It’s been forever since I’ve blogged about baseball. Some might say that’s a good thing.
As a diehard Boston Red Sox fan living Downunder, I can’t let the year end without acknowledging the humongous achievement that was the Boston Red Sox winning the World Series. From bottom of the ladder in 2012 to top of the totem pole in 2013, we Red Sox fans rode the roller coaster with our team. Clinching their first World Series since 1918 at Fenway Park and their third this decade, it was six games of riveting, hairy baseball. The hair came from the lengthening beards of several Red Sox players who in a sign of solidarity and strength grew their whiskers as the play offs progressed and looked more like pirates than ball players.
Boston and Red Sox fans will be talking about the 2013 season for decades. In a year where the city was left reeling in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings and the Red Sox’s dismal performance in 2012, this World Series win represents tenacity, focus and kinmanship. Something that we won’t tire telling any Yankees fan. Apart from the win itself, there were many amazing moments – from Big Papi’s grand slam in Game 2, Victorino’s three run double in Game 6 and Kuji Uehara’s closing dominance – all will be remembered, all were uplifting.
Being so far from the action and on the other side of the world, I found out the result from my good friend, Cricket who is also a passionate baseball fan and American citizen transplant to our fair shores. She sent me a text at about 2.30pm our time, which I managed to peek at between work meetings. And this is what is so great about the Boston Red Sox win, because it is more than just baseball, more than just a game, it is a bonding experience. Cricket, a fellow blogger who blogs at Cricket’s Corner of Australia, is a huge Chicago White Sox fan. So huge that she also live blogs most White Sox games for an audience through MLB.com. And that’s quite a commitment from our Australia time zone! Cricket’s technical knowledge of baseball is vast and puts me to shame, but I definitely regard her as my own Cricketpedia on the topic. So during the course of the year, we have been swapping baseball stories, sharing the victories and the defeats in what we have termed our own Battle of the Sox Drawer. She of the white, I of the red and with a cross over pitcher in the form of Jake Peavy who was traded from white to red mid-season, we have shared in the fortunes of our respective teams. Cricket of course donned the red sox in the post season in what became the year of the drawer.
Apart from this little bonding experience the win gave me an opportunity to contact a friend in Boston, also a big Red Sox fan, to share in the spoils. We had lost touch for a couple of years, 
but thanks for the Sox we have now renewed contact. That opportunity itself is worth its weight in gold. And finally, there was the play by play post mortem with my eldest son and husband and watching the games on delay after our work days. It brought us together and made us reminisce about our trip to Fenway, about hearing the crack of the bats and roar of the fans.
The big news for Aussie baseball fans is that the Arizona Diamondbacks and the LA Dodgers are heading to Sydney for their 2014 season opener next March. Our whole family will be there for both games and we will be hosting Cricket and her hubby for game two. We will be decked out in all of our Sox gear and will make the very most of this unique opportunity. I will be adopting the Diamonbacks as my team for those games as I take in an MLB baseball game on Australian soil.There was an MLB photo teaser this week with representatives of the teams standing before the Sydney Harbour Bridge. This is about to get real!
So thank you Boston and thank you Red Sox. You have brought me more this year than just a world series win, you have brought me friendship and connection. And that’s a home run right there.
This is the last of my NaBloPoMo posts. I didn’t quite achieve the Challenge, but I posted more often that not.
Thanks for joining me on the journey.
Raising the Curtain 
you will know that I have not read this in it’s entirety from when you posted to me clicking like – at least I’m honest lol. Baseball..hmm not so much, but I am pleased for you and want to say you did one damn fine job on your Nano! 🙂 x
And here I thought you were a speed reader. No problem, luvy, appreciate the support 🙂 x
😀 you always bring a smile and you are welcome.
I love it. Thanks mate
You’re welcome.
I am not sports minded at all, although we used to play baseball when I was a kid. Nice to hear the win made for a good excuse to connect with a long absent friend.
