Red Sox fever burns white hot

The hottest team in baseball right now is the Boston Red Sox.

Playoff fever will soon be burning white hot throughout the lovely New England autumn.

This is the year they’ll win it all. You gotta believe!

But they’re the Red Sox.

It won’t happen.

Not this season, not ever.

The therapist’s office is now officially open for another season.

How did I ever get to this tortured place, and why in the world do I choose to stay? No one held a gun to my head and demanded that I become a Red Sox fan a few years back. My friends warned me, in fact, what would happen if I were foolish enough to pledge my allegiance to this doomed old ballclub and become a certified citizen of Red Sox Nation.

They were born to suffer each and every year, my friends all told me. It is their birthright, they said, to feel the crushing disappointment, the sledgehammer blow to the psyche, the emptiness that comes – as it always comes – when a season’s worth of excitement, hopes and dreams inevitably vanishes with that single, season-ending game.

I knew all about the frustration and despair of the born-and-bred Red Sox fan. For as long as I’ve lived in Maine, I’ve listened to the bitter mutterings about the Curse of the Bambino, the infamous Bucky Dent home run in 1978, the 1986 World Series loss to the New York Mets and the infamous Bill Buckner boot. I’d been well versed in the bleak significance of 1918, the last year the Red Sox won a championship.

Despite it all, I took my place among the Red Sox faithful and willingly opened myself up to the pain. And last year, with the Sox just five outs away from a victory over the Yankees and a trip to the World Series, I watched Aaron Boone’s 11th-inning home run sail out of the park and got my first taste of the legendary heartbreak. It was my baseball baptism by fire, and my friends all said: “Now do you understand?”

I did.

But then a funny thing happened. Fall turned into winter, winter into spring and spring into another glorious Opening Day. It was a time of renewal, of resurrected hope, and I was sucked right back into the thick of it as if last season had never happened and those 86 luckless years had been magically erased from the slate.

What games I couldn’t watch on TV I made sure to follow on the radio. I began hogging the remote control in the later innings, careful not to alienate my family members by overexposing them to those insufferable, finger-snapping ads for the Foxwoods Resort Casino. Whenever we’d go out in the evening to grab a bite to eat, I’d make certain to choose a restaurant that happened to have a sports-bar atmosphere and a few big-screen TVs. I nurtured a burgeoning Yankee hatred, in the honored tradition of the true Red Sox fan, and reveled when the pinstripers recently suffered the most humiliating defeat in their history.

Suddenly it’s September again, and the Red Sox have emerged as the hottest team in baseball.

Playoff fever will soon engulf us all.

And you’ve just gotta believe, oh ye of little faith and calloused heart, that this really is the year they’ll win it all.

If not, you can always find comfort in a support group for recovering Red Sox fans. There’s one in every town in New England.