99 Luft Balloons

After 99 games, the 2006 edition of The Boston Red Sox were 61-38 . . . one game better than this year’s club.

Why mutter such a gloomy sentence? Why reference such an irrelevant statistic? 2007 is a new year with a much improved team.

I sure hope so.

With a dreadful bullpen, injuries to Matt Clement, Jason Varitek, Big Papi, & Jonathan Papelbon, and the incomprehensible announcement that Jon Lester had cancer, The 2006 Boston Red Sox imploded over the last two months of the season. The nadir occurred when they were swept in a 5 game series at home against The Yankees. During their 9-21 August, excitement melted to despair and congealed into misery that lasted until April 2007.

Such gruesome memories do not need to be conjured up in full detail, but neither should they be forgotten. There are 63 games left in this season and anything can happen. As Red Sox fans we know this in our bones, but after the magic of 2004 we sometimes think that we’re immune to getting jinxed.

I believe in science, statistics, and having a great bullpen. But baseball is a game where luck is embedded in its core. An inch here, a bounce there, and a game is won or lost. Clichéd maybe, but as they say in Bull Durham, “you can look it up”. While quality and depth are the antibiotics of the bad luck infection, sometimes there’s just no cure.

And make no mistake, ill fortune is always lurking. So how do we ward off these evil spirits who seek to ruin our season? For the players they just have to simply perform to their capabilities with a Zen-like mentality of hard work and relaxation. For us fans we cannot become arrogant or complacent with this 7 ½ game lead. But neither can we become to dour and stressed over a loss and a Yankee win. Curses and jinxes sneak through the door with overconfident s-o-b’s and depressed morons.

Jon Lester has beat cancer and just won his first game of the season. Julio Lugo & Coco Crisp are hitting. We have Manny, Big Papi, Dice-K, and Beckett. Okajima & Papelbon are bullpen gold. And Curt Shilling will be back refreshed and ready to anchor the starting rotation. Let’s just politely smile at these facts and enjoy the remaining 63 games of the regular season.