My emotions are going in several directions at this point in the 2025 season. I’m still sad over the Red Sox early exit from the playoffs; I really believed that we’d at least take the Yankees down. I don’t feel the intense bitterness of, say, 2003—I’m just sad. Saturday’s Toronto/New York ALDS game gave me a major case of the side-eyes too; why couldn’t we get it together to score a bunch of runs against Yankee pitching?!
Dammit, offense, where were you?
But I’m also genuinely happy for what the Red Sox gave us this season. There were highs and lows (understatement!) but we had more to root for than at any time in the last four years.
In terms of the rest of the postseason, I continue to have skin in the game, so there’s still plenty of hope and excitement.
The Cubs are a family legacy team. Not only did I spend time in Chicago every summer of my childhood to visit my aunt, my mom’s twin, but I also lived there for a couple of years right after college. I don’t even know if my first baseball game was at Fenway or Wrigley. When I wasn’t in the park, I loved to look down from the rooftop of my aunt and uncle’s apartment building and into Wrigley Field. Lest you think this was Wrigleyville, just at the edge of the ballpark—no. This was over a mile away, on top of a building that was more than ten times taller than any in my small New England town. But I believed I could peer down into Wrigley, high above right field as I was, and see the game. My imagination spun up a game narrative, and the faint crowd noise helped me fill in some blanks.
The Cubs were exciting in the Wild Card round—and my uncle would love this playoff run if he were here to see it—but I had to turn off Saturday’s tepid NLDS performance. I hope Chicago can get it back.
Now I live in Seattle, a playoff town this year. That’s not typical, of course, but the whole city has been abuzz with baseball all season long. Cal Raleigh has been Seattle’s Roman Anthony (engine of the offense), Mickey Mantle (powerful switch-hitter), Johnny Bench (do-everything catcher), Babe Ruth (60 HR), Shohei Ohtani (favorite player), and more. In my experience here, a lot of people give up quickly on the Mariners, as early as the beginning of May. Some might argue that the Mariners have given up quickly on the fans, I don’t know. I do know that maybe Chicago and Seattle, PCA and Cal Raleigh, despite their respective Game 1 Division Series losses, can do what the Red Sox and Roman Anthony couldn’t this year.
We can console ourselves, knowing that a healthy Anthony and the Sox will be back in the spring. There will be an off-season of plans and decisions, with plenty of time to figure out how to shore up our roster and come back stronger. And we will.
There’s still more baseball in my heart for 2025, but keep an eye the Red Sox in 2026.
