Horizon

I am sure Babe Ruth is rolling in whatever celestial whorehouse he ended up in last night.

And so ends, one hopes, all the whining, the self-pity, the insufferable sense of entitlement that has plagued an entire continent for nearly a century.

Owww, what kind of New Englander are you?

....Oh, a Vermonter, that's what kind. A Vermonter with a sense of superiority to Bostonian self-importance, yes?

Me, I'm beyond self-importance.

Bobby -- Sorry, Internet doesn't convey tones of voice. That was meant to be joking, & with some sympathy, as I'm from *Western* Massachusetts. Today, however, I'm rooting for Boston.

Let us be happy for the people of Boston but let us not over-praise them. It is a pitiable town where the exploits of a few feed the egos of the many. What pleasure, though, this triumph brings to a coldhearted Vermonter: "next year" has come to the Bostonians; misfortune is no longer their mistress and their long practice of enduring misery ignobly is at an end.

Martha, I take no offense (as you should know). In Vermont, we boast only of our modesty - and that is our greatest sin. Our acheivements are small, our winters long, and we never dream in color.

I'm over-zealous in keeping old documents.

An extract from a letter sent from me in Boston on July 21st 1966 to my parents in England:

"...In the evening I went to a Twilight-Night Red Sox double-header against California Angels. Boston won the first, and in an exciting second game, with the scores level in the ninth inning, the Angels pitched a shut-out in the bottom of the tenth to win by one run....Conigliaro almost hit a homer in the bottom of the ninth, but it was a fly to right field in front of the Sox bullpen..."

[Yes, a studied effort in imitative rhetoric.]

That was essentially the team that went on to challenge in the 1967 series with Lonborg, Tartabull, Petrocelli and - above all - Yaz, and I was well on the way to becoming an enthusiast-in-exile. I listened to a lot of the 1967 Series on barely-audible AFN broadcasts, sitting in my room in Cambridge [England] looking out over New Court, Trinity College, while the commentator called out, 'Here's Javier' above the constant crackle of interference, and Lou Brock and Orlando Cepeda sounded too good for my liking.

So hooray for the Sox and I hope the celebrations around Fenway are not muted, even though St Louis was in 1849 the birthplace of my Austro-American great-grandmother.

Let's hope for another postponed victory next week.

This strange victory stuff -- Adrian Walker of the Globe says, "We could get used to it."

First of all, Boston is my favourite American city, so frankly I'm happy to root, root, root for this home team, even though I'm a Torontonian (and hey, why shouldn't I be fickle-- it's not just that our team sucks, they've changed the uniforms to something so vile I wouldn't be seen within a parsec of a Blue Jays ball cap anymore).

Frankly the Red Sox's win gives me hope. I've been waiting for the Toronto Maple Leafs to win the Stanley Cup my entire life (they last won it two and a half years before I was born). If the Sox can do it after 80 years, then maybe the Leafs can do it sooner...

I keep thinking of Doris Godwin Kearns in Ken Burns' excellent documentary Baseball recounting the last near-win / choke by the Sox in the eighties. I should watch News Hour to see if she has anything to say on the subject...

I keep thinking of Doris Godwin Kearns in Ken Burns' excellent documentary Baseball recounting the last near-win / choke by the Sox in the eighties. I should watch News Hour to see if she has anything to say on the subject...

Or is she has anything to 'borrow' on the subject (sorry).

What is it with all these historians plagiarizing each other?? Seems like there has been a rash of cases recently.

Hm. Here's an article on the various cases of plagiarism and misconduct that have cropped up in the history profession recently.