Written by Barry Svrluga at Washington Post.com
It was the offseason of 2005, maybe 2006 — Dave McCarty can’t quite remember — but either way he and his family were skiing in Lake Tahoe. With poles in his hands and a parka on his back, McCarty couldn’t have looked much like a major league baseball player at the end of his career.
Except for one thing: He played for the 2004 Boston Red Sox.
“We’re skiing, and some guy on the slopes recognized me,” McCarty said Monday in a telephone interview. “He’s a Sox fan, and all of a sudden I hear, ‘You’re Dave McCarty. You can’t believe how much what you guys did means to our family. Thank you.’ ”
In 2004, McCarty was a backup first baseman and outfielder who made 168 plate appearances. He did not play that postseason. His Red Sox career consisted of 120 games spread over three years. But it didn’t matter. He is part of history, a member of the squad that snapped a drought that for so long defined all of New England. The Boston Red Sox won the World Series in 1918, and they played 85 seasons without winning another. Until 2004.
When the 2016 World Series champion is crowned, either the Chicago Cubs will end a 108-year drought or the Cleveland Indians will have their first championship in 68 years. Decades of failure and misfortune have defined not only the franchises, but their fan bases. They may not realize it at the moment, with Tuesday’s Game 1 at Progressive Field defined more by the matchups at hand than the malaise over both clubs, but the players on the winning team will scarcely be able to pay for a meal in either city for the rest of eternity.
“I always joke around that back in Beaumont, Tex., you were just a guy,” said Kevin Millar, a first baseman and outfielder on the 2004 Red Sox, speaking Monday from his Texas home. “You got to Boston, and it’s like you’re Aerosmith. It changes. Winning a championship is very special. Doing it for a city that’s been in a drought, it’s different. For a city, now, like Cleveland or Chicago, it’ll change these guys’ lives forever.”
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