DanMargarita.com

When the Red Sox defeated the Angels to advance to the American League Championship Series, I was delighted like everybody else. Yes, I clapped, cheered, hooted and ran naked up and down the street. Uh, was I alone on that one?

It was then suggested by many people that when the Red Sox go on and win the World Series (a bit presumptuous, but I'll save that for later) it wouldn't mean as much if they didn't beat the Yankees along the way. To this I can only respond with:

HUH?

The championship is the championship and if you win it, you had to have beaten every team you faced in the playoffs. Had it been the Minnesota Twins they were facing instead of the Yankees, so what?

Does the Celtics 1986 Championship mean less because they beat the Houston Rockets in the finals and not the Lakers? I say no. Sure it would've been fun and perhaps even more interesting if they had played the Lakers, but if the Lakers weren?t good enough to beat Houston, they didn't deserve to be there.

Does it mean any less that we won World War II because we didn't have to fight Russia?

I?m a Red Sox fan but I have to admit that sometimes I'm annoyed by other Red Sox fans. I have to question the wisdom of chanting "Yankees suck" at a Red Sox game when the Yankees have finished ahead of you every year since 1996. It makes even less sense when it's chanted and the Red Sox aren't even playing the Yankees on that particular night.

Besides being crude, its also inaccurate. It seems to me that saying that something "sucks" means (at least in this context) that it's not very good, so if the Yankees aren't very good, how come they keep beating the Red Sox?

Nevertheless, T-shirts with that declaration sell on many corners outside of Fenway Park. Worse yet, they've come up even more crude slogans for the T-shirts, some of which suggest, shall I say, a Biblical relationship between Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez.

Yes, the Red Sox have a good chance to beat the Yankees but it's by no means automatic. I guess my fear is based on the fact that these are the playoffs and no matter what, the Yankees have a way of remembering that they're the Yankees and that they're playing the Red Sox.

I've watched too many Red Sox teams consistently find new and innovative ways to screw up every year not to be concerned.

As has been well-documented, Sox fans have waited 86 years to watch their team win a World Series. They have as good a chance this year as any that I can recall, but I'm also reminded of another saying which, I believe originated in China:

Be careful what you wish for; you just might get it.

Originally published in The Stoneham Sun.