I don’t think I’ve told my 4 days story here. Started by going to Game 3 with my uncle for his birthday. Was not the best present, for obvious reasons. The next night I was going with one of my best friends. We both had to be in New York early on Monday morning. We considered bagging it. I remember being in the taxi to Fenway, and the driver asking if we were going to the wake tonight. As soon as that ball landed, we hightailed it out of there to try and get 4 hours of sleep, assuming we had just prolonged the inevitable. I had neglected a bunch of shit at home because of the playoffs, and I think that game 5 was on a different day because of rain. I had to pick up our car from being repaired, about 20 miles away. I got home, stuck a tape in the VCR, went to pick up my car, swapped in a different tape, and started watching the first one in another room. We all know what that game was like. I still think it might be the best game I ever watched. Certainly the most tense. Onto game 6. I was at the toilet, sitting in the same section as that asshole running around in the ghost costume. I’ve never been in a more toxic sporting atmosphere than at that game. Yankee fans could sense it slipping away, and they were not happy about it. I zipped up my jacket over my Sox sweatshirt, because I was sure I was going to be the target of someone’s ire. I was a mess before game 7. I went with a friend. We shared exactly the same birthday. It happened to be October 20. I was in the toilet for the grand slam, thinking I could make it back before the pitching change was finished. But I didn’t care. That whole game was a celebration of everything Red Sox. I feel like there were more Sox fans than Yankees fans that night. It was still one of the happiest nights of my life. Even better after having been at the Boone game, riding home with Freddy and his stupid frying pan, among other injustices of that night. I’ll never forget those days, and still have reminders of them in my house. That was a pretty sweet birthday present.
Our experiences were pretty parallel, except I think your ticket budget was way higher than mine (college-student) at that point. I had tickets to Game 3, which was rained out on the Friday night. Tickets for it would be honored, but not until the Monday night - and I had midterms all that week. SoSHers congregated the night of the rainout in a local bar, first to assess the weather prospects and then just to trade nervous glances. I know
@Lose Remerswaal and of course
@BoSoxLady were there, I remember it was like a dozen of us. I ended up having to sell my make-up game tickets for face value to someone else. For what would become, as you say, the greatest ballgame either of us have ever seen - Game 5. Only thing that's come close for me since was 2016 WS Game 7. Voluntarily gave up tickets to that game, and unlike Robin Williams I can't even say that I had to go see about a girl.
The girl I was dating at the time was into playing sports, but not watching. Despite being a Bostonian herself, she couldn't be bothered to join me for any games, even playoff games. Well, I somehow got her to start watching Game 5 as it got to crunch time in the 6th and 7th... and she stayed, transfixed, right up until the walk-off in the 14th. Not even a complaint. Was fascinated to watch baseball for those 2+ hours, and then the spell was broken. Never got her to watch a game again, she never came to the Riv with me, but the drama for that particular game just jumped out of the TV at people, even (effectively) neutrals.
I've told the Game 6 stories before, but: I went with BeanTownGirl, who I'm not sure has been here in a decade, and only a few rows away from
@PseuFighter . We watched Schilling warm up from the upper deck, they weren't throwing anything but insults at that point, but he didn't just appear to be ignoring all the BS - he seemed to be completely unaware of anything other than his pitches, it might as well have been spring training. Nobody knew how he was doing it or how long he could keep it up. The Bernie HR in the 7th got groans from us, and a bloodthirsty crowd leaned into the game for the first time... and the next two batters went down via popup and K, to finish Schilling's night. By the time of the A-Rod shenanigans the crowd was, as you said, in a frothy rage. They reached that tipping point with the West conference-and-reversal calling him out, and suddenly, from mid-upper deck, we were suddenly underneath a curtain of bottles and other objects flying from all around us towards the field. We were terrified, I think Pseu watched the rest of the game standing 2 feet in front of the exit passage. But we also realized - with how far back the upper deck sat from the field-level seats, the bottles couldn't possibly have come close to reaching the field, so we comforted ourselves knowing that a bunch of rich Yankee-fan fucks sitting below just got hit HARD by objects thrown by their cheap-seats brethren. I know a few from the bleachers did reach the field, of course - that made TV - but it still gives me a smile remembering how many hundreds (seriously, they were everywhere) ended up just being friendly fire from on high.