As a native of Auburn and having lived in the baseball wilderness of Richmond, Va., for the past 12 years, I was pleased to receive from my mother the Sun Journal’s supplement leading up to the World Series. I may not live in New England anymore, but my fanatical support of the Sox has never wavered. Ask any of the two meeting rooms full of people who applauded me the day after the Sox clinched.
The Red Sox comeback against the Yankees easily ranks as the greatest comeback in sports history. Eighty-six years of generational frustration and baseball superstition collided with true grit and sensational, improbable Red Sox wins that provided drama that could never have been scripted. People who weren’t even sports fans were captivated.
In a series of cathartic, convulsive eruptions, the Sox ensured that the Yankee finger was removed from the collective eye of Red Sox Nation. Those wins served as the catalyst that propelled the Sox to a World Series drubbing of the Cardinals. To truly erase the curse of the Bambino, the Red Sox had to go through Yankee Stadium. A world title earned any other way would have included an asterisk.
As a longtime and long-suffering Red Sox fan, I awoke the morning after the clinch and was able to utter, once again, the phrase I shouted for the first time the night before and had waited a lifetime to say: “World Series Champion Boston Red Sox.”
Stephen Peterson, Richmond, Va.
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