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" BOSTON -- While the Boston Red Sox&amp;#039; improbable turnaround from one of the worst records in baseball last year to 2013 World Series champions is certainly remarkable, lost amidst all of the hectoring hirsute hysterics is just how close the city itself was to falling out of the national spotlight a few short months ago. Was Boston about to be canceled, I wondered, in what has to have been the second worst bit of prognostication since Dan Shaughnessy wrote off the season before it even began. &amp;quot;But here&amp;#039;s the reality, people: The 2013 Red Sox might be really bad. Worse, they might be really boring. Anybody talking about baseball in your neighborhood these days?&amp;quot; he asked. Somewhat, Dan. Perhaps taking a little break from &amp;quot;Boston&amp;quot; was a good idea, I wrote in March. Certainly we&amp;#039;d had a pretty good run in the national spotlight. And then... well, there was the Boston Marathon bombing, and the Aaron Hernandez murder fiasco, a Bruins run to the Stanley Cup finals, and a brief, but intense summer romance with Tebowmania. Never mind #BostonStrong, it was a return to #BostonLoud. As someone who counts themselves among those uneasy with our collective dressing up in Boston whiteface and shucking and jiving in front of the world every time sports happen, the sudden, intense denouement to the city&amp;#039;s narrative, as usual being driven by our professional athletes, wasn&amp;#039;t exactly great news. But, like a lapsed Catholic who still can&amp;#039;t completely shake the old habit, I found myself genuflecting and standing at all the right cues over the course of the playoffs mass in a sort of Pascal&amp;#039;s Sports Wager. On Wednesday I set out into the city to see if I might find something to believe in. Not quite ready to commit to the full immersive Bostonia, having an acute allergy to douchebags, I jumped back and forth between Cambridge and Allston as the game played out, figuring I might find some sort of peace among people who were agnostic about the game. In Central Square the streets were quieter than usual, which is to say, there were only a dozen or so raving panhandlers, more than a few of whom were beating the Red Sox drum in solidarity. It&amp;#039;s a powerful advertising slogan, this sporting camaraderie. Otherwise the sidewalks swished with costume-clad revelers. If there&amp;#039;s one things that can make otherwise reasonable grown adults regress into an infantile state more than sports it&amp;#039;s Halloween. Inside the Middle East I sought out solace from groupthink in a normally sports-indifferent setting. The game was playing, of course. Even in Boston our most hipster-riddled bars are de facto sports bars. Sexy army schoolgirls cued up next to sexy cowboy drag dudes and sexy zebra and giraffe-headed monstrosities for a dance party downstairs. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m from Boston, so I want them to win,&amp;quot; said one twenty-something in a greaser costume which I later realized was actually his regular every day costume. &amp;quot;But I don&amp;#039;t really care about the game.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m not much of a sports guy,&amp;quot; said the next indie rocker I asked. &amp;quot;I do the whole rooting for the Red Sox thing to be a Bostonian,&amp;quot; said his friend. But, both said they weren&amp;#039;t going to be depressed if they lost or anything. Safe haven achieved. Nonetheless, as Victorino blasted a three-run double off the Green Monster, the entire room erupted. Outside in the street Moe Pope, a Boston hip hop standout, was biding his time before a set later on. Was he, like most other musicians in Boston this entire week, exasperated about the idea of having to compete with the Red Sox for attention. &amp;quot;I have this dream they&amp;#039;re gonna end right as we go on around 11, and there will be this euphoria because they just won the World Series.