Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any
manner whatsoever without the written permission of the Publisher. Printed
in the United States of America. For information, contact ESPN Books,
19 East 34th Street, 7th Floor, New York, New York 10016.
This revised edition published in the United States by ESPN Books and
distributed by Random House, Inc.
“Blood Feud” originally appeared in the April 2002 issue of Boston magazine.
ISBN-10: 1-933060-72-7
ISBN-13: 978-1-933060-72-9
www.espnbooks.com
www.randomhouse.com
10 9 8 7 6
REJUVENATION
October 1998– December 2000
v i i i Bill Simmons
HOPE IS A GOOD THING
February 2004– October 2004
453 Acknowledgments
x Bill Simmons
PROLOGUE
M
y editors had to dissuade me from nam- 1 Imagine being stuck at
ing this book Love Child of the Impossible an all-male school in 20-
degree weather? Yikes. If
Dream. The more I thought about it, they
you’re scoring at home,
were probably right—it sounds like the
Holy Cross finally started
title of a John Mayer album, or maybe a admitting women in 1972,
crappy civil rights epic starring Reese Witherspoon and Omar although they didn’t start
Epps. And we wouldn’t want that. But as the unassuming open- admitting women who put
ing of a prologue about a budding Red Sox fan, it definitely out until 1999.
at Holy Cross (in Worcester, a 45-minute drive from Fenway and search for hotties with
Park). Since the Cross was an all-male school at the time1, Dad their thumbs sticking out.
In fact, you could call it the
would hitchhike on weekends to any town or city with females,
Golden Age of Serial
fleeing the campus so frequently, one of his old roommates still
Killing, with Ted Bundy
calls him Suitcase to this day. His most frequent destination was being the era’s Michael
Boston College, where he crashed with an old high school Jordan. Then the media
friend named Jay Breslin. Well, you know who else was friends went to work. When I was
with Jay Breslin? My mother. Known for wearing the shortest nine years old, I watched
miniskirts on campus, she ended up falling for my father, a a TV movie called Diary of
a Teenage Hitchhiker
wannabe hippie from a rival school. And the rest was history.2
(starring Charlene Tilton),
They didn’t pick just any year to fall in love. Before the
which put the fear of God
Impossible Dream season, the Red Sox hadn’t captured a World in me and everyone else
Series in 48 years, an agonizing span featuring one measly pen- under 15—all I remember
nant and nine consecutive losing seasons since 1958. They were is some creepy dude in a
4 Bill Simmons
this, “The Bengals weren’t very good when I was growing up in 4 I was in college when
Cincy, so I became a Niners fan” crap. Local teams are like fam- the Emmitt/Aikman Era
came together—you have
ily—you have to stick with them through thick and thin. Even
never seen so many
if they’re living on welfare and making occasional appearances
Cowboys hats and T-shirts
on Jerry Springer. come out of the wood-
work, with an astonishing
Rule No. 3: You can’t root for a team, back off during a
correlation between peo-
down cycle, then renew the relationship once the team starts
ple who jumped on the
winning again. Those Cowboys fans who jumped off the band- Cowboys bandwagon
wagon in the late ’80s, jumped back on during the and people who rowed
Emmitt/Aikman Era, jumped back off in the late ’90s, then crew. These were also the
made another jump when Parcells came aboard—you know same people who a) hit on
6 Bill Simmons
And if you’re wondering why Red Sox fans seem to be mul- 7 That’s not a lie: I could
tiplying across the country like pods in Invasion of the Body read by the time I was
two. When I was six, I
Snatchers—well, that’s why. It’s the only fan base in sports that
started reading the Hardy
consistently regenerates itself. Maybe you didn’t come to New
Boys series, which were
England intending to fall in love with the Red Sox, it’s just that written for “boys 10 to 14”
you couldn’t help it. (that’s what it said on the
In my father’s case, not only did he fall in love with the Red back of each book). I took
Sox, he fell for my mother and they ended up having me. Nine this as a personal affront
years later, they ended up getting divorced. and finished the entire 58-
But he still had the Red Sox. And he still had me. book series before I turned
nine. These are the things
that happen when you’re
I can’t remember a single day of my life that didn’t involve an only child in the mid-
the Boston teams. By the time I was eight months old, my par- ’70s and you get only five
ents already had me wearing a Red Sox hat. At two, I was perus- TV stations.
