If there is anything that we hold an unhealthy obsession for, it’s the Boston Red Sox. Annually, we make seven or eight trips to Fenway Park to watch the Sox, and Jeff has had the pleasure of attending several playoff games as well as the Home Run Derby during the All-Star festivities in 1999.
Jeff has long been a rabid Sox fan after growing up in eastern Massachusetts and even developed his own fan appreciation site, FenwayFanatics.com. Jeff’s earliest memory is of a trip to Fenway Park as a young Little Leaguer and watching, from the bleachers, the Sox lose to the Milwaukee Brewers on a warm, late spring afternoon. A few years later, his team was in the World Series, but let’s not rehash bad memories, shall we? Tiffany was never a baseball fan until Jeff started to take her to Sox games. What makes it more remarkable is that she is a transplant from upstate New York (i.e., rabid Yankee fan country), but she never before had paid much attention to baseball and we’re all thankful for that! Jakob and Lea are also becoming fans of the Red Sox and always enjoys going to any baseball game that we can attend, whether it’s at Fenway Park or another ballpark.
After years of frustration, 2004 was finally THE YEAR for Boston. After coming so close in 2003, the Red Sox were finally able to reach the summit and claim that elusive championship for the first time since 1918, the year before Babe Ruth was sold by Boston to its American League rival, the New York Yankees. What made it even sweeter was that, on the way to the top, Boston had to come back from an 0-3 series deficit in the American League Championship Series to the same Yankees to win the pennant, the first time in the history of baseball that a team facing such a challenge had pulled off the unbelievable. From there, it was four wins in four games against St. Louis, to whom Boston had lost the 1946 and 1967 World Series, and the title was back in Beantown!
Three years later in 2007, Boston won its second World Series championship with a sweep of the Colorado Rockies after completing another come-from-behind ALCS win, this time facing a three games to one deficit against the Cleveland Indians. Josh Beckett won all four of his post-season starts, including a complete game shutout of the Los Angeles Angels in Game One of the ALDS, and was named ALCS MVP, while third baseman Mike Lowell was named World Series MVP, batting .400 with a home run, four RBI, six runs scored, and three walks.
Look for us at Fenway Park – we’ll wave to you from Section 29!
