I'll sleep in November

A very late night here in Moscow. For the playoffs, I paid MLB for the Internet feed of the games, and can justify the cost in lost sleep because it is October. Besides, Mila has her first cold and appears to be springing about four teeth at once, so it is not as if my sleep patterns weren’t screwed up already!

I didn’t get to see the team in action except back in April, so it is strange seeing these guys I followed so closely on paper through the year. The Sox look awfully good so far this postseason, like they finally started to play up to their full potential only in the past few weeks or so – especially tonight (this morning), when together Ortiz and Ramirez got on base ten times in five at bats each. Unlike the 2004 edition, they seem like a gang of stone cold pros.

I have to admit that since winning the Series in 2004, and with the Yankees making another ignominious exit, the postseason is much more pleasant than it used to be. I looked up the past Sox-Indians postseason series, and remember how excruciating it was. I remember 1995, getting over the novelty of a divisional series and staying up late with my roommate Adam for the 13-inning Game One that the Sox eventually lost. I remember well 1999, when Pedro game in Game 5 and there was a weird sense that our cosmic luck was finally beginning to change, that there was no way we could lose that particular game. I was also surprised to learn that Dave Roberts, hero of ’04, was on that Indians team in his first big league season.

I happened to see that Oct. 12 was the 40th anniversary of Game Seven of the ’67 Series, the sad ending to the “Impossible Dream” season. Bob Gibson threw a complete game – and hit a solo homer in the fifth -- for the St. Louis Cardinals at Fenway, for a 7-2 win. Jim Lonborg got the loss. What really stuck out for me in the box score, especially as tonight's game approached the four hour mark, is that amazingly, that game lasted two hours and twenty-three minutes.