I bought this ticket yesterday. The moment the purchase confirmation hit my inbox, I walked straight to Jared’s desk and showed him the receipt, smiling like a baby. First thing he says: “no chance that game happens.”

Jared is a stone-cold bitch. I don’t know why I continue to seek his approval. I remember when he first moved to New York. There was a lot of talk about how he had asked Dave to be his guarantor on his lease, and that’s when Dave started calling Jared his son. I thought, “Dave’s my father figure, so that must make us brothers.” And brothers bond over common interests. I quickly learned there was no way that Jared and I would bond over my interests: he doesn’t care about standup comedy because he doesn’t laugh; he doesn’t watch TV shows because he’s glued to the meaningless drivel of the MLB network even before the start of spring training, when the analysts themselves flounder and repeat their tepid predictions knowing full-well that only Jared and his lesbian exes are watching.

If you’re wondering why Jared has dated so many women who subsequently came out, it’s because he only dates women who chew tobacco while they keep the box score from the first pitch to the final out of all 162 Sox games each year, grinding each pencil down to the eraser nub and then swallowing it with a glass of Jack Daniels. Nobody wears the pants in a relationship with Jared because neither party wears pants, just And1 mesh basketball shorts over Adidas shower sandals with calf socks. Jared limits his dating app criteria based on bat speed. His favorite first date is apple picking, so long as he gets to sit on her shoulders and stretch for the highest apples. He exclusively dates human shields. It’s just another area where we have nothing in common.

I’ve honestly never met someone who cared so little about being interesting at dinner parties. But somehow, someway, I’ve wanted him to like me from the moment I heard his uninflected, robotic voice disagreeing with everyone around him. And so, about six months ago, I went over to his makeshift desk that sits next to the water cooler with my reusable water bottle. I had armed myself with a litany of Wikipedia facts about his beloved franchise. As I filled up, I turned my head casually over my shoulder.

“You know, Cy Young had the first and only perfect game in Red Sox history.”

“Pedro had one through nine innings but lost it in the 10th because his team fucking sucked and couldn’t get a run,” he said without looking up. He was referencing Pedro Martinez’s 1995 outing with the Montreal Expos, in which the young pitcher retired his first 27 batters only to give up a double in the 10th because his team couldn’t bring in any runs. Jared was so prepared with his response, and so unimpressed with what I had thought was an esoteric fact, that I stopped my bottle-filling half-way and slunk back to my desk like the fucking loser I was. I needed to dig even deeper, to find baseball facts that Jared had never heard before. I needed to learn.

Thus began a period of intense cramming on our nation’s pasttime. I borrowed a handful of study mints from father Dave’s secret stash and after work, I would pore over volumes of baseball lore. I purchased almanacs, watched Moneyball fourteen times, and became Jonah Hill’s character minus the weight because I like the sight of my penis. I grazed on YouTube compilations of hidden ball tricks, infield shifts, and rare double-play combinations. I marveled at the brilliant base-running of Ricky Henderson. I bought my first glove since childhood, filled it with conditioner, placed it under the tire of a Hummer overnight, and completely forgot about it.

Months went by. I lost touch with my family and my dreams were painted in black. Sometimes I would wake in a cold sweat, screaming at the injustice of Jim Joyce robbing Armando Galarraga of perfection. I removed myself from any group chats that included my former lacrosse teammates. My life became a flight simulation, except the cockpit was a dugout and the heading was the base path. If I happened to bring home a squirter from the bar, I’d cover my bed with a blue tarp and, depending on volume, we’d either wait for a rain delay or call it off entirely. Nothing made sense away from the diamond.

Meanwhile, the Boston Red Sox were barreling forward in their best season in franchise history. I would check in with Jared, making small-talk about our team and their flirtation with destiny. He was uncharacteristically approachable, buoyed by the team’s remarkable success. And as our beloved Sox rolled over the Yankees, and then the daunting Astros, I knew that Jared and I were heading into a place of unbreakable bonding.

At least, that was my thought process as I readied myself for my final act of allegiance. I needed something massive, a fireworks display of baseball commitment, a move so drastic that Jared would be forced to see in me a piece of himself. For only the most diehard Red Sox fan would know that for $2,000, a ticket to game seven of the World Series at Fenway Park was not a choice at all–it was an obligation, and a steal at that.

I purchased. A flood of feelings rushed over me. Elation, excitement, hope… it was as though my heart had become the cauldron that brewed a potion of devotion, to Jared, to the Red Sox, and to the great game itself. I steadied myself and crossed, slowly, to Jared’s desk to ascertain my fate.

“Hey man, want to see something awesome?” I was trying to tease him a bit, wanting to build the stakes, to afford the moment its proper ceremony.

“Whatcha got?” he said, chewing on his horrifically unhealthy lunch of a cardboard hamburger served in a styrofoam container. After that, he would eat an almond chocolate bar and a snickers bar, covering the tiers of the food pyramid as comprehensively as a shitfaced Darryl Strawberry missing every single base during a home-run trot.

I showed him my email confirmation. This was the moment. All my work, all my research, all the late nights had led to this.

“No chance that game happens,” he said, dismissively returning to his work.

It felt like a rhinoceros had charged at me, lowered his head, and punctured my heart with his horn. I should have seen it coming. Of course Jared’s optimism would have him believe that our boys would dispatch of the inferior Dodgers in less than seven games. But all my statistical knowledge had caused me to lose sight of instinct, had eradicated my biases, and had caused me to ignore the very feelings which made Jared so certain that no game seven would be necessary.

But you know what? Fuck that. If Jared doesn’t want to see a game seven, I guess we weren’t meant to be friends. I want nothing more than to see the Sox and the Dodgers trade games en route to the most exciting two words in sports: game seven. Because if that happens, I’ll be there, wearing a hat that I bought on Landsdowne Street, buying Fenway Franks for everyone sitting in my row.

And Jared will be at home, eating his bullshit food, decomposing in a pile of his own misery.