Curse in Hearse

That’s it. 9-11 did change everything. It’s been nearly twelve hours now, and the universe has not been destroyed, despite the Boston Red Sox prevailing in an inconceivable eight game winning streak starting with being down 4-3 going into the 9th inning down three games to none against the New York Yankees to come back and sweep the St. Louis Cardinals to win the 2004 World Series.
Many in New England will now lose a sense of their collective identity: the bitter taste of bizarre means of defeat, heart-crushing late inning errors or opponents’ home runs, somehow made the long, cold dark New England winters seem less troubling than the annual fall collapse of the beloved BoSox. And now, its gone.
Now the BoSox will be “just another team”, and a good one– like the Atlanta Braves, for example, that wins once in a while, and is always in contention. No more curse. No more regional sense of collective angst. Curse exorcized.
Interestingly, October 27, 2004, besides the day of the Red Sox improbable victory, happens to be the 100th anniversary of the opening of the New York subway system; New York, of course, being famous for “subway series” (the most recent being pre-9-11, with the Yankees prevailing over the Mets in 5, in 2000), even though (few people outside of New England realize this), the Boston subway (the “T”) is actually older than New York’s. IIRC, 1904 was also the first year that the Boston Pilgrims (later the Red Sox) won the World Series (this franchise won 5 of the first 15 of them, before falling star-crossed).
Well, although the Bruins and the Celtics didn’t get the job done, I’m counting on one more team from Massachusetts taking it all this fall. Go team!