I became a hard-core Red Sox fan in 1988. By hard-core I mean someone who followed the team on a daily basis (which in those pre-internet days meant reading actual box scores in the Baltimore papers and gobbling up the Globe sports sections Dad mailed me) and whose emotional state closely paralleled the team’s fortunes. In short, a fan, as in fanatic.

And so I suffered through the locust years. 1988. 1990. 1995. 1998. 1999. 2003. Post season failure after failure for the Red Sox. 2004 changed all that of course, a experience I’m still not able to adequately express in (digital) print.

So now in 2007 the Sox are making another trip back to the Serious. And it still feels like Christmas, my birthday, customer appreciation night at the Local, and a family wedding all wrapped up together.

I’ll be honest: I don’t think I’ll ever get used to this, or get over a feeling that a trip to the Big Dance is something magical and precious. I gobbled up 2004 like a fat kid let loose in Carvel but this one…?

This one I think I’m going to savor.