The Red Sox Are The World Champions

While we are thrilled to see our beloved Boston Red Sox win their second World Series in four years, Sunday turned out to be a somewhat anti-climactic sports day. It started at 10:00 am when we arrived at the Blake Street Tavern for a several hours of football. Even though the New England Patriots weren't scheduled to play until 2:15 pm, we wanted to make sure we that got a good seat at the bar. We ended up suffering through a sloppy 11:00 am game between the Indianapolis Colts and the Carolina Panthers which ended in a 31-7 Colts victory.

It's great to see the Patriots playing so well, but their games are starting to get rather boring. Part of the fun of being a fan is not knowing if your team will be able to win, but there was no such drama involved in New England's 52-7 humiliation of the Washington Redskins. The Pats were leading that game 24-0 at halftime when we left the Blake Street Tavern to walk to the Pour House Pub to get a good seat for Game Four of the World Series. The buzz in LoDo was considerably lower on Sunday than on Saturday, thanks in part to the commanding 3-0 the Red Sox held over the hometown Colorado Rockies.

At first, we thought we might have to stand for a while at the Pour House, but were we lucky enough to have a couple of gentlemen leave their seats within a couple of minutes of our arrival on the rooftop patio. The place was packed like it was the previous night, so we must give props to our waitress who had to weave through people all night in order to serve everyone. During the game, thanks to home runs by Mike Lowell and Bobby Kielty, the crowd got to enjoy a couple of free shots of whiskey.

Everyone got a little nervous when Colorado's Garrett Atkins hit a two-run homer in the bottom of the eight inning to bring the Rockies to within one run, but when Jonathan Papelbon struck out Seth Smith to finish the game and clinch the series, the entire bar erupted in bedlam. Greg found himself getting hugged by perfect strangers, a couple of whom actually picked him up off the floor! A couple of patrons opened bottles of champagne and let them spray wildly into the air.

Somehow, the celebration became even more intense when the the bar's sound system played the Dropkick Murphys' "Tessie" and the staff cranked the volume to 11. "Tessie," as seen in the 2005 movie Fever Pitch, is now the official song of the Boston Red Sox, something we didn't realize until this World Series even though we had seen the movie two years ago when it was in theaters. The crowd was whipped into such a dancing frenzy that Sheryl's claustrophobia kicked in, so we had to leave the bar as quickly as the crowd would let us.



We thank the baseball gods that this series was over quickly, because we were beginning to suffer from sleep deprivation from staying up so late to watch these four-hour marathon games. This year's Game Three set a World Series record for a nine inning game by lasting 4:19. Game Three of the 1975 World Series went 10 innings and lasted only 3:03. We don't know how those fans on the East Coast can survive, because at least those of us in the Mountain Time Zone can still get to bed before midnight! Major League Baseball needs to do something to speed up the game, but in the meantime, we're going to enjoy this championship for a while. Pitchers and catchers report to spring training in only four months.