There are a million people writing great things on the Internet today about last night. I’m going to tell a story:

I was sitting in a bar in Boston — I think it was the Beacon Hill Pub —  a year or two after I got out of college, maybe 2001. It was a late afternoon in August, and I was with a bunch of buddies, just hanging out.  The bar was almost empty, and everyone there was watching the Red Sox game. It was a pretty standard mostly-empty-bar baseball crowd.  Two patrons in particular, however, stuck out. The first was a man who must have been about 60. He was sitting alone at the end of the bar, wearing a red sweatshirt, and quietly muttering “fuck the Yankees” over and over again while he drank his beer. (Note: the Red Sox were not playing the Yankees on the TV).

Given his age, I made up a back story in my head for him: he was probably 6 years old when Pesky held the ball in the ’46 Series and 8 when they dumped the 1-game playoff to the Indians, and then spent the rest of his youth watching the Yankees win a dozen pennants and a pile of World Series. It was that kind of formative baseball experience that would produce this kind of 60-year-old. And my own experience agreed: my first vivid memory of the baseball playoffs was the ’86 Series, when I was 8. I’m sitting with my dad watching game 6 — we’re yankees fans, so obviously we’re rooting for the Mets — and when Stanley throws the wild pitch, my father — who up to this moment had been dead quiet —  just starts laughing hysterically. And then I do to. And then Buckner and now we’re both roaring again, uncontrollably. And then Strawberry hits that towering cheery-on-top-of-the-sundae homer in the 8th inning of game 7 and we both start laughing again. And to this day, whenever something goes wrong for the Red Sox, I start laughing. So I understand how these things happen.

The other guy of note in the bar, my friends and I actually talked to him. Another Red Sox fan, huge Boston accent. He had a childhood baseball story too. Turns out he was 7 years old during the ’75 Series. And it also turns out that he never really got over it. It was all he wanted to talk about. He quizzed us on the Reds’ starting lineup (we got everyone but Cesar Geronimo), he recounted in detail his living room reaction to the Armbrister/Fisk non-interference call in game 3, he told us about Tiant’s complete game in game 4. And then he started to talk about game 6. After a short monologue he says, “You guys know who hit the big home run in that game, right?” And one of us says, “yeah, Carlton Fisk.” And he then instantly answered with a firm “No! That’s what everyone says. But the answer is Bernie Carbo! His homer in the 8th was the important one. That’s when I knew the Sox were going to win the game, and the Series!” And then we sat in silence for a few seconds. Finally, one of my buddies says, “Yeah? So what happened in game 7?” And the guy looks straight at us and says, “That’s what I’m still trying to figure out.” And then he walked away.

Somewhere in Boston, there’s a kid who’s going to spend the rest of his life trying to figure out what the hell happened last night.

Five other quick thoughts, hopefully not duplicating anything you’ve read already today:

3) The Sox collapse is like a microcosm of all their great tragedies. The month-long nature of it makes it  a lot like ’78. So does Dan Johnson’s Dent-ish homer. Crawford’s non-catch in left field is reminiscent of Pesky/Stanley/Buckner. The two easy outs in the 9th were very ’86 Game 6ish.  Longoria’s homer was very Boone-ish ’03.  Add in that the Yankees were involved — by losing — and that just sends it into the stratosphere.

1) Dan Johnson is like Bucky Dent crossed with Bernie Carbo. No way that homer happened. I mean, Johnson makes Dent look like a triple-crown contender. “That little shit hit a god damn 300 foot pop-fly.” That’s Tip O’neil, in his autobiography, talking about Dent’s homer. He might as well have been talking about Johnson.  But I bet, like Carbo, he ends up taking a back seat in our memories in the coming years. Longoria’s game-winner is going to be the iconic clip.

2) Last night wasn’t possible ten years ago. The fan experience is just different now. I had all three game available to me on my TV, which itself probably wouldn’t have been possible in the 90’s. But Twitter took those games through the roof. Maybe there have been Twitter sports moments before, but last night was the first time I felt like I was watching the games with dozens of other people, despite sitting alone on my couch. I remember watching game 5 of the 2004 ALCS (the 14-inning marathon at Fenway) alone in my apartment, in the dark, barely blinking. A totally different feeling (no doubt, in part,  because I was rooting for the Yankees), and an amazing one in its own right. But had Twitter existed then, I’m pretty sure it would have made it even better (worse).

4) Baseball drama is more rare, but much more satisfying, than any other sports drama. As plenty of people have said over the years, it’s partly because of the lack of clock. You get these great closeups of the pitcher reading the signs, the batter digging in, the runner leading off first. But you never know exactly when the action is going to start. And then the pitch is way outside and the tension is released and starts building again. But I also think it’s because of the one-on-one confrontations. Yes, it’s a team game, but the success and failure is individual. And I think that makes us relate to it differently. It’s more personal.

5) There’s no cosmic justice for baseball. How else could Tampa make that comeback last night with less than 30k fans coming out to the park? That’s just embarrassing.

As for me, I tweeted the follwoing about 45 minutes before it all ended:  Whether the Sox blow this tonight or tomorrow or at Daddy stadium in the ALCS, it’s going to be wonderful history to watch. Which it was. And, yes, I stayed true to form: after Papelbon gave up the tying run I started involuntarily giggling. And then when Crawford dropped the ball, I started uncontrollably laughing. This being the 21st century, I followed that up with a tweet 15 seconds later: hahahahahaha.