While I am not really up for getting into specifics here, suffice it to say that my father has experienced some tough times over the last few years. As devoted a Red Sox fan as I have come across, the man had not stepped foot in Fenway Park since the 1999 All-Star Game. He was there for three games in the 1967 World Series, saw Fisk’s home run, Bucky Dent’s pop-up that wouldn’t land, Yaz Day and much, much more. And yet he had not been to Fenway in five years to watch arguably the best five consecutive Sox teams in the last fifty years.

When we entered the Park, he was visibly moved and uttered to me, “I feel like I’ve rejoined society”. You see, the invitation I extended to him to accompany me for the game coincided with the first truly good bit of personal news he had received in years. It was perfect. The energetic and wildly enthusiastic baseball junky that raised me had returned and I can’t tell you how neat that was. It was like we were riding home from one of my Little League baseball games, side by side, coach and player, father and son, dissecting the particulars of the game and enjoying the hell out of each other’s company.

And what a joyous game for such a landmark personal event. Curt Schilling was on as he has not been on all season. The Baltimore Orioles were helpless. It’s hard to know how many strikeouts a pitcher has when you are in attendance at a ballgame but after Curt Schilling struck out David Newhan to end the eighth inning, my dad suggested we try and count the plays the Sox had made in the field. “Pokey made a couple plays and there was the lazy pop-up to Damon…um…. Minky made a diving stop…and oh there was a couple plays by Mueller and a foul pop to Varitek.” But that was about all we could come up with. My father said, “I think Schilling has 14 K’s.” As he has been so many times in my life, he was right.

In the bottom of the eighth inning, the Sox, seemingly hellbent on getting their ace the win he deserved, managed to squeeze a run across to give the Sox a 1-0 lead on a pinch hit Kevin Millar sacrifice fly. It was the most wild reaction you could imagine to a sacrifice fly. Fenway was electric.

Without a view of the pitching scoreboard, we did not know how many pitches Schilling had thrown and were disappointed when Keith Foulke came in for the ninth. But despite what the box score may say, Foulke did not pitch terribly - a single to Tejada and a home run to Javy Lopez after what seemed like 6 strikes but alas, the Red Sox had blown the lead in what had been the most exhilirating game I attended all season.

Interestingly, my father explained to me earlier that when you experience a spate of misfortune, as he has, even when things start to look brighter, there is a feeling of impending doom - something will come along to turn the tides of even the most uplifting moments. And sadly, the game that was supposed to be so uplifting for him had morphed into little more than a microcosm of his last three years.

But when Kevin Youkilis walked to begin the bottom of the ninth and Bill Mueller followed with a double, just as recent events in Dad’s life had suddenly turned for the better, so had the Sox’s fortunes. And just as abruptly, they turned for the worse again when David McCarty and Johnny Damon left Mueller and Dave Roberts (pinch running for Youk) standing right where they were on 2nd and 3rd. Ironically, the game was in the hands of Dad’s least favorite and perhaps my very favorite Sox, Mark Bellhorn. “Impending doom” lay ahead for the second time in the night and the thirtieth time or so in the last three years for Dad. But his son was reassured and I could sense him doing everything he could to pry and self-install some of the hope I was overtly emanating and he begun cheering wildly for Bellhorn and clapping with the Fenway crowd. And when Mark Bellhorn hit that ball and it landed in right-center field, it was an unprecedented shared moment of happiness.

There was a lesson last night.

Sure there can be doom around any corner but there is an equal chance that endless possibility lay around the very same corner.