ing the Boston Globe’s sports section every morning.7 At three,
I owned my first baseball glove. When I was four, my father
purchased a single season ticket for the Celtics and started car-
rying me into games—just our luck, we caught two champi-
onships in the first three years, including the famous triple-OT
game against Phoenix in the 1976 NBA Finals. At five, I owned
an extensive collection of baseball and hockey cards, rattled off
statistics like a young Bill James, even performed a dead-on
impersonation of Carl Yastrzemski’s swing.
After my sixth birthday, my parents were summoned to see
my first-grade teacher twice: Once because I was refusing to
start my 8:00 a.m. class until I finished the sports section of the
Globe; once because I was coloring my face black in self-por-
traits and referring to myself as Jabaal Abdul-Simmons. Even
then, I knew the odds were against me—I wanted to play point
guard for the Celtics so badly, I decided that changing my skin
color and having a Muslim name was my only real chance. So I
started signing my homework assignments “JABAAL” and
refusing to answer unless my teacher used my Muslim name.
You know, just like Ali refusing to answer to “Cassius Clay,”
only imagine he was a six-year-old white kid. If this happened
now, they would have loaded me with Ritalin and diagnosed me
with EATD (Ethnic Attention Transformation Disorder) or
something equally ludicrous. Back then, they called your par-
ents in, made you spend second period with “your own person-
al teacher” and hoped you grew out of it.
Well, I grew out of it. Somewhat. Equally obsessed with the
8 Bill Simmons
We were headed to the World Series. Tiant pitched a gem moment of the 20th centu-
against the Big Red Machine in Game One (I still remember ry, Chamberlain basically
saying, “Okay, Adolf, you
him haphazardly running the bases with that goofy warmup
can have Czechoslovakia,
jacket), followed by the Series turning on a bizarre interference
but that’s it” and Hitler
play in Game Three,12 with the Sox eventually falling behind saying, “Yeah, yeah, I
three games to two. That was followed by a surreal three-day already told you, I’m done
rain delay, allowing Tiant to pitch Game Six at Fenway—the after that.” Even Isiah
famous game that Carbo saved with a heroic three-run dinger Thomas wouldn’t have
into the bleachers (my vote for Most Underrated Boston Sports made that deal.
Moment), Fisk won in the 12th (with the homer off the leftfield
12 In the 10th inning,
foul pole) and Matt Damon and Robin Williams immortalized
Cincy’s Ed Armbrister laid
in Good Will Hunting (in the “gotta see about a girl” scene). down a sacrifice bunt
Sadly, I wasn’t awake for the last five innings. After all, I had just right over home plate,
turned six. But I did stay up for Game Seven, and only because my then “accidentally”
father wanted me awake when the Red Sox won their first World lurched into Fisk, who was
because I wouldn’t stop listening to it. She was fine with the this well. There have been
Hirshberg book—at least I was reading something constructive, prison riots that had safer
conditions than the city of
separating me from just about every other weirdo in the class,
Boston that night.
including The Kid Who Threw Chairs, The Kid Who Always
Smelled Like Poop and The Kid Who Made Weird Bird 13 Then again, the other
Noises.13 In retrospect, they should have taken Hirshberg’s kids probably remember
book away from me. I was too young. I didn’t need to know me as The Kid Who Gave
these things yet. I could have been saved. Himself a Muslim Name—
Here were the first two sentences of the book: “What’s the which probably trumped
all of them. Well, except
matter with the Red Sox? In Boston, in all of New England
for The Kid Who Always
except Southern Connecticut, in the Maritime Provinces—
Smelled Like Poop.
wherever baseball is discussed in these areas—this was first a
plaintive cry, then a chronic complaint, and finally, a way of life.”
