The Rally Monkey better watch out. There's a new rally creation in town. Put away those backwards, inside-out hats and those monkey puppets because Rally Karaoke Guy is here to stay.
Baseball is famous for being a highly superstitious game, and I suppose it's almost necessary considering the daily rigors of a 162-game schedule. Heaven forbid anyone should wash his uniform during a winning streak. And don't even think about stepping on the chalk foul lines when you take the field.
That said, we should not be surprised that the Boston Red Sox have taken it to a new level, and I won't even mention Nomar Garciaparra's long list of idiosyncrasies. The Sox, after all, are the team associated with the most famous superstition in American lore: the dreaded Curse of the Bambino. Clearly, Bostonians think, 85 years of futility in pursuit of a World Series title cannot possibly be our fault. As a full-fledged citizen of Red Sox Nation, I happen to agree.
So now we return to our story at hand. The Rally Karaoke Guy. It is the ultimate in comic relief and superstition. The hero of this story is native Texan and current Red Sox Kevin Millar who, while a freshman at Los Angeles City College, was once videotaped poorly lip-syncing and erratically dancing to Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A." Thankfully for Sox fans, that tape has survived and become a cornerstone of Boston's playoff push of the past week.
When Boston paid a visit to the Texas Rangers in late July, the keeper of the video, a friend of Millar's, decided it would be fun to pass it along to his Sox teammates. In order to loosen up before a game and to make fun of Millar, the Sox showed it in the clubhouse prior to game time. That evening, the Red Sox scored 14 runs en route to an easy victory.
Now fast-forward three weeks. While in the midst of a stretch in which the Sox had lost seven of 10 games, including four losses to wild card leader Oakland, the Red Sox knew they needed another boost to team spirit. With scheduled starter Pedro Martinez hospitalized with an illness, the Sox knew exactly where to turn: Rally Karaoke Guy.
During the sixth inning, the sellout crowd at Fenway got an unexpected treat, as the stadium's jumbotron debuted Millar's now-famous song and dance routine. The Sox pounded out three more runs that inning in the midst of a 14-5 drubbing of Oakland. Coincidence? I think not.
Two showings of Rally Karaoke Guy produced two games in which the Sox netted 14 runs. Then, building off the momentum of that win, the Sox began a five-game winning streak, including a four-game sweep of then-AL West leader Seattle Mariners.
But Kevin Millar's contributions to the Sox this year don't end there. And I'm not talking about his .288 batting average, 22 home runs or 82 runs batted in. I'm talking about the phrase that is sweeping the Red Sox by storm: "to cowboy it up." It sounds like a silly thing to turn a perfectly good noun like "cowboy" into a verb. But, according to Millar and his Texan teammate Mike Timlin, "to cowboy" something up means to step up your performance in crunch time. And that's just what the Red Sox did last week and need to continue to do in this weekend's three-game series with their archrival New York Yankees.
Who knew that Millar would be so instrumental to the Sox's success? I certainly didn't. Alert readers will recall that last spring I belittled the acquisition of Millar, mockingly referring to him as "The Franchise." I even made this quip about him: "I can't tell you how many times I looked at last year's Red Sox squad and thought to myself, 'We're just Kevin Millar away from winning the World Series.'"
Well, I was almost right. Millar's been a solid addition, but Rally Karaoke Guy has become the team's real franchise player.
All the pieces are now in place for a title run. The Sox just need to go cowboy it up and bring home that ever-elusive World Series title.
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