Underdogs bite
The St Louis Cardinals were, everyone knew, the best side in baseball this year. Hot, big-name players, particularly their pitchers, made them very difficult to beat.
The Boston Red Sox could not, of course, win the World Series because they are perennial losers, chokers of legendary status.
But they did. One team stood up, did the business, belted the other every way upside and down. The little guys, the unrated, unfancied team, one game away from the doom all had expected for them, on their knees and all but defeated, got off the canvas, met the occasion head-on and smashed their way into history.
The big guys, particularly the much feted midorder batters of the Cardinals, didn't.
Sportsmen are, we all know, overpaid and too much in the news. We put too much of ourselves into pastimes that mean absolutely nothing in the big picture.
But still, we fucking love it when the underdogs bite the complacent and bring them crashing to earth. And if you love sport -- and despite its hollowness and vanity -- I do, if you love it as a creator of fictions, legends and spectacle, you love this story, you love the team that broke their curse and became champions of, erm, the world. Okay, at rounders, but...
So here's to the Sox and here's hoping Massachusetts scores another next week.
posted by Dr Zen @ 1:45 pm
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