Here was my reaction: “Um … what? There’s something
wrong with the Red Sox? Whaddya mean?”
Although I didn’t know what the words plaintive or chron-
ic meant, I kept reading. And my life was never the same. In a
scant 230 pages, I learned the barbaric history of my favorite
baseball team. Here was the timeline:
1 0 Bill Simmons
and ’50s. There was a chapter about the shocking amount of bad 15 We can all agree that
luck over the years: Conigliaro’s beanball; Jim Lonborg blow- Williams was one of the 25
greatest athletes of all
ing out a knee on a skiing trip; Luis Aparicio falling down as the
time, right? With the
tying run in a crucial game in ’72; Johnny Pesky holding the ball
exception of Ali, name
for a split second too long in the ’46 World Series; Joe someone else in that top 25
McCarthy pitching journeyman Denny Galehouse over ace Mel who missed three years of
Parnell in the ’48 playoff game. their prime because of out-
Maybe I was only six, but this book had a profound effect side circumstances. You
on me. Was my team doomed? Sure seemed like it. Just one year can’t. These things only
earlier, I figured out that Santa Claus was a sham because he happened to the Red Sox.
knew things were probably going to end badly, but that didn’t high and sat just 310 feet
stop me from watching as many games as possible and hoping I from home plate (an invit-
ing target for righthanded
was wrong. When they jumped to a seemingly insurmountable
power hitters who were
fourteen-game lead over the Yankees in July of 1978, it seemed
always advertised as
like our fortunes had changed. Then the Yanks started creeping being “perfect for
back into the race—to the abject horror of everyone in New Fenway”). From 1934 to
England—as the lead dwindled and eventually disappeared dur- 1946, the wall was covered
ing the demoralizing Boston Massacre.17 But just when it in advertisements until
looked like the Sox were finished, they battled back with their Yawkey painted it green
before the 1947 season—
own little streak, winning 12 of their last 14 (including their last
hence, the nickname
eight) to force a one-game playoff.
Green Monster. Contrary to
You can’t possibly imagine how big that game was. We did- urban legend, Jim Henson
n’t have cable TV. We didn’t have video games. We didn’t have had nothing to do with it.
the Internet, cell phones, DVD players or iPods. Honestly,
there wasn’t much happening in 1978.18 And when you don’t 17 On September 7,
have a ton of distractions, the distractions that do exist take on the Yankees rolled into
epic proportions. You know, like the Red Sox. This wasn’t just Fenway trailing by just
four games, then pulled
the most important game of my entire life, it remains the
into a dead heat by
biggest Boston game ever and will never be topped. We had to outscoring the Sox 42-9 in
beat the Yankees. When you combine the circumstances of that four games. That was the
season with the Shakespearean relationship between those two Massacre. The definitive
teams, as well as the ghoulish setting of Fenway Park in the late moment: A haunting
afternoon and a petrified crowd … seriously, has there ever been photo of Yaz slumping
another baseball game quite like that? Even when ESPN Classic against the Green Monster
during the umpteenth
shows the old broadcast, there’s an eerie vibe from the fans:
pitching change—it was
deafening silences, urgent cheers, a palpable nervous energy,
like that famous photo of
1 2 Bill Simmons
times when it mattered, and few Boston athletes ever had a bet- once he broke his bat just
ter sense of The Moment. Seeing him stride to the plate against by checking his swing.
