When I arrived in Cambridge for law school in September of 1967, I was quickly made aware that the local team was on a roll. When they won the pennant, things went wild. "Owah Sahx ah th' greatest!" a townie kid cutting across the Yard on his way home from school yelled as he passed me. "They'ah gonna beat those Cahd-nuls." So I started paying attention to the sports news and learned about Lonborg and Yaz and Scott and Rico and the tragic injury to Tony C.--I found out that my then girlfriend, who lived in Richmond, Virginia, had a crush on him--that would keep him out of the World Series lineup. I heard "The Impossible Dream" on the radio a hundred times.
The dream would prove impossible. It took seven games, but the Cards beat the team that had last appeared in a Series the year I was born (1946) and last won one two years after my mother was born (1918). By 1986 I had become a Mets fan--a logical extension of my first baseball love, which was for the Brooklyn Dodgers--and so celebrated the Sox loss of that Series, though with just a hint of wistfulness.
This year I'm rooting for a reversal of 1967, in part because my wife is a Sox fan, but since I've long had a soft spot for the Cards on purely aesthetic grounds, I hope it goes to seven games again.
Addendum: Archaeopteryx reminds me that 2004, the year the "curse" on the Sox was lifted, was also a replay of '67, Sox vs. Cards, though it was won by the Sox in a four game sweep. Because of my father's illness (he died the night the Sox won game four) I didn't pay much attention to that Series. Also, Richard B points out that the '46 Series also featured the Cards against the Sox. It was, like '67, a seven game battle won by the Cards, and featured two of the past century's greatest players: Stan Musial (Cards) and Ted Williams (Sox).
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