Congrats on persevering during the NaBloPoMo as well as you have. I wouldn’t have been able to manage as well. 🙂
Thanks for your support as always, Tess. And yes, the reconnection was a real highlight.
*smiles*
I have never seen a sports team where people flocked to the cemetaries to put pennants, caps and jerseys on tombstones of die hard relatives/ fans who never saw them win. And, now they have done so several times in the past ten years. And, this year was even more appropriate and special with the marathon bombing. Thanks for sharing, BTG
The Red Sox seem to be a team which really evokes emotion. I suppose the Red Sox fans have a lot of catching up to do after the breaking of the Babe Ruth Curse. I would have liked to seen the images of some of those tombstones all decked out in the blue and red, would be quite moving.
I’ve been a Red Sox fan since 1966, and for me personally, the 2013 season has become one of my two all time favorite Red Sox experiences, second only to 2004, when the Yankees beat the Red Sox in the ALCS three games straight, and then the Sox sent the Yankees away to swing golf clubs instead of baseball bats, by beating the Bronx Bombers in four games straight.
The 2013 Red Sox remind me of a movie about a musical group called “The Replacements”. They didn’t look like very much, and before the season started few people expected much of anything good to come from them. Until they started to play… and then we all got to see just how good our Red Sox “Replacements” could really play, when they played better than everyone else.
Thanks for sharing your own 2013 Red Sox experience here, since reading your post helped me to continue enjoying my own. 🙂
I love the analogy of “The Replacements.” So, Chris you fell in love with Yaz, Petrocelli, Lonborg, Scott, Foy, Andrews et al. The Red Sox took fans to the brink many times before breaking the barrier in 2004. That Yankee playoff series was hard to beat down 0-3, yet this past year was special given the bombing. Judy, great memory evoking post. BTG
Yeah, I definitely fell in love with Yaz, Rico, “Gentleman Jim” Lonborg, George Scott, Joe Foy, Mike Andrews, and Tony C, although his was a very sad story in August of ’67 after he got hit by a pitch that all but obliterated his right eye, and ended his season. At least he wasn’t killed, because he could have been, and when he was knocked unconscious by the pitch, and then he never moved, even while being carried off the field on a stretcher, many fans there at Fenway feared that Conigliaro was dead.
But Jude, I am genuinely impressed with your knowledge of the “Cardiac Kids” on the ’67 Impossible Dream Team, and although I already knew that you are without a doubt a true Red Sox fan, I’m all the more impressed that you are also so well versed in Red Sox history from over 46 years ago.
I’m glad that my first full season of being a Red Sox fan was the year before 1967, when the Sox were never in contention and finished in ninth place. Fenway Park was lucky to have ten thousand people show up for a game in 1966, but of course that all changed in very dramatic fashion a year later, and although I was only 10 years old back then, I could still really appreciate the difference between 1966 and 1967.
Uhm yeah… Red Sox fans were taken to the brink only to be deeply disappointed many times, but 2004 took away that collective curse we all lived through, with what seemed like a true baseball miracle, since no MLB team had ever lost the first three games of a best of seven series and then come back to win the series by winning four in a row.
Thanks again for blogging about the Red Sox, Jude. I think that you deserve at least partial credit for an assist, by motivating me to do something last night that is Red Sox related, that I’m now very glad I made the effort to do.
I wasn’t going to blog on WP about my off season Red Sox project that I just completed an hour ago, because of my 171 WP followers, I think that you are the only Red Sox fan in my following.
But if you are the ONLY one of my WP followers who reads and enjoys the post I have just now decided to go ahead and write, it will be worth it. 🙂 My wife really enjoyed seeing my Red Sox related project since she’s a Red Sox fan too, so there’s at least one other person who will read and enjoy my post, even though she doesn’t follow my blog, but she does frequently read it… Lol 🙂
It’s great to see you back on here Chris and thanks for the comment. Indeed, the 2004 series was when the Red Sox became our team for life. I wonder how next year will go now that Elsbury has been traded to the evil empire.
I ‘d love to see your post Chris, glad I could act as inspiration for something 🙂