Seriously.
the fireballing Gossage, well, other than Kirk Gibson’s famous
homer off Dennis Eckersley, has there ever been an at-bat that
22 Three quintessential
felt more like a movie scene? There was grizzled old Yaz trying examples: Robert Redford
to save the season, his lungs filled with nicotine residue, the sun in The Natural; Roy
setting behind him, needing a single to save the season. If this Scheider in Tiger Town;
were a movie, William Devane would have played him, and Yaz and that guy who played
would have ripped a Gossage fastball into the rightfield bullpen, Eddie Harris in Major
League (the same guy
and everyone would have happily skipped out of the dugout in
who tried to steal Norman
slow motion, and the fans would have charged the field, and Yaz
Dale’s job in Hoosiers).
would have been swarmed as he hopped on home plate, and One of the all-time great
then the credits would have rolled. The end. That Guys. I’ll even give
Here’s the thing that killed me (and everyone else): Right as you his name, since you
we were entertaining these magical thoughts, Yaz swung late on just spent $25 for this
a Gossage heater and abruptly popped up to third. What sports book—Chelcie Ross.
movie would ever end like that? I remember the ball slicing up
23 Fisk and Lynn ended
in the air, Yaz grimacing in disgust and slamming his bat like a
up leaving on a contract
shovel, the crowd shrieking in horror, Graig Nettles settling technicality—the team
underneath it, the Yankees celebrating, everything going quiet, “forgot” to mail them con-
Yaz limping back to the dugout, the finality of it all. tracts in time, making
I started crying. I cried and cried. My mom rubbed my head. them free agents, although
I kept crying. Life wasn’t fair. I kept crying. everyone knew they did it
Red Sox stopped spending money on free agents and pushed time. Lynn and Steve
Renko fetched the putrid
five popular stars out of town—Lee and Tiant in the winter of
package of a washed-up
’78, then Fisk, Burleson and Lynn two winters later.23 Just like
Joe Rudi, no-name Jim
that, The Best Young Team in Baseball had been dismantled. Dorsey and noodle-armed
The 1981 season started with Fisk returning to Fenway in a Frank Tanana. At the time,
White Sox uniform and vindictively crushing a pivotal home ABC could have traded
run on Opening Day—a morbidly upsetting moment to anyone Gabe Kaplan, Henry
who cared about the team—launching a five-year stretch where Winkler and Ricardo
the team was kind of competitive, but not really. All I remem- Montalban to NBC for Skip
Stevenson and Claude
ber were these six things:
Akins and I wouldn’t have
been as bitter.
1 4 Bill Simmons
fans per home game. By 1984, that number had dipped to 1.66 26 Following the 1994
million and 20,000 per game. On April 29, 1986, when Roger strike, guess who was the
only team whose atten-
Clemens struck out 20 Seattle batters and turned the franchise’s
dance actually increased
fortunes around—in fact, everything that led to the 2004 World
in the ’95 season? That’s
Series started that day—there were fewer than 14,000 spectators right, Boston.
at Fenway that night. People were just more interested in the
Celtics and Patriots…until Clemens’ remarkable performance
changed everything. By 1988, the team was averaging more than
30,000 fans per game, a mark it topped 11 times over the next
16 years as the children of the Impossible Dream generation
finally had enough money to purchase tickets.26 By 2004, that
number had climbed to 36,298, which was also the capacity of
the ballpark. In other words, every home game sold out.
Following Clemens’s 20K game, the next eight years fea-
tured everything you could want from a baseball team—three
playoff appearances (’86, ’88, ’90), likable stars (Clemens,
Boggs, Rice, Evans, Mike Greenwell, Mo Vaughn), likable vet-
erans (Don Baylor, Bruce Hurst, Mike Boddicker, Jeff Reardon,
Lee Smith), and a front office that wasn’t afraid to throw
money around (even if it was usually at the wrong guys). That
stretch also featured the most scarring moment in franchise his-
tory (Game Six of the ’86 World Series), as well as Dan
Shaughnessy’s release of The Curse of the Bambino (a smarter,
more diabolical rehashing of Hirshberg’s book) and the subse-
quent brainwashing by curse-related rhetoric of every national
magazine and TV network (don’t worry, we’re covering this
later in bloody, laborious detail). Complicating things, the first
generation of post-Babe Red Sox fans was passing away without
seeing the team win a World Series. The symbolism was clear to
everyone: Someday, that could be me.
