{"id":1735,"date":"2007-09-03T19:48:37","date_gmt":"2007-09-04T02:48:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/redmonk.com\/sogrady\/2007\/09\/03\/the-tie-that-binds\/"},"modified":"2007-09-03T19:48:37","modified_gmt":"2007-09-04T02:48:37","slug":"the-tie-that-binds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/sogrady\/2007\/09\/03\/the-tie-that-binds\/","title":{"rendered":"The Tie That Binds"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/38pitches.com\/2007\/09\/03\/stretch-run\/\">Curt Schilling<\/a>: &#8220;<i>Has there been a better time to be a Sox fan in the past 20 years<\/i>?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Some, undoubtedly, might argue that the magical, closing weeks of <a href=\"http:\/\/redmonk.com\/sogrady\/2004\/10\/\">October 2004<\/a> weren&#8217;t all that bad. Those with a bit more mileage on the odometer might speak dreamily of the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Impossible_Dream_%281967%29\">summer of 1967<\/a>. Personally, I can&#8217;t get past the question. <\/p>\n<p>Not the sentiment, which is simply contentment with the present and future prospects for the club, but the premise. I wouldn&#8217;t, after all, ask if &#8220;there had ever been a better time to be an O&#8217;Grady.&#8221; The very notion is blasphemy as far as I&#8217;m concerned. Baseball is <a href=\"http:\/\/redmonk.com\/sogrady\/2006\/10\/01\/162\/\">not just another sport<\/a>, and the Red Sox are not just another team. They&#8217;re a link between us, a tie that binds us. For better, and for worse. <\/p>\n<p>Reminders of this are constant. <\/p>\n<p>Last week&#8217;s miserable showing against the Yankees elicited a couple of agonized text messages from folks I hadn&#8217;t heard from all summer.  But Saturday, Clay Buchholz <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=dugs1vbmPwM\">twirled a no hitter<\/a> in his second major league start, and my brother and I were giddy as kids on Christmas morning. A small flood of text messages and congratulatory emails followed, and the O&#8217;Grady household was dominated by baseball chat Sunday morning. My brother&#8217;s new bride could hardly have a better introduction to the Red Sox part of the family; the first no hitter by a Red Sox rookie. Ever. <\/p>\n<p>I make no claim, of course, that the game itself is of material importance to the wider world. Baseball cannot cure cancer, although it can <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jimmy_Fund#Boston_Red_Sox_Partnership\">help generate the money<\/a> that will. Those that miss the social significance of the sport, however, miss something of genuine importance: a pastime that transcends genders, ethnicities, socio-economic classes, and generations with ease. <\/p>\n<p>Connecting us to each other, for better, and for worse. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Curt Schilling: &#8220;Has there been a better time to be a Sox fan in the past 20 years?&#8221; Some, undoubtedly, might argue that the magical, closing weeks of October 2004 weren&#8217;t all that bad. Those with a bit more mileage on the odometer might speak dreamily of the summer of 1967. Personally, I can&#8217;t get<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-red-sox"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/sogrady\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/sogrady\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/sogrady\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/sogrady\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/sogrady\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/sogrady\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1735\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/sogrady\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/sogrady\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/sogrady\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}