Trivia: When was the last time the Boston Red Sox *lost* a World Series game?

[WilliamPitt]

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Game 7.

October 27.

1986.

End transmission.

[MissMillie]

1. Believe it or not, I knew that one

it was right around the time I met my son's father.

I hope you didn't just jinx us though.... a sweep would be okay w/ me.

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

2. yawn

zzzzzzz.........

[TZ]

3. ya know, I am not a Yankee fan at all

but the Hubris of the Red Sox fans is starting to get really tiresome to me too as a fan of other baseball teams. Now I see little difference between the "evil empire" and the obnoxious "Red Sox Nation".....Go Rockies!

[WilliamPitt]

4. Any winning team that is not your team is, by definition, shit.

The #1 maxim of sports.

Sorry.

P.S. You don't have to be a Yankee fan to dislike the Sox. It's OK; we take all comers these days.

Here. Read about it:

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/playoffs2007/columns/story?columnist=bryant_howard&id=3083430

;)

[alcibiades_mystery]

5. The Red Sox got smart and started emulating the late 90's Yankees

The whole myth of the "Sad Sack Red Sox" so cherished by their fans is of relatively recent vintage, despite the long drought, spanning mainly from the late 1970's until the early part of this decade. True, many younger Red Sox fans knew only this fanciful concoction, and the sports writers (and marketers) knew how to spin that yarn for dollars. Similarly, the Yankee Powerhouse legend is really a piecemeal operation, coming in spurts in the 30's, 50's, late 70's, and late 90's. Don Mattingly (Yankees, 1982-1995) never even SAW a World Series as a player. He saw a playoff series only in his final year, when the Yankees squeaked in to the playoffs only to be beaten by the Mariners. This was really the birth of the modern Yankee era, which is the only one people are really talking about when they invoke the so-called "Evil Empire." Of course, the economics of the sport were changing, and the big market teams were the first to grasp and exploit that. The Red Sox were on board soon after, and the last six years have pretty much played the same marketing and recruiting game as the Yankees did in the mid-to-late 90's, before the front office started writing Big Checks for Old-Timers (was there ever a player less suited to pitch in New York City than the worn out hillbilly Randy Johnson?).

So essentially there are two competing narratives at play:

1) The fanciful marketing gimmick that is the "Red Sox Nation" - a put upon group of righteous losers finally made good. Needless to say, this is the most attractive narrative in our culture (Horatio Alger written in sports: the Karate Kid Redux), which is why so many suckers cling to it like grim death.

2) The hard economic narrative, which makes a mockery of the first.

What we see on these boards is the comical clash of these stories. If you remind Red Sox fans that their team is very much like the Thing They Have Hated (tm), they'll do two things: first, they'll tell you that they REALLY REALLY KNOW that the Red Sox are a Powerhouse Team and not the Lovable Losers of Yore (tm). Then they'll call you an asshole for bringing it up. Needless to say, it doesn't make a bit of sense to do BOTH: if they know it, they shouldn't be the least upset. But they get upset because of the sheer preciousness of Narrative 1, even while Narrative 2 is manifest.

[cboy4]

7. alcibiades_mystery, you really should have typed

your response in all caps so Will could read it from high atop his high horse.

[alcibiades_mystery]

9. I have no beef with Will or any other Red Sox fan

Though some of them seem to have a beef with me. :-)

And I don't use all caps.

Salud!

[cboy4]

6. I've always wondered why October 27, 1986 holds

a special place in my heart.

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

8. That was a good game

[alcibiades_mystery]

10. For Game 6, I was sitting on a couch, just 13, with my two brothers

Shea Stadium visible out our apartment window.

I pumped a bicycle pump for luck. Boston would have had their World Series in 1986 if I had stopped pumping that bicycle pump, I assure you.

I stood up for the entire length of Game 7. Again, had I sat down....

[WilliamPitt]

11. .

:)

[Crewleader]

12. I knew that one William

I went into labor watching the game and two long days later, had my son!
Wonderful Win and hope you got to go to one of the games while they played in Boston! :-)

[bridgit]

13. you of course mean *once they ever enter* the world series...

:spray:

[hyphenate]

14. Wasn't there a poem

or song verse about Billy Buckner?

I remember that series well. My mom and I went to bingo a few times while it played, though not that particular game itself. But I do recall on the nights we went to bingo the announcer had to mention the scores about every 15 minutes during games or the elderly male population would have staged a revolution all their own, and the divorce rate among seniors would have been astronomical. :)