2008 (Gregorian Calendar): The vaunted Boston Red Sox go for a repeat in the old fall classic, something that was a mere pipe dream a half decade before.

The Sox are a lock! Wicked good!

1908 The Chicago Cubs---Win the world series over the Detroit Tigers. The BoSox won the first WS in 1903---Yes, a half decade before. But the best for the Beantown boys was yet to come: 1912, 1914 (Braves), 1915, 1916 and 1918 would see Boston reign in baseball. Perhaps only the Great War and the Spanish flu spoiled a few peoples' lives...They never lost a series that they played in!

Until the the invention of the Beantown modern 20th century heartbreak, that is. A lot of us remember that. The 1940s. The 1950s. The 1960s. The 1970s. The 1980s! And the 1990s...Good riddance old century! Williams, Yastremski and Boggs...A triumvirate of frustration.

Of course, there were those 1920s and 1930s to think about the rise of the Yanks in the wake of the trade of the Bambino. An error in judgement, perhaps. Curses!

And that depression called 'Great' and the Next Great War didn't help much. Teddy Baseball would have had crazier numbers had he not been chazing zeros across the Pacific...

1808 Boston had been the site of the beginnings of the "revolution" that freed us from the monarchical rule of London. A man of African heritage named Crispus Attacks fell to Red Coat muskets in the snowy streets here in 1775 or so, eventually leading to other sundry events, not far from the church where Paul Revere was indicated how to call the minute men to arms, and not far from Concord and Lexington where the shots were "heard 'round the world". Just ask the French.

GW himself was there, leading the militia men of Mass and other free colonists against the world superpower. General Washington would go on to the American Republic's presidency and currency fame, as well as the general known as Andrew Jacskon, only a half decade after 1808, making sure the British had ultimately lost their former colonies in North America.

And Jefferson and others of their ilk, had recorded on documents still extant that they played a thing called "ball", in courtyards involving running and bases and perhaps a bat of sorts, not the blind kind.

Long before Mr. Doubleday gets the credit for creating the game of baseball. It all goes back to Beantown, in a sense.

1708 This newly colonized city on the harbor, sitting astraddle the river Charles, having been settled by waves of Pilgrims and then Puritans from England, religious faiths feeling their way out of the old Europe. They made this one of few North American metropolitan areas. Along with Philadelphia, a couple of 18th century cities, almost cosmopolitan shall we say! For 1708.

Only Virginia and New Amsterdam could much compare with the western civilization of this land, New England as it was called on this new continent. No Dutch here! And the native tribes were fleeing in droves, apparently. Leave those for Lake Erie, some day. (The Mistake on the Lake? By the Lake? You know, AL fans: The Tribe!)

Of course, this was not a new place for the natives who knew it. Did their games and activities influence how American colonists thought about games and sport?

1608 No white settlers knew Boston Harbor too well, and not many locals did either. There were not a lot of people inhabiting these lands period.

Apparently, a wicked (not Bostonian wicked, mind you) disease had ravaged the American Indians previous to the 1620 landing of the Mayflower. Perhaps it was spread by birds, or other tribespeople who had contracted human viruses from further south where Spaniards and other nasty human development was coming to fruition.

I suspect we will know the exact story someday by DNA tracing and forensic evidence.

In any case, the tribes like Wampanoag and others had been hurt in number due to serious illnesses, even before the first whites had set foot on those patches of soil!

And they still had the heart to help out our Plymouth Rock pilgrims! Ahh, the heart is quenched at Thanksgiving, in remembrance. And this was long before Barry Sanders was a "Cowboy". Ironic, huh?

1508 There may have been more human activity around the Harbor back then. If your angle was angling, maybe this was the place to be. A half decade before, Chris Columbus was wrapping up his New World visits, apparently oblivious to the fact that he was not in the real ####e Islands, known as Indonesia today...

Hudson would make his way up through North America eventually, as well as Cabot. But I don't think that they made it around Cape Cod...Maybe they did.

Funny islands like Nantaskett and "Rhode". Look that one up on Wikipedia...

1408 Dark times. Hard to get that "rebirth" going. What do the French call it? Renacimiento? No, that's Spanish. Oh, well.

Beantown was just a visionary delusion of the bubonic plague. Our ancestors lived every where else, almost: England, Scotland, Sweden, Prussia, Italy, Spain, Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Japan, China or Hindustan...

The roots of Boston were being developed between English and other European architects as well as preachers and translators of the Bible like Tyndale and WyCliffe. What was the first mention of baseball in the Holy Bible in King James English, to come two centuries later?

Genesis 1:1. "In the Big Inning".

1308 No hopes of the pastoral game of the diamond back then. Bloody crusades to retake the holy city of Jerusalem?

Now you are talking stealing bases, my Holy Warrior!

Funny that the Holy Cross Crusaders are now located in the place that you already surmised:

Boston!

As well as the Eagles, a vestige of the Roman Catholic tradition.

Which will take us back another ten centuries.

But not today.

That is enough about wicked Beantown and baseball, and our baked bean roots.

Peace.

Clinch rogers out. Dedicated to Grandpa McWilliams, 1896-1980. Boston born and raised. Here's another ring for you, Grandpa.