Jeremy: Oh, How the Mighty Have Fallen

I've always taken a perverse joy in watching the underdog win. Even if it isn't my team. My uncle used to have a button that said "I cheer for Minnesota and whoever's playing Notre Dame." This button was actually more of a commentary on Lou Holtz than it was on Notre Dame, but the point still rings true.
So if I had a button that spoke the truth about my baseball cheering habits, it would read: I cheer for the Twins, and whoever's playing the Yankees. So for the last 10 days or so I've been a Red Sox fan.
Cheering for the Red Sox isn't actually much of a stretch for me. When I was a kid I did some pitching in youth baseball and I used to like to watch Roger Clemens when he was with the Sox. I even had a Red Sox hat at one point. Also, my favorite sports writer, Bill Simmons, is a die-hard Sox fan so he writes about them constantly. Because I love Simmons and hate Sid Hartman, it's possible that I know more about the Sox than the Twins.
So I was very happy to see Boston stick it to the Yankees for the last four games. Being the first team to come back from an 0-3 playoff series deficit, and having it be against the Yankees of all teams, is probably the greatest instance of poetic justice in all of sports history.
Game 7, as far as baseball games go, should have been an unbelievably boring game. But watching the Sox play the Yanks with an 8-1 lead, even late in the game, felt eerily like watching pretty much any Vikings game where they are winning: it just never feels like enough. You just always get the sense when the team you are cheering for is playing the Yankees that it could explode in your face at any moment. But the Sox never let up, the Yanks never turned into the Yankees, and history was made.
So who do I want to win the series? Honestly, I don't care. After last night the baseball season is over. The Twins aren't playing, and nobody is playing against the Yankees, so all of my teams are out of it. I'm sure I'll watch Boston and in many ways hope that they can complete what they've started and take home the trophy.
But I wonder if the Sox and their fans don't feel just a little bit like I do. I wonder if they feel like the hardest part, the important part, is behind them. That even if they win their first World Series in 86 years that it's just not quite as big as beating the Yankees in the ALCS and shaking that darn "Curse of the Bambino."
If the Sox do win the Series it will be one of the greatest stories in recent sports history. Everyone will be happy for them. But I bet that people won't talk as nostalgically, especially in New England, about a World Series win, as they will about shaking the curse, and finally beating the Yankees.