red october
I've been running since I was 14. In fact, I remember my first run-just-for-the-sake-of-running quite clearly. Aside from family, very few things in my life have stuck around from that era. (Spiked hair, neon jammers and 16-bit Nintendo just didn't hold their water. THANK GOD.)
There is one thing however that outranks even running in terms of my own personal longevity: The Boston Red Sox.
The year was 1986--I was in the fifth grade. Although largely a straight-laced kid, I had a contrarian streak in me throughout elementary school. I collected Garbage Pail Kids. I listened to a lot of Weird Al. I wondered why everyone around me liked the Steelers, Pirates and Nittany Lions--didn’t people realize that they had a choice in the matter? In the fifth grade, I realized this contrarian streak would have its limitations. After all, I was no longer a young boy--I was a slightly older boy. And if I were to be a fine, upstanding, slightly-older boy in modern society, I was certainly lacking in one department: I did not have a favorite baseball team. I set out that fall to find myself a favorite baseball team for life. (Seriously, I did--no creative liberties taken here!)
One of my first professional baseball memories was--of all things--a marketing ploy: the “Reggie!” candy bar. Also from childhood, I had a California Angels matchbox car in my toy collection. That fall, Reggie Jackson’s Angels were in the playoffs. Because I recognized that team--with that player--in the news, the AL pennant caught my attention. (I still to this day have a tough time picturing Reggie as a Yankee--I was born too late to remember any of his Mr. October heroics with New York.)
I was too young to understand the nuances of the game, but I was old enough to understand wins and losses. The Angels would lose that series (in dramatic--and ultimately tragic--fashion, as I learned later in life) to Roger Clemens and the Boston Red Sox. I vowed to root for one team that World Series, and that team would be my team forever. Because they beat that candy-bar/matchbox-car team, I chose Boston (the clear, objective decision-making of a grade schooler, no doubt).
I followed the Sox through childhood as I collected baseball cards: Boyd, Boggs, Dewey and the like. The Oakland combination of Canseco and McGwire would beat them repeatedly in the playoffs in the early ‘90s. I didn’t follow much sports in college (there wasn’t much to follow in baseball anyways, with the ‘94 strike and all), and I was too busy with studies and friends to sit around and watch TV. Things changed in 1996.
The summer of ‘96 was my first Engineering internship, with Cabletron Systems in Merrimack, NH. The job was less than exciting. Rural New Hampshire was modest but had a good running club. But what I didn’t realize until I got there was that Merrimack was a 1-hour drive from Fenway Park. I went to the first game that I could.
My god, Fenway Park. Century-old paint! Pillars that obstructed your view! Wooden seats that weren’t made for anyone taller than 5’ 8”! And there were PEOPLE in those seats (watching the game, no less)! This was NOTHING like the handful of trips I made to Three Rivers growing up. This was BASEBALL. I was damn near trembling as I walked to my seat for the first time. The Red Sox put together a win against the Tigers with a standout performance by Reggie Jefferson. I was hooked. I would go to several more baseball games that summer with coworkers. When I drove, I would park my parents’ K-car in a lot on Van Ness for $5. The very last thing I did that summer before driving back to Pennsylvania was tour the park. I got to sit in the home dugout, walk the warning track, and go behind the scoreboard--they don’t do that on the tours anymore.
The marathon: another tie back to the ballclub. On one trip into Boston that summer, my friend Dave (who was good at “marathoning,” a relatively new concept to me) made it a point to drive down Boylston Street before the game and asked me to look out the window on the road. I saw a wide stripe of yellow perpendicular to the lanes and thought it odd. He told me it was the finish line for the 100th Boston Marathon, run earlier that year. That may have been the first time I had heard of the race. When I qualified for my first Boston in 2000, I was nearly as excited to go back to Fenway as I was for Hopkinton. On Patriots Day, the Sox play a special morning game that coincides with the marathon. During the race, many spectators write on whiteboards the status of the game--current score, who’s pitching and the like. One spectator even made their own miniature Green Monster scoreboard. And by the time you run by the park at Mile 25, the game has ended and 35,000 screaming (and not necessarily sober) Sox fans are streetside to cheer you on. Heaven.
There you have it: how I came to wearing the scarlet letter. What a ride it has been.
***
THE SOX WON THE WORLD SERIES. Although it’s November, I’m still not over it. Ortiz’s heroics, coming back from a 0-3 deficit in the Bronx, Derek Lowe winning all three clinchers... what Sox fan doesn’t get emotional when thinking about 2004? To boot: they just did it again--in nearly just as dramatic fashion--last month. August through October were simply SPELLBINDING, with truth often being stranger than fiction. I can’t hang with some of the great writers of the game, but I can pretend. With that, I present a love letter a collection of random thoughts regarding the last few months of the historic 2013 Red Sox season.
