I never thought it would end like this.

We all thought the Red Sox would have had a pretty good chance of beating the Yankees in the ALCS this year. After all, the Sox had gotten better with the additions of Keith Foulke and Curt Schilling, and the Yankees pitching had gotten worse with the loss of Clemens and Pettitte over the offseason. Even the additions of A-Rod and Gary Sheffield shouldn’t offset it. After all, don’t pitching and defense win in the postseason?

Now the Sox stand on the brink of elimination. Down 3-0 in games, and down 2-0 in the 3rd inning of game 4, The Red Sox have virtually no chance of beating the Yankees now. Even if they should manage to rally and win this game, no team in the history of baseball has ever overcome a 3-0 deficit. The injury to Schilling in game 1, the unbelievable pitching of Leiber in game 2 and the brutal 19-8 beating in game 3 have combined to push the Red Sox to the brink.

Going down without even a win is very disappointing. After the sweep over the Angels, it looked like anything was possible for this team. Now it looks like 2004 is going to end the same way the last 86 years have ended; with Red Sox Nation watching someone else celebrating after the last game of the season.

I said to A. after last night’s loss, “Do you think I’ll ever see the Red Sox win a World Series? I’ve probably only got 30 or 40 more chances left.” If that’s not putting your mortality in perspective, I don’t know what is...

It’s been a tough couple of weeks. The collapse of the Pittsfield baseball opportunity, a really tough, frustrating couple of weeks at work and now the demise of the Red Sox at the hands of the Evil Empire have got me pretty down.

Fortunately, there are a few rays of sunshine. The Pats won their 20th in a row, beating a pretty good Seattle team. We had J.’s 7th birthday party today at a sports training place nearby. The kids had a great time and it was fun to watch them run around. My parents came north for a Bat Mitzvah next weekend, and drove up a few days early to attend the party, so it was a nice bonus to have them around. J. also got some pretty cool presents, including a Lego version of Hagrid’s house from Harry Potter. There’s nothing quite like having your own Lego Hagrid.

R. always has an interesting take on things. She was trying to figure out how I could be a grown-up and a kid (with my parents around). A. made the point that I am sort of a kid in a grown-ups body, but that’s a different discussion.

As if I’m not miserable enough, Fox just ran the Aaron Boone home run from last year. Talk about rubbing salt in the wounds.