Around this same time, I was pursuing a writing career that
started with a weekly column for my college newspaper at Holy
Cross—yes, Dad’s old school—eventually deciding to write
about sports for a living. I earned my master’s from Boston
University in 1993 and spent the next three years as a high
school sports reporter and editorial assistant for the Boston
Herald. And here’s where my life and the Red Sox intersected
again. In 1994, the indefensible strike wiped away the World
Series, a loss of innocence for anyone who’d ever cared about
sports. I found myself stuck with all these baseball memories
that suddenly seemed insignificant. If they didn’t care about
1 6 Bill Simmons
So I wrote a couple of freelance pieces for the Boston 29 Good move for a
Phoenix over the next three months, but my heart wasn’t in it weekly paper in Boston,
only the most rabid sports
and as fate would have it, they hired a new news editor who
city in the country.
improbably told me, “Um, we’re going to shift away from the
sports thing.”29 Now it was the beginning of June. I had no 30 One of my 10 biggest
contacts, no leads and no idea what I was doing with my life. fears in life is that copies
Every night I was sitting home writing episodes for a made-up of these episodes will
TV series about people in college, despite the fact that I had no somehow turn up on the
contacts in Hollywood and no idea how to write a screenplay.30 Internet. They couldn’t
I was making $0.00 per week and living off peanut butter and have been worse. It’s not
possible.
cereal. I was lost. Totally, completely lost.
And then a pretty neat thing happened: I started bartending.
I ended up doing the restaurant/bar routine all summer—
woke up at noon, worked past midnight, stayed out partying
until 3 a.m. five nights a week, spent cash like Monopoly
money—and it was the best thing that could have happened to
me. Everyone was lost, everyone just wanted to have fun, every-
one was interesting and every night was more interesting than the
last. The inherent danger of the restaurant business is that you
could look up from a drunken, smoky haze one morning and
realize that three years just passed, that the carpe diem mentality
just sidetracked the course of your life. Fortunately for me, that
never happened. Within a few months, I started thinking to
myself, “I need to give writing one more shot.” I just didn’t know
how. Or where. In May of 1997, I launched my own web page
called “Boston’s Sports Guy,” which could only be found
through Digital City Boston if you had an AOL account. Since
they were paying me peanuts, I kept the bartending gig and
worked at a breakneck pace over the next 18 months, not really
knowing where I was headed, just knowing that it felt like the
right direction. Like with the Red Sox, sometimes you just have
to believe.
It took time to find my voice as a columnist, mainly because
the Boston sports scene had been so depressing over the previ-
ous decade. Eventually I learned to write from a fan’s perspec-
tive, but that wasn’t clicking at first because I needed to learn to
love sports again. My angriest column was written in October
of 1997, after yet another rebuilding year in Boston that fea-
tured an unprecedented double whammy—Clemens rolling off
one of the great pitching seasons in recent years in Toronto, fol-
lowed by Florida winning the World Series. The Marlins thing
1 8 Bill Simmons
what? I couldn’t really blame them. I actually wanted to write 32 In November 2002, I
this book after the 2003 season, only I was juggling two jobs at started writing for Jimmy
Kimmel’s new late-night
the time and couldn’t swing it.32
show on ABC, cutting
Just know that this book isn’t about the Red Sox as much as
back to three columns a
a kid who fell out of love with baseball, slowly found himself month for ESPN.com and
sucked back in, then battled the demons that came with support- ESPN The Magazine. In
ing a star-crossed franchise. Maybe last October’s events gave me April 2004, ESPN lured me
a better title than Love Child of the Impossible Dream, as well as back full-time and I had to
a much happier ending (well, unless you’re a Yankee fan). But this break up with Jimmy,
book would have happened whether they won the World Series although we remained on
good terms and agreed to
or not. As Manny Ramirez would say, it was destination.
share custody of our three
children.