&amp;quot; Walking past the Phoenix Landing a block down, that euphoria was in full display, as Stephen Drew, himself having decided to go as an actual hitter for Halloween, hit a homerun. Literally anything can happen. With a six run lead at this point, ducking away from the game for a bit seemed safe enough. At The Sinclair in Harvard Square, New York City&amp;#039;s indie-disco favorites Holy Ghost! were doing the unthinkable: getting a Boston crowd to dance. I commiserated with a fellow bipartisan sports and music nerd friend on the dancefloor amidst the strobe lights. &amp;quot;If it were the Pats in the Super Bowl I wouldn&amp;#039;t miss a second of it,&amp;quot; he said. This, somehow, felt different to us both. Weren&amp;#039;t we just here a few years ago with the Red Sox? &amp;quot;Thanks for having us here, especially on the eve of the championship,&amp;quot; Holy Ghost! frontman Alex Frankel said just then, around the fifth inning. You New York City bastard! If that&amp;#039;s not a purposeful jinx, I don&amp;#039;t know what is. Having seen enough of the Cantabrigian stiff upper lip, I jumped in a cab to Allston. If there&amp;#039;s anywhere to find hedonistic displays of debauchery outside of the Fenway area itself, which Boston Police were turning people away from, saying all bars in the area were at capacity, it would be in this collegiate shithole. My cabbie was throwing a jinx on as well. It&amp;#039;s not over yet, I told him. &amp;quot;They are not coming back, my friend,&amp;quot; he assured me, just after asking if I were allergic to peanuts, which was a thoughtful touch. In Allston, the streets were eerily quiet, A city-mandated parking ban had Harvard Ave empty of cars, although there were a curious abundance of people dressed up in police costumes loitering on every corner. At Great Scott, a Boston Halloween tradition of bands playing cover sets was underway. I arrived in time to see a reborn MC5 shred into &amp;quot;Kick Out the Jams.&amp;quot; Deep Purple had just finished. Most of the crowd were planted at the midway point between the band and the TVs toward the front of the room, eyes darting back and forth; the metal crowd in Boston has always been more forgiving of sports-fandom. Not everyone was entranced, of course. &amp;quot;How long is that game going to be on for,&amp;quot; a musician friend in a Edward Scissorhands costume asked, which is a delightfully Scissorhandian thing to say. You don&amp;#039;t care about sports, I asked? &amp;quot;The only sport I watch is &amp;#039;A League of Their Own.&amp;#039;&amp;quot; Before long a chant of Ko-ji! Ko-ji! was in full effect, and just as the last strike was recorded a spray of beer covered the room. Outside on the sidewalk things remained calm. &amp;quot;These cars aren&amp;#039;t going to flip themselves people,&amp;quot; one guy complained. &amp;quot;There are too many cops,&amp;quot; his friend said. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s like &amp;#039;Escape From New York&amp;#039; and shit.&amp;quot; Is that a Red Sox beard, a hippie girl with dreads said, lilting up out of nowhere, in what has come to be my least favorite question over the past couple months. &amp;quot;Nah,ah... you know what?&amp;quot; I said. &amp;quot;It actually is.&amp;quot; For a minute there I meant it. Sure enough, cars would be tipped elsewhere throughout the city, intense crowds would roam the streets closer to Fenway, and, for some inexplicable reason, the finish line of the Boston Marathon, but relatively few arrests were made inside the city. Nearby colleges were a different story altogether. I can&amp;#039;t think of a less appropriate reason to riot than a sporting championship. Short of Nancy Pelosi showing up at your house to steal your guns, or the King of England hand-delivery your tax bill, there&amp;#039;s really no good reason to riot. A big crowd finally started to gather on Harvard and Brighton Ave, but remained mostly peaceful. Horns were honked, yelps were sounded, and bro-hugs were bro&amp;#039;d, but compared to championships past, it was nothing. Uneventful so far? I asked one bored-seeming police officer. &amp;quot;Yeah,&amp;quot; he said. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s getting old.&amp;quot; It is getting a little old. Both championship-winning, and the idea of &amp;quot;BOSTON&amp;quot; itself. &amp;quot;The first World Series drove people crazy,&amp;quot; my cabbie was explaining to his wife on phone on my way back to Cambridge. &amp;quot;This is not as tasty as that one...&amp;quot; The old saying when you win in sports is to act like you&amp;#039;ve been there before. The thing is, we&amp;#039;ve been here quite a lot lately. Maybe now, finally, we can go away for a little while. Follow Just Now Ago on Twitter at @JustNowAgo. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/sports/news/a25437/boston-world-series-reax/>