How the **** did that happen?

What?

No, really. What the hell happened last night? How the hell was that possible? The Red Sox don't end things pleasantly. They may have won two world series recently, but the Red Sox are still that team where they take your hopes, raises them as high as they go, then stick a needle in them and send them crashing to the ground like a hot air balloon gone wrong. 

So last night was pretty much impossible. The Sox don't score eight runs in three innings when they've had trouble scoring eight runs this entire series. I'm not trying to be cocky or anything, but ****, this doesn't happen. Not to the Sox. Not to Sox fans.

Last night felt like the Sox won the World Series. For this Red Sox fan, it is incredibly difficult to say goodbye to the boys of summer and wait all the way until February to see them again. Parts of me just ache for baseball even when I'm only missing it because it's an off-day. For the Sox to end their season at Fenway, completely obliterated by a team that lost 96 games last year, swept three games at Fenway, it just would have been too much. It's 10,000 times harder to see your guys go down like that, all dignity stripped away from them after they'd overcome injury after injury to even play in October. So when J.D. Drew hit that double, when he hit that home run, when David Ortiz launched one the farthest he has in a long time, when Dustin Pedroia flat out refused to end the seventh without scoring a run, the torn pieces of my heart started to sting just that much less.

Sure, the Red Sox have brought plenty of joy in the past few years, but scars from previous seasons never disappear. I still innately expect to be heartbroken, inconsolable come October. And thanks to last night, I don't have to feel that way yet. It can come on Saturday or Sunday or next week or never this season, but I don't have to feel it now. It's not happening at Fenway yet. 

We're still alive, and now we're kicking, which is more than we have been for the last three games of this series. The Sox have an incredible amount of momentum coming off last night (is this really not a dream?), but we also have to remember that the Rays still only have to win one more game to finally close the door. One game from either Shields or Garza. One game where Upton and Crawford and Pena and Longoria play just like they have been playing all season and all series long. The Sox are still teetering dangerously on the edge of a cliff, one tremble away from elimination.

But now, right now, I'm still watching replays of last night, still convincing myself that this really did happen, still smiling, still euphoric. The Sox are still defending, still alive. 

They're in Tampa right now and not playing golf yet. It's enough for me at the moment.