Happens to the best of us

(Photo from Boston.com)

What can you say? Sometimes Fate plays for the other side.

I'm of the mind that Red Sox fans have nothing to complain about. We can be disappointed, sure, as you are when your team loses in any fashion. More so in a playoff race after coming back in an epic fashion (again). But Tampa Bay - despite how weird it still seems - has been this good all year. We don't get to claim bullshit umpiring, flukey play, clear bias or karmic intervention. The Rays flat out won. It is the way of things. I'm not, you know, happy about it. But nor am I breaking things. (People are going to start to claim that the Super Bowl that didn't happen has left me dead inside and unable to feel human emotions anymore). But I think it's actually just a matter of perspective.

Sure, I've rolled my eyes at the sad Rays fans in the Trop with their hangdog faces and hand wringing over the past few games because, dudes, you're baseball infants. You have to earn that look. But that said, that look no longer belongs to us, as Boston fans. We gave that up last year. We don't get to claim it anymore.

What we should do, I think, is congratulate Joe Maddon and his misfit band of pre-teen baseball Wonder Kids for taking the defending champs this far. Because the way I figure it, the Rays won the division by two games which, if I have my baseball math correct, translates into a seven game series and a two-run win in Game Seven. So they're just following the script. Can't fault them for that. (Doesn't mean I have to like Matt Garza though). And it doesn't mean we have to root particularly hard for them - or at all - in the World Series. Doesn't even mean we have to watch it. But we do have to be the bigger person in this instance and congratulate the team on outplaying us. This was no 83-win St. Louis Cardinals 2006 team. The Rays won it fair and square. Also, we should congratulate my grandmother because she's happy and she's a great lady. The best. And she really likes that Carl Crawford.

Okay, now that I've gotten that out of my system, who wants to be petty and make fun of the fact that the Rays are eleven and can't drink the celebratory champagne so will have to resort to getting stupid on the sparkling apple juice before hearing a bedtime story from Grandpa Joe?