No Way That Just Happened

As promised, here's my abbreviated axiom regarding the existence of alternate universes as proven by Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS, specifically Dave Roberts' 9th inning theft of 2nd base and the subsequent game-tying single courtesy Bill Mueller off of Mariano Rivera (the first of many strange goings on that resulted in Boston winning 4 straight games over the hated Yankees.)

Quite simply, I still don't believe the base-burgle (and the subsequent 7-game Sox victory over the then-invincible Yankees) ever took place. Here's what makes more sense:

It didn't happen.

I haven't decided what exactly did happen, but Occam's Razor and the history of the American League East would suggest that Dave Roberts stole 2nd, then Bill Mueller popped up to 3rd. I, however, would like to advance that Dave Roberts stole 2nd but was somehow called out in yet another Yankee gift . This not only seems possible, it seems probable.

This must be what happened.

I didn't realize it at the time, but when Roberts was called safe I had slipped into a traversable wormhole into what I must now consider to be My Reality. This, of course, is only one of many realities that the fleet-footed Roberts forged that evening. When Roberts was called out (in what I can only refer to as the Probable Reality), I must have flipped the fuck out. Flipped. The fuck. Out.

As I was in New York City at the time watching at The Riv, I probably had a lot of company in spewing vitriolic verbal venom in the general direction of the T.V.

Dozens of half-full $9 Budweisers were made airborne.

But here's the best part: were it not for the wormhole, I, for the rest of my life, along with millions of like-minded Boston fans, would have to argue that the series "might have" "turned out differently" had Roberts been awarded 2nd base. Everyone else, in particular millions of smug Yankee "fans" would guffaw loudly at any such theories and speak of Yankee Magic and 1918 and blah blah blah.

But guess the fuck what, Billy? I'm in the universe where the Yankees choked harder than anyone had ever choked before in the history of organized sport. I can prove that the Roberts steal mattered. It mattered. It wiped the smirks off the collective pin-striped face of the sense of entitlement. There's nothing else I can say about what happened; I haven't sufficient knowledge concerning the intricacies of the spacetime continuum. Surely, though, logic dictates it should have never happened.

But it did happen.