Monday

16 October 2017

— From one day to the next, my oak tree has donned a saffron gown.

Good Morning All,

Even how I became a fan of the Boston Red Sox is testament to the fatalistic belief none of us really has much control over his or her destiny.

I was six, still living in Bethesda, Maryland. My brother David, age ten, had a Washington Senators baseball cap. It had a big W on it. I, of course, wanted one, too. My mom went looking. She could not find one in the greater Washington, D.C. area. She came back with a hat with a red B on it. She told me the B was for Beano, her nickname for me, just like the W on David’s hat was for Winston, which is his middle name.

Four side comments:

1. My mom turned out to be somewhat challenged in the hat-finding department. In 1954, after we’d moved up to Arlington, Massachusetts, Disney ran his Davy Crockett mini-series. If you were an eight-year-old boy then, a Coonskin Cap was an absolutely de rigueur part of your morning ensemble. Mom went in search. Mind you, virtually every kind of store in the country had a wrack of Coonskin Caps on prominent display. Gas stations had them. Funeral Homes had them. Shoe stores. Bakeries. Massage Parlors. Dentistries. Prosthetic Limb Shops. Mom returned with a striped beanie with a two-tone propeller on top.

2. Old joke about the hapless Senators. Guy calls up Griffith Stadium and asks, “What time’s the game start?” The man at the other end asks, “What time can you get here?”

3. Yes, getting the red B hat was something like a blessing in disguise, since it saved me from becoming a Senator fan, the worst baseball fate of all, but I nevertheless ended up with the 3rd worst baseball fate, becoming a Red Sox fan. (Second worst fate, of course, being a Cubby fan.)

3. Old Cubs joke: Several years ago in Chicago you could actually buy a t-shirt that said: "Cubs Fever, Catch It!” On the back of the shirt was written: “And Die.”

Anyway, being a Red Sox believer in New England had a certain symmetry to it if you were of either Puritan or Irish Catholic stock. Every spring, the team fired you up with hope. Every year, you’d tell yourself, “No, I’m not going to get sucked in, not this time.” But every year you did. And then every year, the Sox would find some new and more ingenious way of losing and breaking your heart. Bucky Dent, Bill Buckner being just two of those agents. But—and here’s the important part—you knew deep down they had to lose. In fact, it was fitting, because you—the abject sinner you were—deserved to lose and be re-taught an important moral lesson. Namely, that you were still worthless scum. Thus did the world to the Puritans and Irish Catholics continue to make sense.

So, the other day, a the Globe columnist, Kevin Cullen, did a piece entitled: The End of Baseball Season Is Worse than Labor Day on the 50th anniversary of the Impossible-Dream Red Sox winning the pennant in 1967. A good bit of nostalgia, that prompted this posting (at the end of the article) from me.

My Winchester friend got standing-room tickets for the first game of the 1967 World Series. I drove up from college in New Jersey in my $55.00 Dodge, 1953 Sherman-tank model, which would not do much over 40 mph. Valiant José Santiago took the mound for the Sox and hit a home run, but he was going against Bob Gibson and lost 2 to 1. Great game, though, and--as it turned out--the only time I've ever attended a World Series game at Fenway.

Mr. Cullen baldly maintains the Red Sox have actually won three World Series since the world's odometer hit 2000. I've read that elsewhere, as well, but I chalk it up to some sort of mass hypnosis. After all, if the Red Sox ever did win the World Series, we'd lose the pleasure of the pain of all these years.

Go Well and Stay Well,

Bhekaron

P.S. I need only one more gun-control survey response to have ten! It’d take you two minutes. If you are not already my friend for life, you will instantly become one by sending your response!

P.P.S. Two Holly autumn snaps.