I've had warm regards for the red-garbed Sox since that fateful day in 1987 when, straight off the plane, I illegally immigrated into the land of the Fens.
I'd cabbed there directly, the game already in the 7th inning, and let myself in. Call it gratis or grace, gracie, but it inbuilt a kind of loyalty. I never forget a flavor. Surrounded by the comforting green walls, properly earth-toned in a place as grounded as this, I floated above the diamond for a couple of star-crossed innings.
So I have a minor rooting interest in the Sox (and the Phils for the sake of Dominican Tom) and so was disturbed by last night's stinging defeat suffered at the serrations of the Devil Rays. The Sox are down 3-1, and it's hard to see the joy in Fenville. The camera panned those exiting after the 8th inning and since leaving early is a walk of shame for the baseball fan, some did hang their heads, Tom Dooley-style. No matter the score baseball is a game without clock and therefore with hope. But it is a game not without innings and the ninth came and went and now the storied team finds itself immersed in its dark night of soul.
The jaunty Rays possess a plucky joie de vivre, most precisely embodied by one B.J. Upton, a crisp-looking player with an appetite for (Sox) destruction. Then too there's the "What, me worry?" look of Longoria and the rest, now all playing with a lead. See the power of compounding in action. America loves a Cinderella team, and the Rays certainly fit that cartilaginous bill.
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