I really like this Nike ad that poignantly calls to mind generations of Boston fans no longer with us who would have appreciated the Red Sox' success this season.

My wife has been thinking of her late mother, who introduced her to the Sox. I've thought of my late father, who began going to games at Fenway when Duffy's Cliff rose to the left-field wall, and who brought me to doubleheaders to cheer Yaz and Lonborg and Tony C.

The Red Sox are a team that connects generations, writes Dan Shaughnessy.

That's why this matters so much.

They remind you of your father and mother, maybe your grandfather, too. And they remind you of your sons and daughters and all that you taught them when they were young. Like green eyes and freckles, love of the Red Sox is passed through bloodlines, and the shared passion can bridge the gaps that come with maturity and growth.

In every family there's inevitable distance -- sometimes geographic, sometimes philosophical or emotional. But the Red Sox furnish common ground, which is why they are more than a baseball team and why this is more than a story of a surge to a long-awaited championship.

How many of you have heard from relatives in the last 10 days, maybe a sibling you haven't spoken with in a while? And how many former New Englanders are watching their televisions in Colorado, Arizona, or Florida, remembering growing up with the mellow voice of Curt Gowdy pouring out of the porch radio into the humid night?

How many of you watched the thrilling comeback against the Yankees and thought of a parent or a spouse who has died? How many watched the first two games of the World Series and thought about how much more special this would be if Uncle Joe or Aunt Elizabeth had lived to see it?

* * *

The tune now stuck in my head: Irving Berlin's "Blue Skies," sung by Maxine Sullivan, from the HP Invent commercial. Here's the ad: High * Low

* * *

Tonight's game is to be played under a full lunar eclipse. The stars and planets apparently are in alignment -- but for what?

* * *

Peter Kreeft, in an interview last month, on whether the Red Sox' winning the Series would signal the End Times:

"The clearest apocalyptic sign conceivable would be a seventh game World Series win by the Cursed Sox. That would indicate not only a change in the cosmos but in the Creator…We are indeed the Chosen People of baseball, chosen to suffer and be the sign to the whole world. If the unthinkable ever happens, everyone will be as confused as a robot in an electrical storm. We simply would not know what to do.

"By the way, I know exactly how the end of the world will happen. This time we'll be up ten runs in the ninth with two out, nobody on, and two strikes on the opposing batter. The third strike splits the air, the plate, and the helpless batter's mind. Just before the umpire's right hand can go up, the Heavenly Umpire's right hand goes down, splits the sky like a scroll, and a voice that sounds suspiciously like Charlton Heston intones: "Now, my children, those of you who are wise know that this is the one thing I can never allow in your world. You're in mine now. You're home. It's over."

"It is no accident that there are more philosophers per population in Boston than in any other city. For philosophy is the love of wisdom, and wisdom comes through suffering, and we have our beloved bleeding Red Sox."