World Series Champs 2013

A couple of anniversaries to acknowledge: I've been at this blog for a solid year and my wife's birthday is today (we'll judiciously avoid mentioning which one. And to celebrate, we managed to get tickets to Fenway to see the Sox play the Chicago Cubs, a storied franchise whose Curse is even deeper than that broken by the Sox in 2004. The Cubs's GM, Theo Epstein, was the genius who put together Boston's curse-breaking effort, and when Theo went to Chicago several years ago, it was with the hope that he could work the same miracles for a team that hadn't won the Series since 1908. (Boston's drought lasted a mere 86 years.) Win or lose, it would be a spectacular night for baseball, and one of the many things I wanted to see at the venerable ballpark was the flag that marked Boston's improbable charge from worst to first in 2013. I got a chill looking at it, because it's a symbol of a truly magical run... and a marker of how remarkable a championship season ever is. Everything has to come together in the unlikeliest of ways, and, alas, in this mostly dreary season, the magic isn't often in the air. This beautiful night, the magic was entirely with the Cubs whose pitcher, Jake Arrieta, almost threw a no-hitter. That bit of improbability was broken up in the 8th, but, even with a couple of hits, the Sox lost 2-zip.