Never Just A Game
By lefty
The writing below was sent to me in an unnamed email. I don't know who the author is or where it was written. ButI like it so I’m posting it here. If anyone knows the author, please let us know and we'll credit that person appropriately.
Thanks, Lefty
Here it is:
I am a Red Sox Fan.
Always have been. Always will be.
In the throws of World Series passion I was reminded that many of us have lost the simplest thing in life – our innocence – we have lost the ability to remain forever young at heart; to enjoy something simply “because.” As a delirious “Nation” fan, still basking in the moment of Foulke tossing the ball to Mientkiewicz and being hugged by his wife and teenaged boys while howling at the very appropriate lunar eclipse, I was hit the next day with the first comment, “It’s just a baseball game.” Then others followed “overboard” “silly,” “childish” and more than I care to remember… and I felt bad – for them.
Baseball is more than a game. Baseball is closing your eyes and hearing the voices of Curt Gowdy, Ned Martin and Ken Coleman floating over the twilight air, thick with the smell of freshly cut grass, charcoal barbecue and summer. The “Voices of the Red Sox” gently cut through the sound of a neighbor cutting his lawn in a rush to beat sunset, the play-by-play mingling of the voices and hardy laughter of “grown-ups” on the front porch.
Baseball was requesting to empty the garbage in your classroom because the janitor’s room was the only place you could watch the World Series game during day… unless of course you developed a stomachache or “felt warm.”
Baseball was something kids wanted to do, and we did all day waving goodbye to our moms at home while being reminded to “be home by dinner.”
Baseball is more than a game, it is having a catch with your friend with a worn glove that would crease and lay flat when tossed on the ground to be used as a base or a cushion as you rested your head staring up at the steely blue sky; and all the while talking about important stuff like favorite players, Pez and girls.
And yes, baseball for Red Sox fans was also about the curse, 1918, Babe, Bucky Buckner, and Boone; but understand as painful as those moments were they did not define me or my friends as Sox fans because there were too many other moments, so many great teams and great players. Remember, the misery of those moments and why we felt them so much was due to what happened before Dent’s ball rested atop the green monster and before the Reds beat us in game seven of the 1975 World Series.
I remember 1967 and the Impossible Dream. I remember 1986, 88, 1990, 95, 98, 99, 2003 and now of course 2004.
But you see, baseball is more than a game. Baseball is part of life, it is woven into a fabric to be worn or smelled, with a scent so strong it brings a flood of memories… like 1975…
My mom sat glued to our television with family, friends and food, as her beloved Red Sox were behind in game six to the Big Red Machine. Weeks earlier the Sox did the impossible by beating the three-time defending American League Champs, the Oakland A’s.
Down 6 – 3, Freddy Lynn singled and Rico Petrocelli walked in the bottom of the 8th when Bernie Carbo hit a pinch-home run tying the game and becoming only the second player in World Series history to hit two pinch-home runs. My mom with the rest of the family jumped with the timing of an orchestrated dance troupe.
Now in the bottom of the 12th, both players and fans exhausted, up stepped Carlton Fisk, one of my mom’s “special players.” As Fisk drove a shot towards left field, the ball seemed headed for foul territory until Fisk himself, stuttering down the first-base line, began waving his hands willing the ball back into play. And as Fisk’s home run cleared the wall, and Fisk himself shot straight up, my mom shot across the room firmly planting kiss after kiss on Fisk’s image as he rounded the bases.
Like many Sox fans my mom passed away before she could see her beloved Sox finally end the curse; win the World Series again; see the jumps for joy; watch as players take champagne showers oblivious to the sting in their eyes; and to kiss the TV once more…
So, here is to family and friends, rivals and teammates, and mostly to the fans… to the fans who allow themselves some of life’s simple pleasures – to wear a ball cap, to paint their faces, to wear their team’s colors, and to howl at the moon… and yes, to be forever young.
