Carol Peters

Fulfillment

Some puritan impulse,
some money-saving, time-saving,
pent-up-hostility-toward-the-media impulse
caused us to cancel
our television feed, and it was not
until thirty minutes
before the start of the 2004 World Series
(because we’d been in Honolulu
where even without cable
we can pick up the network channels
and watched through snow
the four-game-straight comeback
of the Red Sox over the Yankees)
that I realized
I would not be watching
the World Series games,
and I freaked out, because after all,
baseball is my favorite sport,
and the Red Sox my all-time favorite
team, and even though I hate
Tim McCarver as a TV color man even more
than I hate Rick Sutcliffe,
I had to see the games,
yes, John Miller and Joe Morgan are outstanding,
but remember that interference play with Alex Rodriguez
in the ALCS? I mean, how can you capture that
on the radio, nothing but words,
so I was faced with driving
to a sports bar or flying back to Honolulu
until my husband asked me whether
he should call the satellite TV folks
to ask if they would hook us back up,
just for a week, just for the Series—
I said Yes! Yes!
and it was the damnedest thing:
they said we had a twenty-eight-dollar credit,
they could turn us on for two months,
we could watch the Series for free,
so if you were wondering
why the Red Sox won—
the curse reversed—
it’s because of me,
one dedicated fan
as far away as Hawaii.