DanMargarita.com

As you may have heard by now, the New England Patriots recently lost to the New York Giants in Super Bowl Whatever The Hell The Roman Numerals For It Are. I count myself among the Pats fans who were extremely disappointed at the idea of falling short of joining the ’72 Dolphins as the NFL’s only undefeated teams.

The question has been raised by local sports media as to whether this loss was worse than the multitude of really horrible “there’s no way in hell that any team but the Red Sox could possibly lose like that” failures that the Boston Red Sox have suffered over the years. Alas, I have to conclude no, it wasn’t quite as bad. Sure, all appropriate fellatio-oriented analogies apply like “It sucked!”… It blew!”…“It really bit the big one!” but Red Sox hell has been far worse.

Some may disagree but, until the Red Sox won the World Series in 2004, few if any fans were still around when Babe Ruth and his Red Sox teammates hoisted champagne to celebrate the teams’ last successful World Series appearance and thus had never known a championship season. The point being that, despite the Pats loss to the Giants, at least I’ve already seen them win a few championships.

Sox fans of a certain age may remember the collapse of ’49, Bucky “Bleeping” Dent in 1978 and the Mother of All Collapses…1986.

Just one strike away from winning the Series in ‘86, the Sox took a choke that Heimlich himself couldn’t have prevented. Even a Yankee fan friend of mine (who was also a Mets-hater) noted to me the next day when he called to check on my well-being, “Planets were colliding.”

More recently was the nightmare that was the 2003 American League Championship Series. Fans, like athletes themselves, tend to be superstitious when it comes to their team. If you were wearing your Michigan State sweatshirt the last time your team won the big game, you’re going to wear it for the next game. In fact, I was at a Super Bowl party when the Patriots won their first Super Bowl and was in the bathroom when they scored their first touchdown. I was afraid to come out of the bathroom and afraid that my friends wouldn’t let me come out.

Superstition is why I decided to watch Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS, at the same place where my friends Jim and Britt and I had watched them win Game 6 the previous evening. The bad omens began immediately. When Jim and I arrived for the second night in a row at the Lakeside Lounge, a part of The Lord Wakefield Hotel (located, appropriately enough in Wakefield, Ma.), a quick glance at the room made it clear that something was wrong as the place was nearly empty.

“We changed ownership at midnight so we lost our liquor license at midnight” a waitress explained.

Since it was near game time, we scrambled to think of a place to watch the game and decided on the now-defunct Ground Round in Stoneham. With Britt not having a cell phone, we hoped he’d figure out where we were going so he could join us (he did).

Things started well for the Sox who built up a 5-2 lead. The camaraderie was palpable when Trot Nixon smashed a home run and we all cheered. A guy at the bar decided to give us all a high-five. That’s fine. When Jason Varitek scored on an error, it prompted the guy to give us another high-five. Kevin Millar led off the fourth inning with a home run which drew, as you might have guessed by now, a high-five.

The Yanks mustered two runs but in the top of the eighth David Ortiz hit a home run to put the Sox up 5-2. This time a high-five wasn’t enough. The guy at the bar insisted on giving us all a hug. I don’t know about you, but I’m not all that comfortable getting a hug from a strange guy in a bar.

As some us remember too well, Sox manager Grady Little left pitcher Pedro Martinez in way too long, despite the fact that the team was conscious all year long that for the first 100 pitches, Pedro was virtually untouchable. From pitches 105-110, he wasn’t quite as successful. From pitch 111-on, he was throwing batting practice.

As Little continued to leave Pedro on the mound and various screams of “What is he doing!?” and “He’s done! Get him out of there!” could be heard, the game slipped away. When Aaron Boone hit a home run off of Tim Wakefield in the 11th inning, a collective wave of depression settled over the room. It was yet another heartbreaking loss for the Sox and left them 85 years without a championship.

Of course, all of that changed when the Sox won the World Series the next year and now with two World Series wins in four years in the books, it almost seems as expected…like Super Bowl wins for the Pats.

It was a tough loss for the Patriots but then again, nobody’s perfect.