As the hard winter cold gives way to the unrelenting muds of spring, the small dividing strip of land along Commonwealth Avenue in Newton, Massachusetts between Center Street and Hammond Road—a stretch runners know better as Heartbreak Hill along the Boston Marathon route beginning at 20 miles—becomes rutted by the innumerable footfalls that pound its surface every day.

For Bostonians who train along this hallowed ground through the long, bitter months of winter, it is the pull of generations past who have suffered and soared along this stretch that draws them through till Marathon Monday in mid-April.

Perhaps that is why there has always been a close connection between the opening of baseball season and the Boston Marathon, for both are harbingers of hope, the promise of better, warmer days ahead.

Yet the Marathon, like the long baseball season ahead, while offering hope, never actually promises it. Would a people who sprung from a Pilgrim’s harsh heritage have it any other way?

Born of myth, the marathon is rooted in failure, actually, demise. Today, its language of failure alludes to that curtain which will befall each of us one day. “Man, I really died out there today,” is how a runner describes a poor performance. It is this element of suffering to attain, overcoming to transcend, that extends the myth into today’s nano-second world of instant gratification.

In that sense, the 108-year long, no World Series title suffering Chicago Cubs baseball fans (1908-2016) could relate to what New Englanders experienced with their beloved Red Sox for a mere 87 years (1918-2004). But even the Cubs’ multi-generational streak of futility and frustration couldn’t compare in quality to what the Boston Red Sox fans endured during the long-running “Curse of the Bambino”.

Before winning the 2004 World Series in an improbable, incalculable, historic, tear-stained four games sweep of the St. Louis Cardinals—and before them a come-from-three-games-down to sweep past the hated New York Yankees for the American League pennant—to love the men of Fenway Park, you had to love the bitter New England winters and the gray, forlorn specter they represented. You had to be one who sought the company of misery with arms flung wide, ready to embrace discomfort even as you awaited another arctic blast of disappointment to freeze your heart and beggar your hopes. This sense of hope denied meshed nicely with the marathon, whose grueling distance more often than not took the measure of you rather than you of it.

But while the Cubbies might have built a longer winless streak than the Red Sox, the Cubs never really came close to glory. The Midwesterners’ hope rarely lasted past mid-July. Compare that with the Red Sox, who too often failed on an epic, Shakespearean scale—most infamously via Bill Buckner‘s between-the-wickets error in 1986 versus the New York Mets just one out away from the World Series crown, and Bucky “F’g” Dent’s three-run home run off Mike Torrez on October 2, 1978 in the American League one-game tie-breaker against the Yankees. Only the Bartman episode during the National League playoffs against the Florida Marlins in 2003 comes close in Cubs’ lore.

Notwithstanding, as the 2024 Major Leagues official Opening Day once again fires up hopes for potential glory many months in the future, so, too, does the whisper of promise beckon the legion of marathoners who lace up and stride out through the harsh last weeks of training with eyes set wide on their Patriot’s Day journey in two and a half weeks’ time. The ghosts of Pilgrims’ Pride would be proud of each and all.

The Red Sox visit the Seattle Mariner’s tonight in T-Mobile Stadium beginning at 7:10 p.m., Pacific time. The Cubs play the Texas Rangers in Arlington, Texas at 4:35 p.m. Onward!

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