September 23, 2008
When the Markets Trembled and the Knuckleball Didn’t
September 23, 2008. This is a date with a lot of significance to me. That morning, I sat in Leede Arena at Dartmouth College in scenic Hanover, New Hampshire and listened as College President Jim Wright welcomed us to campus at Convocation, the official start of the academic year.
It was also the beginning of a journey that would leave me with a lifelong affliction: Red Sox fandom.
As I prepared to enter my first college classes, the Red Sox prepared to face the Cleveland Indians at Fenway Park, just two hours south of Hanover. Boston stood on the verge of clinching the American League Wild Card and returning to the postseason. They were the defending World Series Champions, and a successful defense would give them their first back-to-back World Series victories since the 1915 and 1916 seasons. The Red Sox did not enter this day particularly hot, having lost four of their last six games.
The news at the time was dominated by the on-going market instability that triggered the Great Recession. Congress was negotiating a bailout package to try to stabilize the market while the George W. Bush Administration warned that quick action was needed to avert the worst possible outcome. Aside from a dollar amount, Republicans and Democrats were negotiating about the conditions that needed to exist for the bailout’s recipients. Should executive pay be cut? Should taxpayers share in their profits? These were questions that needed to be answered.
While these questions were being bandied about, millions of Americans were watching their investments dwindle with no immediate relief in sight. It was a chaotic time and a time when baseball truly was a diversion from our daily worries.
This uncertainty dominated headlines in the Valley News, which serves the region in which Hanover sits, the Upper Valley region of New Hampshire and Vermont. Locally, the uncertainty in state and local budgeting was already having ripple effects. Courts in Windsor and Orange Counties in Vermont were preparing to close for a half-day each week in order to close a projected budget deficit while the town of Conway, New Hampshire was exploring opening public facilities in the winter for residents to keep warm, in lieu of offering direct heating assistance. Governments were also facing uncertain times.
This was all unfolding during a heated election season. The presidential contest between Senators Barack Obama and John McCain dominated national attention, while New Hampshire's Second Congressional District featured a competitive race between incumbent Democrat Paul Hodes and Republican challenger Jennifer Horn. The two candidates had debated the previous evening at New England College, where questions about the economy and the proposed bailout package dominated the discussion.
The uncertainty was also unfolding among the families of my classmates. Vermont’s lone representative in the United States House of Representatives, Peter Welch teamed up with Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa to encourage colleges to use their endowments to lower college costs for families. The pair hosted a roundtable to discuss the issue and get the input of families and institutions, a sign that concerns about affordability were becoming impossible to ignore.
Let’s transition from affordability to something that was unaffordable to a lot of people (or at least me, who carried a flip phone) in 2008 - smartphones. On this date, the first Android powered smartphone was announced as a collaboration between Google, HTC, and T-Mobile. The T-Mobile G1 (or HTC Dream) offered an alternative to the iPhone and BlackBerry, which dominated the smartphone market at the time.
Let’s look at what music and movies that my classmates and I may have been consuming before sitting down to watch the game.
Here are the top 5 songs from this week:
And the top 5 movies:
1. Lakeview Terrace
2. Burn After Reading
3. Righteous Kill
4. My Best Friend’s Girl
5. The Women
In a country full of uncertainty and change, there was but one certainty – baseball.
The Red Sox began the day by announcing that they would be paying homage to the past and honoring Johnny Pesky, former player, manager, coach, and jack of all trades, by retiring his number 6 before the game on Friday, September 26th against the New York Yankees. It was a well-deserved honor for one of the all-time greats and a loyal son of the Red Sox.
The legendary knuckleballer Tim Wakefield took to the mound for the Red Sox opposite Cliff Lee, one of the best pitchers in the game. Lee was on the precipice of the 2008 Cy Young Award and was the first Cleveland pitcher to win 20 games since Gaylord Perry in 1974. He was dominant and a formidable barrier to the Red Sox clinching a post-season berth.
The first three innings proceeded with no score between the two teams. David Ortiz started off the bottom of the fourth inning with a double, which was followed by a Kevin Youkilis home run to put the Red Sox on top 2-0. However, Cleveland answered in the top of the fifth inning and put up 4 runs to take the lead.
The Red Sox answered again in the bottom of the inning with Dustin Pedroia hitting a double to left field to score Jacoby Ellsbury and Coco Crisp and tie the game. Jason Bay put the Red Sox on top for the final time with a single to center field that brought Pedroia home. The Red Sox were now on top 5-4.
The rest of the game would proceed with no more scoring, which meant that Cliff Lee was saddled with just his third loss of the season. The game ended with Jonathan Papelbon, one of the best closers in the game, earning his 41st save of the season. The game ended with Victor Martinez hitting a pop up to future Red Sox manager Alex Cora at shortstop.
The Red Sox were in the postseason! Of course, they would fail to repeat as champions, losing in the American League Championship Series to the Tampa Bay Rays, who would lose in the World Series to the Philadelphia Phillies. But there was always next year. And for a Red Sox team that seemingly made the playoffs every year, next year was something to which you could look forward with hope.
My first trip to Fenway Park would come in the following spring, but that’s a different post.