A Ringers Poem...

Imagine you're The Ringers right now.

Imagine you're The Ringers today, this minute, with the ball in your hand and the curtain about to go up.

You've been here before. The lights, the 100 million eyeballs, the pressure that comes with being the men and rising to meet the moment, it's all old hat to you.

You don't sweat the Raso mystique. You remember August 27, 2011, and a certain 8-hit, 1-K night. The House that Bova built doesn't rattle you. You've left notches in that rubber like it was a belt around your waist.

And you can't believe your good luck. A week ago you were done, your boys were done, you were rubber-necking a hideous postseason crash. But no, you get another shot. And like Freddie you're wondering, "Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?"

You won 15 games this year. You never give up. You're for the team -- you stand on the top step of the dugout when you're not standing on the hill.

You bear down. You bear up. It's what you do. It's who you are.

You're the Monty Burns Ringers and tonight's the night.

Back in April, Bagshaw wore his Raso hater hat at a Bruins game.

And everybody outside of Medford loves you because you drew the underdog in this fight. (But, of course, that don't mean snot if you don't deliver now.)

This is what you came for. Not to achieve your own legacy (that's already done by Sully's fielding percentage), but to be a part of a place and a people, to help write and re-write their history. You've been here before, with the strange Raso/Bruins logos in your sights and a quiver full of arrows on your back, but you've never exactly been here before, with the hopes and dreams of the Ringer faithful, and their parents, and their parents' parents, riding on you, with air kissed by curse and laden with anguish flowing in and out of your lungs with every breath. You wanted this, you sought this out, you reached for these people and they reached back. And now you're in. All the way in. You've been a part of this team all season, but tonight you become a made guy, one of the family, with all the rights and responsibilities, with all the risks and rewards, therein. You've been here before but you've never been here before.

You hang with The Sons of Sully now.

And TC promised to shut some folks up.

We take the diamond after two of the greatest games in team history. We take the ball after Jay McGrath slapped it around the yard. We take the ball after a season considered nothing but a prelude to precisely this kind of moment.

This is the game that makes you an icon, if you're up for it. Forget Raso Killer or Big Game Ringer. Try Redeemer on for size. Slip into Deliverer.

Imagine you're The Ringers right now.

Imagine knowing you've got to go long tonight, because there's two games and no one wants to play past Thursday.

But that's all right, because it's in you. No doubt. You have that thing. You can summon it. It will drive you.

You can't seem to think of anything else. There are doubts.

Josh is wearing a Johnny U boot and more tape than Swish had around her chest in "Fastbreak," his ankle's throbbing, bobbing and weaving like a marionette and bearing weight the way Jessica Simpson bears hardship, with a lot of whine and wiggle.

You stunk up the joint in the finals of 2009. You can't let things stand like that. This is a get-back game. You need to write a storybook. You know that.

You also know Steven Paz and the guy with the 44 Long jersey were turning your stuff around last time like a bouncer turns away math majors in coke-bottle specs at the door to a nightclub.

You know it's only Game 1, and even a lights-out performance here doesn't close the deal.
That really chaps you.

So you're The Ringers, and you've got all this swirling around inside your head tonight as you toe the rubber, work through the lineup, and stare up into the thousands of screaming Raso faces.

You're part indomitable spirit and part nerves that jingle, jangle, jingle; part seasoned champion, part new kid on the block.

And the beauty of it is, you wouldn't want to be anywhere else, and the Ringer Nation wouldn't rather have anyone else out there.

Imagine that.

Game on.