The Power of Free Stuff and Alcohol

(Like this, but a wee bit smaller)

I'm'a get to the Sox shortly, but before I do, I thought I'd share with all of you one of the most entertaining moments of my evening last night.

So I went to the Bruins home opener. It was sweeeeeeeet! Apparently, hockey done some good business last night.

But the best part of the evening happened as we were leaving the Fleet/Garden/Arena/Dome/Whatever. We'd just gotten the final Sox score from Amy and seen the Bruins lose after a questionable obstruction call sent a man to the box and opened it up for Montreal to score the game winner with 11 seconds remaining in regulation and for a bunch of fans in attendance to throw their replica Stanley Cups on the ice.

You see, upon entering the Garden, we'd all been given teeny, tiny replica Stanley Cups as, I guess, a way of saying to the fans, "Our bad. Sorry. Please stick around." Marianne, who'd never been to a hockey game before, immediately assumed that she was supposed to throw it on the ice. When I informed her otherwise and then she saw everyone else do it, she gave me a stern look.

But the best thing, and the thing that was so absurd that it made me feel a good bit better about the sporting world in general occurred as we were getting on the escalator to go down to North Station. A very large, VERY drunk gentleman hoisted his tiny Stanley Cup over his head and started yelling at the top of his lungs, "Bob Kraft has nothing on us! Theo Epstein has nothing on us! They have Lombardi trophies and World Series trophies but we have...TRINKETS! EAT YOUR HEART OUT, BOB KRAFT! WE HAVE TRINKETS!"

It was so, so excellent.

Sometimes it's the absurdity of sports that makes it all worthwhile.