Chris Berman called it "a 12-month party" for the New England region, and you know what happens to every party once it inevitably fizzles out.
Somebody has to sweep up, in this case, the Chicago White Sox, who took out the 2004 World Series champion Boston Red Sox in three straight games, culminating with Friday's 5-3 clincher at Fenway Park.
Once again, a familiar fall tradition rolls out over New England, with emotionally crushed Red Sox fans turning their eyes to the Patriots, looking for some sort of Sunday pain-killer ... and there the Patriots are, 2-2 after four games and on the road against 3-1 Atlanta.
The greatest run in the history of New England professional sports appears to be running on fumes.
Every Red Sox fan at Fenway on Friday took postseason elimination hard, including the one providing play-by-play for ESPN.
"I'm a native New Englander," Berman confessed after the final out, sounding despondent as he rambled on about having "spent a dollar and a quarter, a dollar-fifty, many a time to sit out in the bleachers and watch the Red Sox of the '70s and the '80s, et cetera, what that meant here, to New England, and what they have done. I've heard of, two and three months later, of sons going out to have a shot with their grandfather in a cemetery in December, who is a Red Sox fan, and drawing families together, and maybe those that hadn't even talked to each other for a while, all because the Red Sox won." (Translation, please? Anyone?)
"That now is a chance for White Sox fans," Berman continued while ESPN's graphics staff stubbornly refused to provide subtitles. "But to these Red Sox who lost here, thank you from the whole region. There's no other way to put it." Oh, rest assured, there probably is.
It was a tough pill for Red Sox fans to swallow, because as Berman put it during the eighth inning, "Darkness starts to fall on the champions who forged one of the great stories of this or any other year, no matter who you root for." Unless, say, you happen to root for the Yankees or the St. Louis Cardinals.
Sunday at 10 a.m., CBS's Jim Nantz and Phil Simms preside over the possible sub-.500 submergence of the Patriots, who play a team with a gimpy Michael Vick, a team that has already lost to Seattle.
