Baseball Exorcisms

So I was standing above a stock pond on Point Reyes yesterday, looking at a bird that somebody called a pectoral sandpiper and someone else thought might be a buff-breasted sandpiper, when a third person said to me “you’re wearing a Boston Red Sox cap!!” It’s true. I was. This person had just flown in from Massachusetts and they were getting some birding in for the weekend; she lives in Needham.

With Red Sox nation, there’s no need for small talk, you dive straight into the particulars of this play or that home run (in the event, the two-run clincher by David Ortiz on Friday). We’re hopeful, all of us, this year, the year the Red Sox might just defy history and win the World Series.

But there’s WORK to be done, viz:

I told my new friend about the Sox fans who had taken a voodoo priest down to Babe Ruth’s grave to try and get the Curse of the Bambino lifted. She countered with the story of the vegetarian who had eaten 86 hot dogs (one for each year since they last won) in an attempt to do the same thing.

Hocus-pocus, maybe, but if they win this year I’ll believe anything.