Red Sox World Series brings students together
Joshua Begley '10
Issue date: 12/5/07 Section: Sports
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Eight pm arrived. I brought the Sox' MLB site up on my lap top. Homework was soon being interrupted every few seconds as I checked and re-checked the score. Eventually, I decided to go down to the temporary lounge in Young Hall, in the basement of the dorm, to watch the game. Just for a couple of minutes.
There were a few people already watching the game. By the end of the night ('a couple of minutes' had become 'a couple of hours'), I was surrounded by a bunch of freshmen whose names I was struggling to learn. "So, Lindsey - no, no, you're Lindsey. Oh. You're Melissa? I thought you were Emily. She's Emily? Then who's Ann? Oh, I made that up?"
Game 2, as Wikipedia reminds us, went into extra innings: "the 11th inning proved to be a historic one as Cleveland took advantage by scoring 7 runs off a shaky Sox bullpen, a postseason record for runs in an extra inning by one team." Down in the lounge, watching the bullpen implode, there was a distinct sense of having wasted several hours of our lives. Jared, a Yankees fan, was the only one looking wide awake, and positively delighted. I'm pretty sure he literally cackled.
But even as I trudged back up to my room that night, I knew that the time hadn't been wasted. I'd had a great time, despite the ending to the game. No, what stayed with me was how much fun it had been watching with these particular people and getting to know them.
Fast-forward a few games. The lounge on the first floor has re-opened for students to use. The crowd there has grown each game. There are several freshmen, a few sophomores, some juniors and a couple neighbors from McIntyre sitting and standing around the lounge. We've all come to, subconsciously, view the games as a regular part of our nightly schedules.
We bring food and chuck bouncy balls and footballs at one another. We do our best to preventing anyone from getting any substantial amount of homework completed. We clap and cheer as the Sox stage another come-from-behind ALCS performance and take an early lead in the World Series. We draw faces of the Sox players on paper plates and stick them on the wall, already plastered with Sox paraphernalia. We argue over which Sox player is cuter: Josh Beckett or Jacoby Ellsbury? (Sorry, Josh - no contest.) Simply put, we have pure, unadulterated fun. You know those rare occasions when everyone in a group seems to be absolutely hilarious? This was one of those occasions, stretched out over several days.
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