Bill Simmons
June 2005
O
n November 18, 1997, the Red Sox acquired 33 If you’re reading this
Pedro Martinez only weeks after he won the in 2050, The Contender
was NBC’s boxing reality-
Cy Young Award for Montreal. It would
TV show that never quite
become the most important trade in franchise
resonated with viewers.
history, and not just because of how Pedro Since it was hosted by
pitched in Boston. Finally —finally!—the Sox were targeting Sylvester Stallone and
young stars entering their primes over proven stars who had Sugar Ray Leonard (a
already peaked. combined 195 out of 200
Sounds pretty simple, right? Not for the Red Sox. During on the Unintentional
my first three decades as a Boston fan, they trotted out more Comedy Scale), I did my
best to get people watch-
has-beens and overrated names than Sly Stallone during the
ing, even writing, “Since
entire first season of The Contender.33 This isn’t always a bad Sly Stallone single-hand-
thing. For instance, in The Contender it’s fun to see random edly ended the Cold War
crowd shots of James Woods and Don Johnson, or a barely rec- for us, the least you could
ognizable Carl Weathers high-fiving Sly after an exciting round. do is give his reality show
But when the year-to-year fate of your baseball team is a whirl.” Didn’t work.
2 4 Bill Simmons
for proven commodities. Without revenue sharing or a salary 37 I gave Duquette a 95
cap, small-market teams couldn’t afford talented players head- out of 100 on the “Ruined
the Summer” Scale for rea-
ed for free agency, so they were forced to build a young nucle-
sons including “Pushed
us, hope everything crested for one season (like with the Expos
Clemens away to Toronto
in 1994), then exchange those studs for prospects (in trades) and spent his money on
and draft picks (compensation from free agency). Lather, rinse, Steve Avery, Robinson
repeat. By contrast, big market teams could allow everyone else Checo, and Shane Mack”
to develop young talent, then pluck the blue-chippers like a and “Has same haircut as
prime-time show plucking rising stars off a soap opera. my elementary school
As long as the Red Sox kept producing desirable prospects shop teacher.”
Things quickly turned, however, during a frustrating 1996 son of 24, or even Shawn
Michaels super-kicking
season, when the Sox underachieved for four months and made
Marty Janetty through a
a belated run near the end, followed by Clemens’ bitter depar-
plate-glass window. The
ture and a pitiful 1997 season (when I skewered Duquette in a column almost seemed like
column called “Who Ruined Our Baseball Summer?”37). Media an intervention, as
members were openly mocking the Duke’s secretive style; there Gammons pleaded with
was something creepy and distant about him, like he was evolv- the Duke to hire a major
ing into the baseball version of The Manchurian Candidate. league advisor and a pub-
lic relations guru. My
Even Gammons turned on him in a September column called
favorite excerpt: “Scrap the
“Time to Make a New Plan, Dan,”38 which included barbs like,
Iron Curtain, cultivate and
“It seems as if nothing has changed since Tom Yawkey died” and enjoy the media. You
“Duquette is not pulseless, although he has allowed himself to always wanted this job,
be so portrayed.” now you don’t seem as if
Only one thing saved him. Thanks to Duquette’s original you enjoy it, and your fam-
plan, Boston’s revamped farm system was deep enough that ily and friends shouldn’t
they could dangle two prized pitching prospects (Carl Pavano have to agonize every time
they pick up the paper or
and Tony Armas Jr.) for Martinez, a package that Montreal
turn on the radio.”
ended up accepting over a similar overture from the Yankees.
For a franchise that desperately needed to make a splash after 39 Here’s what I wrote:
the Clemens fiasco, this was the boldest statement Boston “After a summer of watch-
could make. But since it was unclear whether the team would ing the Aaron Seles and
re-sign Pedro after the 1998 season, writers and fans were cau- Tim Wakefields of the
tiously excited at best.39 In our wildest dreams, nobody imag- world, management real-
ized that you can’t win
ined that he would stick around and evolve into the most
without a stopper—some-
dominant pitcher in 30 years.
one who stomps out to the
mound every five days
2 6 Bill Simmons
pushing for his departure, it was only a matter of time. Dan
Duquette ended up getting canned right before the 2002 season,
31 months before the Red Sox won their first World Series in 86
years. Fifty years from now, I will remember him as the guy
who drafted Nomar, signed Manny, and traded for Pedro, as
well as the monosyllabic eccentric who allowed his dream job to
eventually get the best of him. But starting with the 1998 sea-
son, Duquette was one of the people who gave Red Sox fans
hope again. And that’s where our story begins.
