The Battle of Teutoberg Revisited at Fenway

During the Age of Augustus in A.D. 9, three Roman legions under the Governor of Germania Varus were annihilated in the German forest of Teutoberg. 20 000 Romans, scattered and out of their familiar positions, were ambushed and wiped out. News of the defeat shocked Rome, an Empire at its apex, to the point of never recovering. Plans to conquer Germany were abandoned and the implications of this battle were to impact world history. There was to be no collision of the Romance and Germanic languages. The borders had been set separating Latin and Germanic civilizations.

Only once Rome had fallen for the last time in the 5th century did the two cultures collide to form new bloodlines.

On a modern sports equivalence, that's what the New York Yankees did in their stunning five game sweep of the Boston Red Sox. Ok, the comparison to Roman history is a little much but you get the picture.

The Red Sox were never in it. Mentally and physically they were wiped out. They seemed to be as disorganized and frightened as the Roman legions must have been. Despite fighting in mud on an unfamiliar terrain, accounts of the battle describe the Romans as being valiant and putting up a fight. No such thing happened at Fenway. It was a massacre in its purest form.

It remains to be seen what affect this will have on the organization. The same thing happened in the late 70s when the Yanks swept the Sox in a four game series at a critical point in the season. Chances are the Sox will overcome this. It's just fun to draw historical analogies.

Does it have to be this humiliating for Sox fans? As if Bruins fans haven't had enough of being perennial bride maids to the Montreal Canadiens in hockey. It seems like Boston is a town that invites pain and agony.

Note: Boston won the World Series in 20o7. Too-tee-too...