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Oct. 28, 2004 Dear Red Sox Fans: Enjoy your team’s first World Series victory since 1918. Savor it until pitchers and catchers report next February--and try not to destroy any parked cars along the way. Indeed, remember this feeling now at the end of the 2005 season, when your team, more likely than not, will end its postseason with a loss. That is, if it gets there. For, as novelist and playwright Oscar Wilde once wrote, “When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.” That’s as true in sports as it is anywhere else. No matter the sport, teams that win championships always want to win again. And, ideally, again. But it’s how the teams try that’s the key to their success in doing so--or their failure. Your own Celtics, for instance, started the 1960s with a solid young nucleus of stars led by center Bill Russell and won an astounding nine NBA crowns. Your Patriots, too, seem well on their way to dynastic deeds, having won two of the past three Super Bowls behind twenty-something QB Tom Brady. And, of course, there are your pinstripe-wearing friends from New York. You know their names, I’m sure. But these great teams are exceptions to the rule. More often than not, teams fail to repeat, or even return to the throne in short order. Why? New York, believe it or not, provides the classic case history. In 1994, the Big Apple’s Rangers won professional hockey’s Holy Grail, the Stanley Cup, ending a 54-year drought. Then-GM Neil Smith did it by trading the team’s young talent for experience-rich veterans, building upon the Blueshirts’ then-young backbone of defenseman Brian Leetch and goalie Mike Richter. Fans were elated. The players were heroes forever. The Curse was over. Sound familiar? “There is no better place to play, to win, to be successful [than New York],” Leetch told the New York Times last year, a mantra he repeated often in the 10 seasons after the 1994 team won the Cup. Apparently GM Smith agreed. In fact, he couldn’t get enough. If the formula worked once, by gum he’d make it work again. Today, rosters across the NHL are littered with former Rangers prospects and Smith is out of a job. And the veterans the Blueshirts scored in return? Well, they’ve not only failed to win the Cup again, they’ve led the team to a demoralizing seven straight playoff-less seasons. Only the ongoing NHL lockout is preventing them from making it eight in a row. Now, Sox fans, you may be thinking, “Who cares?” And who could blame you? Your team hasn’t won in 86 years--what’s a piddling few years without a championship? Hell, the Yankees could win again in 2005 for all you care. But, I’m not really talking about 2005. I’m talking about 2006, 2007 and beyond. Will Boy Genius GM Theo Epstein empty the cupboard of minor-league talent to acquire the veteran-du- jour and, as the sports cliché goes, “win now?” Will he hold on to veterans on the decline out of loyalty for what they did this season? I have to say, if David “Papi” Ortiz shed 50 pounds and put on a pair of skates, he’d look a lot like Mark Messier did in 1994. Well, not really. But how he looks after carrying that beer belly around the bases for a few more years may determine the fate of the Red Sox franchise for the rest of the 21st century. Yes, enjoy this victory Red Sox fans, but don’t take it for granted. Remember how difficult it was to achieve and what it took to get there--and hope to heck your team’s front office does as well. Then again, Wilde also said, “The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.” Better hope Epstein doesn’t read Oscar Wilde. ------------ About the author: Brian P. Dunleavy is a New York-based freelance sportswriter, and his favorite baseball team still has a decided historical advantage over its Beantown rivals. He can be reached at: bpdunleavy@yahoo.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ |
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