Recurring civic neurosis returns to Boston!

[pseydtonne]

The Yankees beat the Twins in the eleventh inning last night. The Twins had been ahead 5-1 until late in the game.

Why would I be posting this, seeing as I'm only a baseball fan in passing? Because I live in Boston and many of you live in the metro New York world. Boston is absolutely neurotic about the Yankees. The entire city gets hung up on defeating the Yankees on the way to a World Series, never quite doing it and interpreting that as meaningful to civic pride. It's our psychodrama. Winning would traumatize us because there'd be nothing left to conquer (except pot holes, how dull).

Oh no, I don't mean this in a metaphorical way. Here's my proof: there is an overpass along Storrow Drive (the equivalent of FDR in Manhattan) with a useless warning on it, "Reverse Curve". It's taken me years to realize that meant the curve of the road was now about to change direction. Someone has been adding the word "the" between "Reverse" and "Curve", then retouching the paint on the V in "Curve" so that it becomes an S. "Reverse the Curse". The DCR (the local bureaucracy responsible for the parkways of Boston) used to fix the sign back every so often. I now suspect DCR employees are the ones that turn it back to "the Curse" because the colors being used are exact matches. There are T-shirts with this phrase on them, made to look like the sign.

Which curse, you may ask? The curse from Babe Ruth of course. The owner of the Red Sox sold him to the Yankees. Then he built a new ball park. It's been since then that the Red Sox haven't won a World Series. Remember that the Red Sox only won in 1904 because the owner of the New York Giants refused to play a world series against some team from the new American League. That's right, a series by default.

So it's time for Charlie Brown to walk up to the football and Lucy to yank it. Each year Charlie Brown gets better at kicking. Each year Lucy pulls the ball. We can only hope that, this time, Charlie Brown gets all Matrix on Lucy's arm. Maybe then I can stop watching baseball.

-no I don't get it either but I'll still be watching

Comments

[starphire.livejournal.com]

When I first arrived in Boston, I was driven past that sign and told it meant "reverse bank to the curve". In other words, while curves on limited-access highways are usually banked inward, so that centrifugal forces don't make your car tend to slide toward the outside of your lane, that particular curve goes against the norm. Years of driving through there have convinced me that this is indeed the case, though I think it's just completely flat there.

[grace-of-gemini.livejournal.com]

I live in Boston, and I know *exactly* what you mean.
I heard a joke the other day that went something like:

RALPH: "Hey Bob! I saw a guy with a Yankees T shirt on the train the other day!"

BOB: "Was he still wearing it when they carried him off the train?"


I wonder if that kid that got beaned in the teeth with a baseball is Babe Ruth's way of telling us that he has finally forgiven the Red Sox.

[tkitch.livejournal.com]

well, boston. stupid.

both 6 letters, coincidence? I think not....

*ducks*