Knox The Hatter
2nd Level Indigo Feather
- Joined
- Feb 11, 2003
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I reprinted this from my blog. I think it's well...not bad. Unless you're a Yankees fan..but then, oh well! 🙂
This is for the septuagenarian…
The septuagenarian who sat along the first base line, about ten rows back, in the Back Bay Fens yesterday, with the children and grandchildren, who drove out from Lynn and Lowell and points further. The septuagenarian whose eyes teared from seeing things that he thought he would never live to see.
Babe Ruth. They keep talking of Babe Ruth. The septuagenarian was born in that strange year when Babe Ruth had played part of a final, sorry season, not for THIS ball club, but that other rotten team, the one that played up on Commonwealth Avenue. The one that today routinely fouls its nest in Atlanta every October. The septuagenarian remembers his first game; his first trip through the turnstiles here in the Back Bay Fens, his small hand clasped by the dry, calloused one of his fireman of an uncle from Brockton…a day when the offense was provided by a musclebound, brick wall of a man named Jimmie Foxx in a 5-4 come from behind victory over the St. Louis Browns. Jesus, who surrounding him in the boxes along the first base line would even remember the St. Louis Browns?
There were many days there, whiling away the hours in the Back Bay Fens, growing up at a time when there were no grown men to be seen, and no cars on the streets, and only players too old or too young for war service. As time went on, there were men named Bobby Doerr and Johnny Pesky and Dominic DiMaggio and Tex Hughson, as well as a deity in the flesh named Theodore Samuel Williams, all come back from the wars, to while away the hours of adolescence with, as they won and they won and they won again. They won, but they, of course, didn’t win. There was the World Series, against the St. Louis Cardinals, that went down to the very last play, where an indomitable Southern spirit named Enos Slaughter wouldn’t be denied his date with destiny. There was success, and a loss in a one game playoff with Cleveland, and the denial of what would’ve been an All-Boston World Series. There was…a ferocious let down, a heart killer, when they went to Yankee Stadium for that last weekend series in 1949 and came home empty handed.
There was the immense frustration of watching that team in The Bronx succeed every year, one year after another, decade in, and decade out, seemingly without fail, while the decisions on the local front were made in the offices of a perpetually inebriated owner, accompanied by both an equally alcoholic manager and general manager. There was the maddening concept of watching the arrival of the Tony Kubeks and the Gil McDougalds and the Bobby Richardsons and the Elston Howards, while you had to sit there and watch Don Buddin throw simple grounders ten rows back of where you’re sitting right now.
The septuagenarian went to college and got married and had children. He bought a house out in the suburbs, and ignored the mounting embarrassment in the Back Bay Fens, until one year, it all turned around. All of a sudden, in 1967, things were exciting again, in fact, more exciting than they ever were before. There were new heroes, who showed their greatness on an every day level, such as Carl Yastrzemski, and there were glimpses of what could’ve been had fate not intervened, like in the case of this kid from Lynn named Tony Conigliaro. There was yet another seven game World Series with the St. Louis Cardinals, and the indomitable spirit that would not be denied this time was this mean-as-catshit fireballing pitcher named Bob Gibson.
The years passed, and the Local Heroes were always competitive, but they never seemed to be able to get the job done. The kids got older, they made it through high school, and lo and behold, even the Yankees came back from an unusually long exile to never-never-land. There were new faces, like Jim Rice and Freddie Lynn and a wily Cuban pitcher named Luis Tiant, and there was another World Series, and even though the Local Heroes came up short again, it certainly was entertaining, what with colossal home runs from Carlton “Pudge” Fisk, among everything else. Finally, there was the year when it seemed everything would finally come together, the year that the Yankees would finally get their asses kicked, and have a frickin’ can tied to it in the Back Bay Fens…the septuagenarian remembers how it all came to an end off the end of the bat of a journeyman turd named Bucky Dent, and how, for so long, it was so painful to recollect.
More years passed, the kids got married, and they soon had children of their own. The faces in the Back Bay Fens gave way to the likes of Marty Barrett and Bruce Hurst, as well as a volatile character of a pitcher who called himself “Oil Can” Boyd, and a hitting machine known as Wade Boggs. One saw a future Hall-Of-Famer in the flesh in Roger Clemens, who the septuagenarian watched strike out TWENTY in a single game. There was a magnificent year, in which the Local Heroes managed to inflict their kind of suffering on another team in the League Championship Series with a checkered heritage, the Angels, before suffering an indignity of their own that, through the years, grew into a legend of its own. The septuagenarian remembered watching Mookie Wilson’s grounder go through Bill Buckner’s legs while watching the game in his daughter’s Amherst dorm room, with her and her friends, and how, for a fleeting moment, wondered what the sound of insane celebrating would actually be like there in his old Charlestown neighborhood. Most of all, he remembered the heartbreak.
