Defeating Dodgers would really matter

The Dodgers will be at Fenway Park tomorrow night, which is exactly what baseball nuts in this town wanted.

The Brewers? Get serious. No one was happier to see the Dodgers eliminate Milwaukee than voracious Red Sox buffs who were licking their chops for a shot at all that “Dodger blue” represents.

That’s how their insufferable guru, Tommy Lasorda, romanticized them, as if they hailed from Camelot while the rest of baseball languished in Mudville.

They weren’t always that way; in fact they were once famously likeable. Check their DNA and you’ll find hallowed names such as Carl Furillo, Johnny Podres, Gil Hodges and Roy Campanella. Affectionately known as “Dem Bums” they played in a park called Ebbets Field, which was every bit as quirky as Fenway, making them a lot like us.

Then they broke the hearts of some of the best fans in the world by packing up and moving to sunny California.

No, you can’ blame Manny Machado and the rest of his mates for what happened 50 years ago, but the name Dodgers still raises hackles for those with long memories whose love of the game endures.

There’s Frank Sinatra, hugging Lasorda. It’s like seeing Jack Nicholson rejoicing at a Lakers game. It’s enough to make you barf.

Now these Dodgers come to Boston.

Welcome to Fenway, boys, or as children’s poet Mary Howitt put it many years ago, “‘Come into my parlor,’ said the spider to the fly.”

Too emotional? Perhaps. Sports can make yahoos of us all.

But the Dodgers, to many of us, will forever deserve a good pounding.

Today, a day of anticipation, we can afford to entertain such thoughts. As the late, great Jake Hess used to sing, “We have this moment to hold in our hand, and watch as it slips through our fingers like sand.”

At the moment anything is possible.

Mookie, J.D. and JBJ are a lot like the Patriots were that magical Sunday in 2002 just before Adam Vinatieri’s 48-yard field goal beat the Rams as time expired in Super Bowl XXXVI.

Immortality was beckoning, as it is again now.

These Sox are on the precipice of much more than a Duck Boat ride through town. Even if they go on to other rides in seasons to come, the first will be the one they’ll always savor most, and they wouldn’t need the Dodgers to make it any sweeter.

But for longtime lovers of the game, beating the Dodgers would be as good as it gets.