Great: The Sox blowing out the Tigers by 15+ runs in a mid-September, potential ALCS preview.
Even Better: Lester and the Sox beating a 19-1 Scherzer 1-0 the night before.
The blowout stole all the headlines, but the Scherzer loss was the real harbinger. Indeed, the Sox relied on Lester throughout October for a number of narrow victories. Uehara’s efficient work in the ninth in the Scherzer game would seal the win, much as it would against opponents in the playoffs--including the Tigers.
Great: David Ortiz knocking Torii Hunter over the wall with a game-tying grand slam in the eighth inning of Game 2 of the ALCS.
Even Better: Mike Napoli slugging a solo HR against Verlander in Detroit in Game 3, the only run scored in a 1-0 Sox win.
As it turned out, the September 1-0 win was a dress rehearsal.
Great: Beating the Cardinals in six.
Even Better: Beating the Tigers in six.
Were you as ABSOLUTELY TERRIFIED as I was in the seventh inning of ALCS Game 2? With Verlander waiting in Detroit, the Sox’s comeback season were staring down the barrel of an 0-3 gun. Once Peavy faltered, the Sox were staring down the A-list Tiger starters for Game 6 and 7. That Fox camera shot of the scoreboard tiger three stories high was unnerving. I’m still in shock that the Sox got past Detroit. No disrespect to the Cardinals--a World Series title in the next five years for them is a near certainty with their current roster--but the Tigers were certainly the more fear-inducing team on paper.
Great: Mary J. Blige singing the anthem to open WS Game 1
Even Better: That Marine singing God Bless America in the 7th inning of WS Game 1.
What a performance. As much as I am fierce proponent of separating church and state, God Bless America in the 7th inning stretch in October gets me every time. I suspect that’s true for any baseball fan who watched the Yankees/Diamondbacks World Series in 2001--one month after 9/11--when the tradition was started.
Even Better: Jane Richard, Game 2 ALCS national anthem, who was only seen and heard by those at Fenway.
Great: Dustin Pedroia turning the 4-2 double play in ALCS Game 6.
Even Better: Pedroia stating at the post-game press conference that he was thinking 4-1-2 triple play when the ball left Peralta’s bat.
Who else out there in TV Land was thinking 4-1-2 triple play? For any baseball game? Ever?
Even Better: On July 25th, Pedroia signed with the Red Sox through 2021.
By 2021, most baseball players will be replaced by robots and regular season games will be played in outer space. Some quotes from Dustin at the signing press conference: “I love being here,” “I want to play my last game in a Red Sox uniform,” and “I live and die by this team.” Red Sox fans around the country punched their fist into their glove and shouted “F*CK YEAH!” when upon reading the news this summer.
Great: After a fierce dugout speech by David Ortiz, Johnny Gomes hits a two-out, three-run, game-deciding homer to left field in WS Game 4.
Even Better: After a fierce pre-game speech by David Ortiz, Daniel Nava hits a two-out, three-run, game-deciding home to left field at home against the Royals on April 20th.
April 20th was the first home game in Boston following the marathon bombings. On an otherwise flat day for the Red Sox offense, Daniel Nava rose to the occasion in the bottom of the eighth and put an exclamation point on an emotional day. “This is our city.”
Great: The 2013 Red Sox winning the World Series title after all of baseball gave up on them in 2012.
Even Better: John Lackey leading the 2013 Red Sox to their World Series title after all of humanity game up on him in 2011.
Lackey’s life was in shambles in 2011. SHAMBLES. A sputtering career with a despised, expensive contract, a mostly-private divorce that had the media’s bullseye because of his wife’s condition, and some extra pounds around the waist with buckets of fried chicken. No person on Earth would take pity on an underperforming millionaire--not even John Lackey himself. When he showed up to Spring Training this year as lean as he looked since the early Angel years, you could sense that John was out for more than wins and ERA. The fact that he’s so vocal and intense on the field makes him just flat-out fun to watch. We couldn’t have hoped for a better or more-fitting unexpected hero. Congratulations on your victory, John. And your 2013 World Series crown.
Great: The Red Sox won the 2013 World Series.
Even Better: The Red Sox won the 2004, 2007 and 2013 World Series.
Ask any high-school aged baseball fan today about the Red Sox, and their response is clear: the Red Sox win it all. Often. The last time this was true of high-schoolers was when they all talked about baseball while walking to school, for school buses hadn’t been invented yet. Under the ownership of John Henry, this team has won under different players, different managers and different GMs. If something’s not working right, the ownership takes action and makes amends. I have a World Series Champions pennant at work that I display at my desk on years the Sox are defending the title, because that happens so often these days. I saw this advertisement in Boston in 2006 and sometimes it doesn’t feel like a joke. And that’s just mind-boggling to any Sox fan over 30.
Just when I thought it wasn't possible: I love my Sox, now more than ever. Boston Strong.
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