I Can Still Die In Peace
The Red Sox lost again today, putting them three games up on the Yankees with a little under a month of baseball and three more Sox-Yankees games to go. As we've been telling each other all year, though, no matter what happens, we won last year. We won last year. We can die in peace.
Hence the title of Bill Simmons' upcoming book, Now I Can Die in Peace : How ESPN's Sports Guy Found Salvation, with a Little Help from Nomar, Pedro, Shawshank, and the 2004 Red Sox. Astute cultural observers will know Bill Simmons already, partially through his frequent and trenchant observations of the sports world and life in general, but chiefly through the one time I mentioned him on my blog. (Really, I checked, it was only once.) Since I seem not to have given him proper credit, real quick, Bill Simmons realized early on that while we have a million sports columns written about being an athlete, we didn't have any about being a fan. Plus, he's fascinating and insightful; his recent column on the WNBA sets a standard for honest sports commentary.
But the title of his book reminds me of the weird connection between the Red Sox, secular northeasterners and religion. I've already discussed how people in the northeast tend not to think of religion as a go-out-and-convert-your-neighbors kind of thing. Honestly, though, I think group faith isn't absent from New England; it's just been transferred. When the Sox finally won in 2004, I remember thinking the perfect way to describe the experience was using religious terms: the past 86 seasons, specifically the playoffs in 1946, 1967, 1975, 1978, 1986, both series in 1999, and both series in 2003, had been too much of a coincidence, too many times, to pretend any more that there's not a higher power controlling baseball. So we already knew that God exists, and in 2004 we learned that he loves us too. That's what we were waiting for.
So, as crackpot as that sounds, I don't think it's that far off. Again, Now I Can Die in Peace : How ESPN's Sports Guy Found Salvation, with a Little Help from Nomar, Pedro, Shawshank, and the 2004 Red Sox. What do we have here? A reference to salvation, a reference to shoving off this mortal coil with inner peace, and a one-word reference to a two-word movie whose other word is "redemption." And you're telling me this isn't religious? I'm not going to imply that Johnny Damon is actually Jesus here (remember, it was Schilling who fell in the playoffs, only to rise again), but I hope this helps clarify for the jerks out there (i.e. non-New Englanders) why we're so nuts about the Red Sox. Besides the fact that we're still three games up.
Also, song of the day is "Soulful Strut." No separate column needed.