Boston Strong!

It's a good week to be in New England.
Our boys have done it, they are baseball's World Champions!

For someone who grew up with year after year of disappointment, year after year of good springs and summer fades, of 86 years of "the curse"..........
and then.......
2004!
We could all die happy.

But wait, the baseball gods were not done.
Having lifted the curse, they would reward us again in 2007!
Surely we did not deserve this, we celebrated, but wondered, what price would the gods demand for this second gift?

The past few years have been tough in New England, indeed, for the entire northeast.
An October snowstorm left us without power for weeks, Hurricane Sandy, flooding in Vermont, Sandy Hook Elementary School, and this spring, the Boston bombings.
The rest of the country has not been spared.  Hurricanes, oil spills, shootings, wildfires, and on and on.
With September 11 still fresh in our memories, no one could blame us if we felt a bit beaten down.
We had stood together after September 11, we had risen out of the ashes, we had new life.

The question became, could we do it again?

Maybe it took a city, a region, who had lived 86 years under "the curse" or maybe it was just time, but after the marathon, a new cry began.
It started slowly, quietly.  It started as they all do, not with voice, but with action. As the firefighters and police had rushed in on September 11, so did they on April 15.
Boston Strong
Boston Strong
Boston Strong
Boston Strong
Boston Strong
Soon it was a cry heard across the country, a cry that said, "You may knock us down, but we WILL get up!"
It became a cry of hope, not only for Boston, not only for New England or the northeast, but for all.
Boston Strong applied just as much to those fighting fire fires in the west, as bombings in the east.  It applied as much to the children of Newtown as the runners and spectators of Boston.
In one of the greatest displays of solidarity, the great New York Yankees declared that they too, were "Boston Strong!"

The gods could not ignore us any longer.  We had been tested. We had stood together and stood strong, Boston strong.

So, for the third time in my life, the Red Sox are World Champs, and this time, for the first time since 1918, the gods smiled on us and let us celebrate at Fenway.