2003-10-05 - 5:04 a.m.

I just had what could best be described as a simultaneous orgasm with 34,000 other people.

I don’t know if you can understand if you’re not a die-hard Red Sox fan. We have a dedication even we can’t fully explain, we just know we need the win. It doesn’t have an explanation, it’s just deep, personal, totally ingrained. Most of us have needed that win, every single time, seemingly since birth.

If there are any living Red Sox fans who actually saw the last time they won the World Series, they’re probably too old to be able to remember it and definitely were not at the game today. They’d have broken something.

So every single person in the stadium tonight was someone who’d seen year after year of the Red Sox coming So Close and losing it in the end, whether that be during an individual game or entire series. We can never be calm until the game is entirely over. The Sox are masters of losing games that seem like locks and winning games in the last at-bat. We can’t calm down until the game is over.

Today, we Red Sox fans found ourselves in a place we’ve been time and time again in our lives. A must-win game in the playoffs against a well-matched team on a cold Boston night where really, it could go either way and we’re going to eat ourselves up inside until we know how it ends. The only difference for me was, for the first time ever, I was there for one of those crucial games. Right Field Box, Section 2, Box 88, Row VV, Seat 5. Most amazing time I’ve had in an incredibly long time.

The people around me were the hardcore fans. The people who come out on a night when the Sox have lost 2 games in a best-of-5 and fill the stands despite the fact they can see their breath and the rain has been drizzling down since noon because they know Tonight Is Our Night. Tonight, they’re going to win, they’re going to save the series, and it’ll be the jumping block to their first World Series Championship since Babe Ruth left for the Yankees. And someday, we’ll all be able to say to our children, “I was at the game where it all turned around.” And our children will be wide-eyed and hope that someday they could witness something so amazing with their beloved Red Sox. And they will love the Red Sox. It’ll be in their blood.

Everyone cared tonight. People clapped for every strike thrown at an A’s player and every ball thrown to a Red Sox player. For the last half of the game, every time an A’s batter had 2 strikes the entire stadium was on its feet, chanting, clapping, praying for a third strike. Every single pitch had people reacting some way or another. This game was a team effort, and there may have been only 9 Red Sox on the field but there were tens of thousands dressed in blue and red backing them up. I screamed myself hoarse and practically clapped my fingerprints smooth. I had no idea of the kind of mutual energy a crowd could have until a whole stadium full of people, pumped up by a sudden resurgence of strength in their team, laughed and sung along to the “Rally Karaoke Guy” video of Sox first baseman Kevin Millar, years ago, doing a karaoke impression of Springsteen performing “Born In the U.S.A.” on the big screen, a video that apparently has brought on rallies for wins by the Red Sox at least seven times now. There was an energy and intensity there I don’t remember ever really feeling in a crowd before, and it was only the beginning.

With the game still tied in the top of the 9th, two outs and two strikes on the A’s batter, the crowd of screaming, clapping fans was no longer a group of individual people, it was one. One entity that needed that out and blew apart in a mass of flailing limbs and wordless utterances when it got what it needed. It uttered sounds from thousands of different valves like a monstrous bagpipe-looking instrument, playing a building crescendo as the bottom of the ninth came and went and this thing that I was a part of found itself again needing just one more strike to get out of the top of the 10th and building even more toward some unforeseeable climax.

Finally, in the top of the 11th, we were there again. One more strike, one more out, and we will Find a Way by the end of this inning. It just has to happen. It’s 11:11, everyone, make a wish! I know what I wished for, I bet I know what a lot of other people wished for. 11:11 in the 11th inning and we all wanted the same thing. We wanted it so bad we could taste the noise coming from the pounding crowd around us. I had long since stopped talking with people. I didn’t take my eyes off the game, I could barely even pay enough attention to anything but the field in front of me to actually chant “Let’s Go Red Sox!” with the rest of the crowd, I could only bring myself to do the *clap clap clapclapclap* part. I was too tense. Fists clenched, arms pressed against the sides of my head like blinders, I stared, barely even blinking, as the game moved on. At one point (it may not have even been in the 11th but it was late in the game) someone on the Sox made a great play and I jerked my arms up so quickly while I cheered that I elbowed the girl next to me (and sort of in front of me... Fenway is kind of crowded) in the shoulder blade because I simply forgot she was there. Don’t try to figure out the mechanics of that. It’s not worth it.