The years went on, the grandchildren came, one after another, and the baseball seasons were filled with talk of a “curse”, brought on by the sale of Babe Ruth to the Yankees before the 1920 season, which might as well have been when Columbus sailed the ocean blue in Fourteen Hundred and Ninety Two, for all it really mattered. The septuagenarian knew that it was all a game to sell newspapers, and he had no regard anyway for anyone who truly believed such nonsense, but deep down, one wondered, after all. How could one institution suffer through SO much bad luck, for so many years in a row? This wasn’t like the Chicago Cubs, with so much incompetence to show for so many decades. The Boston Red Sox were always a competitive club, but when the time came, someone upstairs would pull the rug out from underneath, usually in the most embarrassing manner possible.
And then, there was 2004.
There was no reason to believe that it would end in 2004. After all, there was the true darkness before the dawn, the debacle of Game Three of the LCS, watching the Local Heroes slowly sink like the ‘Titanic’, watching run after Yankee run cross the plate. However, everyone knew that no one in the history of Baseball had ever come back to win a postseason series after being down three games to none.
It happened, though.
It really happened. The septuagenarian, now retired, had come up from Florida to watch Game One of the World Series, the tickets courtesy of his son-in-law, a junior partner in a law firm near Copley Square. Enjoying himself immensely, he watched with growing amazement, as the Red Sox never lost another game after that dark, disastrous third game with the Yankees. How wonderful was it to have this happen to the Yankees, this most embarrassing of collapses in the history of the game?
So, yesterday, there the septuagenarian sat, along the first base line in venerable Fenway Park, with his family, watching the raising of the championship banner, watching the giving out of World Series rings to the victors, watching the effing Yankees look on from the visitor’s dugout. Wiping the tears from his eyes, as he eyed an eighty five year old Johnny Pesky, the Sox’ shortstop of his youth, receive a ring of his own.
This is your day, Sir. Your day.
This is for the septuagenarian…
The septuagenarian who sat along the first base line, about ten rows back, in the Back Bay Fens yesterday, with the children and grandchildren, who drove out from Lynn and Lowell and points further. The septuagenarian whose eyes teared from seeing things that he thought he would never live to see.
Babe Ruth. They keep talking of Babe Ruth. The septuagenarian was born in that strange year when Babe Ruth had played part of a final, sorry season, not for THIS ball club, but that other rotten team, the one that played up on Commonwealth Avenue. The one that today routinely fouls its nest in Atlanta every October. The septuagenarian remembers his first game; his first trip through the turnstiles here in the Back Bay Fens, his small hand clasped by the dry, calloused one of his fireman of an uncle from Brockton…a day when the offense was provided by a musclebound, brick wall of a man named Jimmie Foxx in a 5-4 come from behind victory over the St. Louis Browns. Jesus, who surrounding him in the boxes along the first base line would even remember the St. Louis Browns?
There were many days there, whiling away the hours in the Back Bay Fens, growing up at a time when there were no grown men to be seen, and no cars on the streets, and only players too old or too young for war service. As time went on, there were men named Bobby Doerr and Johnny Pesky and Dominic DiMaggio and Tex Hughson, as well as a deity in the flesh named Theodore Samuel Williams, all come back from the wars, to while away the hours of adolescence with, as they won and they won and they won again. They won, but they, of course, didn’t win. There was the World Series, against the St. Louis Cardinals, that went down to the very last play, where an indomitable Southern spirit named Enos Slaughter wouldn’t be denied his date with destiny. There was success, and a loss in a one game playoff with Cleveland, and the denial of what would’ve been an All-Boston World Series. There was…a ferocious let down, a heart killer, when they went to Yankee Stadium for that last weekend series in 1949 and came home empty handed.
There was the immense frustration of watching that team in The Bronx succeed every year, one year after another, decade in, and decade out, seemingly without fail, while the decisions on the local front were made in the offices of a perpetually inebriated owner, accompanied by both an equally alcoholic manager and general manager. There was the maddening concept of watching the arrival of the Tony Kubeks and the Gil McDougalds and the Bobby Richardsons and the Elston Howards, while you had to sit there and watch Don Buddin throw simple grounders ten rows back of where you’re sitting right now.
