Last Red Sox post, I promise

...at least for 2007.

I love Bill Simmons. His articles about the 2003 and 2004 playoffs are so incredibly perfect in every way, so exactly crystallize the horror and shock and joy of those two years, that I sometimes just go back and read them just because I have to remember those experiences all over again. And his article today about last night's win contains this section that I simply have to quote, in its entirety, because it's just so perfect and because if you are a Red Sox fan who is still a little confused about how this whole not feeling cursed thing works, then you will understand it completely:

I promised my daughter there would be a payoff at the end -- that somebody on Colorado would make an out, that the Red Sox players would jump on each other and celebrate, that there would be dancing and hugging and everyone would be really happy. She understands absolutes (words like "happy" and "dancing" and "hugging") and understood something special was about to happen, but she had never heard the word "celebrate" before." She liked the way it sounded, so she kept saying it. Celebrate. Every time something happened in the last two innings -- a strikeout, a groundball, whatever -- she'd ask me why they didn't celebrate and I had to keep telling her, "No, you'll know when they're celebrating, I'll tell you when."

Eventually, she started watching me to play off my reactions. When Jamey Carroll cranked that one-out, 0-2 fastball in the ninth, for a split-second, like every other Sox fan who had abandoned their anti-jinxing rituals, I thought I had screwed everything up and screamed, "Noooooooo!" before Ellsbury hauled in the catch and she asked me what happened.

"That guy almost screwed it up," I told her.

"Oh." She thought about it for a second. "They're not going to celebrate?"

"No, no, they're about to celebrate," I told her.

We moved to the edge of the bed. I was sitting down; she was standing between my knees and leaning against me. Paps uncorked a 2-2 fastball for the clinching strike ("Yesssssssssssss!!!!!!!!!"), whipped his glove in the air and flipped out like he always does. If there's an enduring image of this 2007 Red Sox team, it's the sight of a wild-eyed Papelbon waving Varitek towards him for a postgame embrace -- he always looks like some drunken Boston kid who just sucker-punched somebody in a bar and wants the fallen guy's buddies to run over for a full-scale brawl. COME ON!!! LET'S DO THIS!!! Once Varitek jumped into his arms, the entire Boston team mobbed them within seconds, and everyone eventually settled on jumping up and down in a delirious circle. A few seconds passed before my daughter finally turned to me with a big smile on her face.

"They're celebrating," she told me happily.

I don't know how I got here.