Finally, with two outs and one man on base, Trot Nixon was brought in to hit and the crowd went insane. This is a man we can count on to Do Big Things. A guy three seats down who I had been talking to a bit went, “Wait a minute!” while the crowd was still cheering the announcement that Nixon had been brought in, and pulled off his sweatshirt to reveal the red Nixon jersey he’d been wearing the entire time. I took it as a Sign.

Two pitches, a ball and a strike. The tension was palpable. We Needed This. This was the kind of things that was going to require Lots of Capital Letters. For all I know, all 34,000+ fans were in rapt silence, because I couldn’t hear a thing. I mean, I know they were chearing and clapping and all that, but my memory of it, only hours old, is silent. Nothing mattered but the pitcher and Nixon. At that moment, I felt my physical and mental well-being and that of a lot of the people around me centered on what happened with Trot Nixon at that exact moment.

All game I’d been hearing the same thing. There was a strong breeze blowing toward the outfield, yet there had barely been a single ball hit past shallow center the entire game. Not a single home run ball or even anything that began to approach one. It made no sense! How was this possible?

To me, it makes perfect sense how it’s possible. As a writer, it makes perfect sense, because it means when Nixon has a 1-1 count in the bottom of the 11th inning with 2 outs in an absolutely crucial game, and he hits a long, high fly into center field, every single person is going to be praying it’s gone and expecting it to drop and send us into another inning. It’s called drama, people, and sometimes the Fates are just desperate to inject a little into our lives just to mess with us. Is it or isn’t it? Pleasepleasepleasepleasepleaseplease....

And that’s when it happened. The collective, 34,000 person simultaneous orgasm. After about 4 innings of the most intense buildup possible in baseball, among the throngs of some of the most die-hard fans alive of any baseball team, in a baseball stadium with more years and history than any other in the country that’s still in use, when that ball dropped into the center field stands and it really was like a giant orgasm. People were so overwhelmed, both physically and mentally they just started grabbing people at random and hugging them. There were few words, just grunts, moans and screams. People were tingly. Knees buckled. A few people (myself included, though it may have been because I was screaming so much I was coughing like mad) had little tears in their eyes. Everyone was all smiles, and for that moment, every single person in that place was in love with every single person they saw.

We stood for long after the game and just screamed and clapped and cheered and more. Eventually we all made it out of the stadium but the celebration was far from over. Depending on your seats and where you parked (or if you took the subway), half the people exited one gate and walked in one direction and the other half exited the other and passed us going the other direction. So at one point, a crowd split in two of about 30,000 people total passed each other going in opposite directions down the middle of a relatively busy street filled with night clubs. Guys in beaten-up Sox shirts high-fived fashionable folks on their way to clubs so they could dance and be One of the Crowd even though they were more One with the Crowd standing outside high-fiving us than they’d ever be inside the doors of those clubs. People stranded in cars that couldn’t move through the crowd honked and cheered because it’s Fuckin’ Boston, and they may not have had tickets, but they still care. People stranded in cars who just looked upset I couldn’t help but laugh at. They were stupid enough to try to take their SUVs down Lansdowne Street after the Red Sox playoff home opener? Fuck ‘em. I would just look at them and smile. "Yeah, I'm walking down the middle of the street! And so are thousands more of us! What're you going to do about it? Try to get through us and we'll tear your little gas guzzler apart like a manuscript about an ex-girlfriend." People high-fived each other constantly. I dropped a dollar in a homeless man’s cup and another in a street musician’s bucket, even though I’d already dropped a ludicrous amount on the ticket. It was jubliant. No other word works. And after tonight, I know one thing:

If the Sox make it all the way to the World Series, I’m absolutely, definitely going to be there...

In a bar down the street, watching the game on TV.