June 2005
As we regroup from another playoff collapse and brace for 41 The Indians took the
Mo Vaughn’s inevitable departure, only one player will keep series in four games. In
Game Four, Tom Gordon
Boston fans smiling throughout the winter: Our shortstop.
gave up the go-ahead
Forget how the Indians-Red Sox series turned out.41 We’ll
double after Jimy Williams
always remember Nomar Garciaparra clapping in the dugout brought him in one inning
during the final inning, trying anything to keep his team alive, early for the first time all
never giving up hope...and when it was over, stepping out of the year, leading to Flash’s
dugout and applauding the Fenway Faithful. After everything second blown save of the
he gave us this year—the clutch hits, the breathtaking plays in season. These were the
the field, the smiles, and the hope—the last thing we would types of things that hap-
pened to the Red Sox.
have expected was for him to applaud us. But he did.
All the time.
Listen, I remember every person in sports who ever let me
down. I remember supporting Roger Clemens through thick 42 This is a reference to a
and thin for 12 years, then watching him sign with Toronto now-defunct professional
and barely mention Red Sox fans on his way out. I remember league called the
the players and owners shutting down the 1994 baseball season National Hockey League
and canceling the World Series—maybe the worst decision in (NHL for short). The league
featured teams of hockey
the history of professional sports. I remember the appalling
players based in different
lack of emotion Jack Tatum displayed after paralyzing Darryl
cities—every spring, the
Stingley in 1978. I remember the thankless way the Sox pushed champion was awarded
Fisk, Lynn, and Evans out of town. I remember Harry Sinden a trophy called The
and Jeremy Jacobs refusing to spend enough money to secure a Stanley Cup.
Stanley Cup from 1988 to 1993, squandering the primes of two
superstars (Ray Bourque and Cam Neely) in the process.42 I
remember Irving Fryar fumbling and snorting his way though
eight horrible years in New England before moving to Miami,
finding God and becoming an All-Pro.
I remember M.L. Carr, John Y. Brown, and Victor Kiam
destroying my favorite teams; Lenny Bias costing the Celtics a
dynasty because he wanted to get high; Glen Wesley missing the
open net in the triple OT game. I remember Cedric Maxwell
killing the ’85 Celts because he didn’t work hard enough to
return from knee surgery. I remember John McNamara keeping
Bill Buckner in over Dave Stapleton; KC Jones burying Reggie
Lewis as a rookie; Raymond Berry picking Tony Eason over
Steve Grogan before Super Bowl XX; and Don Zimmer man-
3 0 Bill Simmons
comeback—we missed the ferocious way he competed, how he 46 This could have hap-
derived a certain charge from vanquishing opponents, how he pened if he hadn’t injured
his wrist. When you read
would play for free (give or take $30 million). And it’s why we
the rest of these other
appreciated Nomar’s gesture so much last week. He didn’t have
Nomar-related columns
to come out of the dugout and applaud the Fenway fans after over the rest of the book,
Game Four. But he did. And he left everyone in Fenway and this one feels more
everyone watching on TV with the same feeling: There’s a guy poignant than it did at the
who cares about us. time. It’s hard to believe
Here’s my theory: Fans are like dogs. Feed us, walk us, fill how this played out.
our bowls with water every few hours, give us those little Even now.
3 2 Bill Simmons
Order a copy of NOW I CAN DIE IN PEACE
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Borders
IndieBound
Powell’s
Random House
Other Retailers