Baseball makes it brighter

By Eric Wilbur

September 22, 2008

4 minutes to read

On the bright side …

There’s baseball.

If anyone had doubted the uncertainly that indeed promised to land squarely on Rt. 1 at some point this season, it’s now a moot point following yesterday’s . . . well, you know.

I have a good friend who has been on the season-ticket list for nearly 10 years now, and watching yesterday’s demolition with him, I never got a true read on his overall demeanor. A life-long Pats fan, he spit out his share of the 40-some billion expletives emitted from Enosburg to Warwick yesterday, yet he also understood that some of those widespread empty seats could be his next season as the bandwagon potentially gets lighter.
What’s a man to root for: Team or reaping in the benefit of the team’s misfortune? It’s an inner struggle that the “alternative” hats, corporate fat cats, and there-for-the-moment phonies can’t possibly fathom.
In any case, it all gets a little easier a little more than 24 hours after the ugliness, when the Red Sox look to finally wrap up a playoff berth with Josh Beckett on the hill versus the Cleveland Indians. The magic number sits at one for the postseason, with that darned AL East title so close that Terry Francona will have little choice but to make an extended run at it.
So there’s that. Champagne will flow and Jonathan Papelbon will add a new dance to the repertoire. Unless they decide to go out like they did last year, a dainty toast for making it to the dance, waiting until they clinched the division for an all-out bender. With that less of a certainty this time around though, you might as well put the bartenders at Game On, The Baseball Tavern, or whatever other Fenway-area establishment that players plan to conquest, on alert for an extended Monday night soiree.
That will at least take some of the sting off of watching the Jets potentially pull into a second-place (second) AFC East tie with the Patriots tonight in San Diego. Buffalo is 3-0, and no longer does there appear to be a gimmee on the schedule (outside of Oakland) knowing what we think we do now about the New England football team.
But that’s a concern for another time. By the time you’re watching the Patriots again, the Red Sox could conceivably he headed to the ALCS. That’s how quickly things turn around in sports, a possible bright side to the direct-snap woes of a Ronnie Brown-induced coma.
On Oct. 5, after the bye week, New England travels to San Francisco, a 4 p.m. start that could immediately follow a series-clinching Game 3 in the ALDS. On Oct. 12, when the Patriots have to fly back out west to play the Chargers a week later, the Red Sox could bring a 2-0 ALCS lead into the off day. On Oct. 20, when Denver comes to Foxborough, the Sox might be nursing their hangovers after downing the Rays, Angels. White Sox, or Twins in Game 7 the night before. And on Oct. 26, when the lowly St. Louis Rams come to town, the Sox might be awarding free furniture to New England for the second year in a row with a 12-game World Series winning streak, clinching their second-straight title in Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, or Los Angeles.
On Nov. 2, the Patriots are in Indianapolis, a week before kicking off a three-week AFC East back-to-back-to-back trifecta of Buffalo, New York, and Miami. Then it’s Pittsburgh before having to make consecutive trips out west yet again, to Seattle and Oakland. The schedule rounds out with Arizona and the Bills, a combined 5-1 on the season thus far.
Bottom line, that docket, which looked so cake-walky just three days prior, looks nothing but today, all the result of what happened yesterday in the ugliest loss ever at Gillette Stadium, and the worst regular season debacle in these parts since Rod Rust and Dick MacPherson were at the helm.
Bill Belcihick and Dick MacPherson. Did you ever think the day …
But, never mind all that. True, the Red Sox won’t be hanging a 162-0 banner in Fenway any time soon, but they could be, as soon as tonight, officially back in the playoffs, which should take your mind off the ramifications of yesterday’s loss for a short time. Playoffs. That’s a term of hope these days when it comes to the football team, not expectation.
The baseball team is there. Party at the moontower tonight. The basketball team raises its own banner in a matter of weeks at the Garden, and the hockey team … well, who knows. For the first time this decade, that same measure of uncertainty equates to the Bruins and the Patriots. For what will we see in two weeks vs. the 49ers? What will the Patriots have become sans Tom Brady vs. the Colts in November? Will the Bills or the Pats be the team fighting for their playoff lives in the season finale in Buffalo? Three-hundred-and-sixty-five days after biting their nails in a game that delivered 16-0, Pats fans may be doing the same in a playoff push vs. the Bills. Imagine.
For now, there’s baseball. That’s the good news.
Everything else, it’s wait-and-see in a future clouded by tears and uncertain long-range vision.