Palling Around with Zobrist

During his discussion of the presidential debate Wednesday night, Charlie Rose asked historian and Sox fan Doris Kearns Goodwin whether McCain or the Red Sox had a better chance of coming back from their respective deficits. Goodwin laughed, saying she should have expected that. Goodwin, a frequent commentator on Rose's PBS show, continued, saying that she had breathed a sigh of relief when she saw that Sox playoff schedule wouldn't interfere with the debate, but that her willingness to miss the debate meant she wasn't a real historian.

A good laugh was had by all.

The Sox' 3 games to 1 deficit is no laughing matter, of course. Naturally, however, we are all now hoping history will repeat itself, as the saying goes, and as history hopefully will as well.

I suppose not unsurprisingly, the Sox find themselves on the brink of elimination in the ALCS yet again. But history won't repeat itself without some help; only a Marxist or Hegelian might reify history sufficiently for it to be the sort of thing that can go about repeating itself all by itself. I fear it must be the Sox, and not history, that must make it happen. Besides, history, that higher and lower force, wasn't much help before 2004, when we had a whole lot more of it, and I'm not looking to it now. The cosmic patterns, the analogy of being down 3-0 or 3-1, doesn't help, as best I can tell, analogy is not an operative principle in the universe. Ortiz' wrist is. (or isn't.) Dice-K's erraticness is, and a shaky Beckett and Lester may be in the if necessaries.

Hegel and Marx would tell us its all necessary, of course, the inevitable unfolding of what was always to be. For all that, I'd like a specific prediction. Sox over Phillies in 5? Will that happen before capitalism implodes? (Or are we too late?)

I like to end with a joke.