In Excelsis Theo

The title is from the subject line of an email from my mother this morning. And it is, as per usual with my mother, eerily appropriate.

He's back. Not quite sweeping into town on a white horse. It's too late for that, and too much has been screwed up.

I heard the news hanging out at my friend Katie's last night. I call her into the room, I tell her; she's looks at me with a mixture of sadness and anger, and storms into the other room. She refuses to be happy, but not because she doesn't like Theo. She loves Theo; she is pissed that it took this long. And really, I can't find the words to tell her she's wrong. Because she has a point. Stuff has passed under the bridge; we still don't have a shortstop or centerfielder, and the options are dwindling.

But he's back, and that's gonna be worth something. Even if it's not right now, even if it's hard to see. As much as part of me is pissed, part of me is jumping up and down with joy. I'm not thinking of 2006, because, apart from the pitching, that makes me want to hit things. But I'm thinking of 2007, and Jonathan Papelbon, and Dustin Pedroia, and Jacoby Ellsbury, and the many young and contending years after that. And that's what's making me smile.