The All Too Familiar Story of Life

This Red Sox season has been a tumultuous ride.

Beginning with excitement for the team with its plethora of talent. Followed with a disastrous bad start at 37-48 and last in the AL East. Succeeded by a historic 15-game winning streak. Now with a month left in the season, they find themselves cemented in a wild card spot behind the dreaded rival Yankees. What is baseball (all sport for that matter) if not a mirror of life. Hope, Pain, Success, Defeat, Triumph, and Happiness all rolled into one. Red Sox fans are familiar with such roller coasters. Although we’ve been blessed with four championships in the recent millennia, there was a time when we were all too acquainted with the defeat part. The curse of the Bambino was finally broken in 2004. You’ve heard that story. That’s not the one I write about today. There was a parallel going on at the same time as the rag tag ’04 Sox climbed the mountaintop. A story of love, loss, sacrifice, and destiny. A story that does not get the credit it deserves. A story … that you can currently stream on Prime Video. 

Last night as I was scrolling through Prime to finish my night off with an easy watch, I came across a romantic comedy, released in 2004, starring Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore. Fever Pitch. Admittedly I have seen it before, even if it’s been years. My sister adores this movie and to my recollection we have watched together at least five times, but it had been since high school, and I thought that maybe, as a different man now, I could appreciate it from a different perspective. The story is nothing new, based on the book of the same name by Nick Hornby which uses soccer as its sporting background, which in turn was made into a British movie starring Colin Firth, Fever Pitch made its way over to the States with an update the Americans can get behind – using baseball instead. The premise is what you would find out of a Christmastime Hallmark movie. Two drastically different people meet each other. One obsessed with work and one obsessed with baseball, more importantly the Red Sox.

Barrymore’s “Lindsey” is a workaholic 30-year-old wealthy mathematician who believes she’s running out of time to find the right man. Fallon’s “Ben” is a high school teacher who grew up watching the Red Sox with his season-ticket-owning uncle.  By the time the movie begins, Ben’s uncle is dead and leaves him the tickets. Ben has not missed a game in years. His bedroom is decorated in Red Sox wallpaper, furniture, posters, and amenities. Obsessed is an understatement.  The movie showcases him to be quite the charmer; with the sole reason he can’t keep a girlfriend being his love for the team that hasn’t won a championship since 1918. They meet in the winter offseason and fall in love. Everything looks like true love until the season starts up again. The first bit of conflict springs up when Ben skips out of Easter with Lindsey’s family to go to spring training in Florida with his buddies, where he is caught on TV acting like a fool. Every game that Lindsey attends, it is quite clear she has little to no love for the ambiance of the ballpark. Eventually Ben skips out on a trip to Paris with Lindsey, due to a particular important stretch of Mariners games, but just before she leaves upset, she lets Ben know she is late. Well separated, they both contemplate having a child with each other. Ben is excited, but Lindsey is unsure of the commitment with a man she questions may love a game more than he loves her.

It does turn out to be just a fluke, but conversation is there. Ben comes to understand he must sacrifice something that was there for him when he was young. As a child new to the Boston area with no friends, he only had Fenway Park to call home. Now he had someone who loves him back. He misses a game to be with Lindsey at her friend’s birthday party that turns out to be the greatest comeback in the season that leads to a mosh pit in the neighborhood. Tensions flare and Ben has an outburst. Lindsey finds he will never be the man she needs, and they split. Ben is thrown into pain. The parallels are there with the relationship and the Boston Red Sox themselves. A team at the time that could climb the mountaintop. Year in and year out would give you hope then just as things were getting good, ultimately disappoint you. But in the third act as the two are broken up, Ben offers some clarity of why he goes back to the Red Sox even though they are a constant disappointment.  

“Why? I’ll tell you why, ’cause the Red Sox never let you down. That’s right. I mean — why? Because they haven’t won a World Series in a century or so? So what? They’re here. Every April, they’re here. At 1:05 or at 7:05, there is a game. And if it gets rained out, guess what? They make it up to you. Does anyone else in your life do that? The Red Sox don’t get divorced. This is a real family. This is the family that’s here for you” This speech coincides with the end of the regular season the tough slog of the first two rounds of the postseason as hope of a championship drains away.

There is beauty in the game. Not just the players on the field, but the life surrounding it, and the community that joins in to cheer for it. Ben realizes he wants Lindsey to be part of that even if it means giving up part of his other life and he makes a decision to sell his season tickets to a friend during Game 4 against the Yankees (the start of the comeback). When Lindsey hears of this, she runs to the park, storms the field and realizes if Ben is willing to sell it all away for her, he is the man she dreamed of. Now this movie was supposed to end with a shot into the future with Ben and Lindsey well into their 80’s seeing the “first” Red Sox World Series win. The Problem? While filming the movie, The Red Sox would go on to have the miraculous comeback against the Yankees for the pennant and then beat the Cardinals to win their first. The producers had to rewrite the ending of the movie to match up with reality, going so far to get Fallon and Barrymore on the field when the Red Sox celebrated the win. Pretty neat.

Fever Pitch is, according to critics, a mediocre rom-com. But for people devoted to a sports team, I think they have a little more appreciation for it. The parallels to life are more obvious the closer you look. Through ups and downs, wins and losses, real love sticks with you. Year in and year out it finds you. You can’t win a championship every year, but you certainly can give it your best shot, and you can do it with the people that care for you just as much as you care for them. If in one season you can get it done, don’t fret – eventually the winter snows will melt away, the flowers will bloom, and it will be baseball season once again.