The septuagenarian went to college and got married and had children. He bought a house out in the suburbs, and ignored the mounting embarrassment in the Back Bay Fens, until one year, it all turned around. All of a sudden, in 1967, things were exciting again, in fact, more exciting than they ever were before. There were new heroes, who showed their greatness on an every day level, such as Carl Yastrzemski, and there were glimpses of what could’ve been had fate not intervened, like in the case of this kid from Lynn named Tony Conigliaro. There was yet another seven game World Series with the St. Louis Cardinals, and the indomitable spirit that would not be denied this time was this mean-as-catshit fireballing pitcher named Bob Gibson.
The years passed, and the Local Heroes were always competitive, but they never seemed to be able to get the job done. The kids got older, they made it through high school, and lo and behold, even the Yankees came back from an unusually long exile to never-never-land. There were new faces, like Jim Rice and Freddie Lynn and a wily Cuban pitcher named Luis Tiant, and there was another World Series, and even though the Local Heroes came up short again, it certainly was entertaining, what with colossal home runs from Carlton “Pudge” Fisk, among everything else. Finally, there was the year when it seemed everything would finally come together, the year that the Yankees would finally get their asses kicked, and have a frickin’ can tied to it in the Back Bay Fens…the septuagenarian remembers how it all came to an end off the end of the bat of a journeyman turd named Bucky Dent, and how, for so long, it was so painful to recollect.
More years passed, the kids got married, and they soon had children of their own. The faces in the Back Bay Fens gave way to the likes of Marty Barrett and Bruce Hurst, as well as a volatile character of a pitcher who called himself “Oil Can” Boyd, and a hitting machine known as Wade Boggs. One saw a future Hall-Of-Famer in the flesh in Roger Clemens, who the septuagenarian watched strike out TWENTY in a single game. There was a magnificent year, in which the Local Heroes managed to inflict their kind of suffering on another team in the League Championship Series with a checkered heritage, the Angels, before suffering an indignity of their own that, through the years, grew into a legend of its own. The septuagenarian remembered watching Mookie Wilson’s grounder go through Bill Buckner’s legs while watching the game in his daughter’s Amherst dorm room, with her and her friends, and how, for a fleeting moment, wondered what the sound of insane celebrating would actually be like there in his old Charlestown neighborhood. Most of all, he remembered the heartbreak.
The years went on, the grandchildren came, one after another, and the baseball seasons were filled with talk of a “curse”, brought on by the sale of Babe Ruth to the Yankees before the 1920 season, which might as well have been when Columbus sailed the ocean blue in Fourteen Hundred and Ninety Two, for all it really mattered. The septuagenarian knew that it was all a game to sell newspapers, and he had no regard anyway for anyone who truly believed such nonsense, but deep down, one wondered, after all. How could one institution suffer through SO much bad luck, for so many years in a row? This wasn’t like the Chicago Cubs, with so much incompetence to show for so many decades. The Boston Red Sox were always a competitive club, but when the time came, someone upstairs would pull the rug out from underneath, usually in the most embarrassing manner possible.
And then, there was 2004.
There was no reason to believe that it would end in 2004. After all, there was the true darkness before the dawn, the debacle of Game Three of the LCS, watching the Local Heroes slowly sink like the ‘Titanic’, watching run after Yankee run cross the plate. However, everyone knew that no one in the history of Baseball had ever come back to win a postseason series after being down three games to none.
It happened, though.
It really happened. The septuagenarian, now retired, had come up from Florida to watch Game One of the World Series, the tickets courtesy of his son-in-law, a junior partner in a law firm near Copley Square. Enjoying himself immensely, he watched with growing amazement, as the Red Sox never lost another game after that dark, disastrous third game with the Yankees. How wonderful was it to have this happen to the Yankees, this most embarrassing of collapses in the history of the game?
So, yesterday, there the septuagenarian sat, along the first base line in venerable Fenway Park, with his family, watching the raising of the championship banner, watching the giving out of World Series rings to the victors, watching the effing Yankees look on from the visitor’s dugout. Wiping the tears from his eyes, as he eyed an eighty five year old Johnny Pesky, the Sox’ shortstop of his youth, receive a ring of his own.
This is your day, Sir. Your day.
