It was the fourth and final game of the World Series between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Boston Red Sox, and I was living in a dust-caked apartment in Somerville, just a few miles from Fenway Park. The Sox were poised to sweep the Cards and thereby end the most ballyhooed dry spell in all of professional sports, dating back to the team’s shipment of Babe Ruth to New York in 1918. I had received multiple invitations to watch this historic contest, and declined all of them. I was a man in possession of an excruciating secret, and I wanted very much to sleep. It was dark and stuffy under the blankets. At a certain point, it also got loud. From next door came a noise of jubilation so primal I hesitate to place it in the humanoid category. Then car horns, the fizz-bang of bottle rockets, air horns, small arms fire. The beady red digits of my clock radio read 11:40 P.M. Soon the phone would start ringing. My friends, proud citizens of Red Sox Nation, the loudest-suffering fan contingent on earth, would want to share their joy with me.
