Lifelong Red Sox fan Peter Diamond finally found a moment to eclipse the curse of the Bambino being shattered after 86 years.
“Jokingly I said to my nephew — who’s a Yankees fan who lives in New York, when I called to tell the family — that this is almost as good as the 2004 World Series.”
The MIT economics professor’s big news was that he won the Nobel Prize yesterday for explaining how so many people could be unemployed despite a large number of job openings.
“With suitable macroeconomic policies, there’s no reason to think that once we get through this we won’t get back to normal unemployment,” Diamond said. “We’re starting from a place with unusually high unemployment. The process is going to be slow and that’s painful for the entire economy.”
Diamond, who was nominated by President Obama last month to the Federal Reserve board, won the $1.5 million prize along with a British-Cypriot and another American.
The 70-year-old has spent his entire career at MIT.
“You might think when a big faculty member wins this type of prize you are more happy in a distant way,” grad student Xiao Yu Wang, 22, said. “Because it’s such a close knit community we very much feel a part of it.”
Yesterday, Wang and other students sported T-shirts reading “MIT Econ” in Red Sox-style lettering on the front and “Diamond” on back. They wore them on April 20 when Diamond tossed the opening pitch at Fenway Park.