504 Words About 2004
By Mike SanClemente - Managing Editor
12/31/2004
I always had faith that it would happen.
They would win someday.
You can ask my friends, I’ve debated them for years: I never believed in a curse, even though the Sox lost Game 7 to the Mets in 1986 on my 18th birthday, as I attended college in upstate New York (which only made the trauma worse). How someone can believe in a curse but not Santa Claus is beyond me.
If anything, as my family has been New England Patriots’ season ticket holders since 1970, I would have put a Patriots’ Super Bowl victory further out of reach, with 2 Super Bowl victories simply unfathomable.
But as the Red Sox added to the greatest comeback in American professional sports history with the most impactful World Series victory ever, they did so on my 36th birthday. Who ever would have predicted that my greatest year ever as a sports fan would occur the season my Stratomatic team went 41-121 in a 26-team keeper league, with a staff anchored by Pedro Martinez?
While I was out with friends watching the final game at a packed “Boston” sports bar in San Francisco, my wife saw me on TV as a local station took their camera inside and then interrupted her show. This single moment of highest elation in my life was unknowingly captured here: http://www.ktvu.com/news/3866141/detail.html. About halfway through the clip, you can see a skinny, 6’5” guy in a white Red Sox hat bouncing around as if my team had won a big game or something.
I’ll spare you stories of phone calls made during Game 7 of the Yankees series when it appeared the Sox would finally do it, or after Game 4 against the Cardinals. Instead I’ll mention that less than 24 hours before the sweep of the Cardinals, we launched this site, ending years of wondering when I’d finally get around to doing so. We are all kindred spirits in our love for Stratomatic baseball, and having the chance to reach out to so many of you – even in just our site’s 65th day of operation – gives every one on our staff a tremendous feeling.
I’d like to close with what I feel is the most telling quote of the many uttered during this past October.
It’s not one that has been repeated often. Prior to Game 4 of the ALCS, reporters mingled with the Boston players, prodding to gain fodder for their columns while at the same time not prodding so hard they’d get punched in the face for asking the wrong question.
Kevin Millar began to walk off the field and was asked if he had any final thoughts with his club down 3-0. “Yeah,” he said. “They’d better not let us win tonight, or they’re in trouble.”
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Our staff would like to wish all our readers a happy and safe New Year, and may February bring your players the best Strat cards they could ever have been given.