I’m feeling a little down and out as the 2014 Red Sox season comes to an all-too-early-end this coming weekend. I find myself reminiscing back to Opening Day and the giddiness that comes with new possibilities, green grass, crisp white uniforms, cold beer, Sweet Caroline, the boys of summer, and magical nights inside the hallowed grounds of the one and only Fenway Park.
Opening Days, especially those that involve a ring ceremony, always give me the chills. I can’t get enough of the sound of the crowd, the vivid colors that blend together to paint a portrait like none other, and the goosebumps. I’ve been fortunate to breathe in the awesomeness of Opening Days from the field. To look up and around….to pan the crowd…and see it in almost slow motion. It may come as no surprise that I may possibly be the world’s biggest sap, but Opening Day gets to me in a way that I have trouble putting into words. So, it isn’t supposed to end this way. The years with no post season play feel like a year without Christmas, July 4th, beach days, and grapefruit beer. The horror.
For me, it isn’t just the baseball. The post season is about the camaraderie that is palpable while ordering your morning coffee after a late night win, while coexisting with strangers during mundane errands prior to rushing home for the first pitch, or while cheering on the Sox at a local bar. Never mind the 9 inning marriage of 37,400 fans cheering on the team inside the park! It is impossible to not feel like all of Red Sox Nation are immediate best friends come late September and October….if, that is, we’ve made it. Which, of course, we haven’t.
With no wild card run, American League Divisional Series, American League Championship Series….and, sigh, no World Series….I’m feeling like I’ve just arrived to a luxurious beach vacation and the weather forecast is calling for 7 straight days of torrential rain. And that, my friends, may be an understatement.
Sure, we’ll fill these fall days with plenty of fun…but, something will be missing for sure.
Good Morning Gloucester 
I hear you Nichole, when I go to see a Red Sox game I get all emotional. When my mother was pregnant with me, my due date was June 10th, she went to a game and I was born two days later. How fun it would have been all these 61 years to have been born at Fenway Park.
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That’s awesome, Donna. I remember being a week overdue with Thatcher and going about business as usual. There were some places I refused to go for fear that I’d go into labor….as it wouldn’t have been cool to give birth in…for example….Walmart. Fenway, however, would have been a GREAT story!!!!!
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I was born in Brooklyn NY in 1942, the year the Dodgers almost took home the National League pennant. It was a year of heartbreak and a year of fear. After being 10 games ahead on August 4, the Dodgers watched as the St. Louis Cardinals won 45 of their last 56 games, leaving the Dodgers 2 games out at the end of the season. (To those too young to remember, the only “post season” play in those days was the World Series.) 1942 was the year that center fielder Pete Reiser nearly killed himself while chasing a fly ball into the unpadded center field wall at Ebbets Field.
No, I don’t really remember these things from my first year, but they, nevertheless, became part of me and by the time I was 6, I had become a knowledgeable, and fanatic Dodger fan. I plunked down 50 cents for bleacher seats every at every opportunity, learned the geography of Ebbets Field, inside and out and followed every inning of the season in person, on the radio, or, in later years, on TV. I remember Leo Durocher being replace by Burt Shotton in the middle of the 1948 season. I remember the 1949 season when the Dodgers avenged 1942 and beat the Cards in the final game of the year for the pennant, but lost to the Yankees in the Series.
I heard Bobby Thompson’s “shot heard round the world” when his walk – off homer gave the Giants the League Championship in 1951, breaking the hearts of all of Dodgerdom. I saw the Dodgers come back in 1952, only to loose in the Series once again to the Yankees.
In 1953 my team again clinched the pennant and again faced the Yankees in the Series. Despite heroic efforts, they fell to a Billy Martin single on the bottom of the ninth in game 6.
And then there was 1955, the year the Dodgers walked away with the pennant after holding first place for the entire season; the year that saw the first two games of the Series go to the Yanks at The Stadium, but witnessed the Dodgers win games 3, 4 and 5. After the Yankees took game 6 the stage was set for the finale at Ebbets Field. With Johnny Padres going all the way for Brooklyn and Sandy Amoros making a God guided catch of a Yogi Berra meteor, The Dodger won their first World Series and a small, skinny 13 year old boy wept with joy.
It was 1957 when Dodger owner Walter O’Malley moved the team to L.A. The Brooklyn Dodgers played their last game at Ebbets Field on September 24, 1957.
Over those years I watched two Carl Erskine no-hitters, witnessed Jackie Robison steal second more time than I can count, gasped as Carl Furillo threw a perfect pitch from deep right to the plate to nail a runner, cheered on many occasions as Duke Snider saved the day with a long one over the scoreboard into Bedford Ave. I listened to Red Barber and Vince Skully call the games and kept in a place of honor a small jar that contained a wad of chewing gum that had been expectorated by a glum Roy Campanella while walking to the clubhouse after a disappointing game.
So, Nichole, my point is this: the happy ending to your beautifully written post is that you get to go on having hope on hopeless days, finding joy in a joyless season, and wishing for a better year next time around.
I have my memories.
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Amazing memories, Marty. Thanks so much for sharing. Baseball is indeed special. Reading about your memories also gave me the chills. Funnily enough, somewhere deep in the crevices of our freezer right now is a wad of 1/2 chewing tobacco 1/2 gum that Terry Francona and Kevin Millar threw at me early in the 2004 season. 2 days in a row Terry teased me by throwing it at me as I walked in front of the dugout. The second day I picked it up and put it in my camera bag. He joked that it “wouldn’t be worth much” and I said, “You never know.” Of course, as you know, they went on to win the first World Series in 86 years a few months later.
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All – great posts – yes get emotional too but that’s what true love of the sport will do for you! 🙂 No Ricky Nelson Garden Party for me here on the memories aspect maybe lonesome town however!
Lonesome Town – Ricky Nelson
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uN7mjvok6MI (Good tears for good memories) 🙂
I love the history here folks memory lane live within and carry it no matter where you are it will always be a part of you:-)…The gorge Scott Glove, the Yaz and Tony C Glove, Rico P…I remember a splinter from the long ago days 60’s…Fenway Park built (1912)…Marty the LA farm team (Albuquerque Dukes)…watched in early 70’s too! Donna your only 15 minutes or so from Fenway then home (Somerville)… Me June too 2:23am Saint Elizabeths Hospital…and we lived over on Pearl Street before moving to lanesville in 1957. Still a lot of row house apartments and looks like fixing it up some…
Thanks for the memories warms the spirit! 🙂 Dave
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Sorry, They lost me in 1986. I loved them up to then, but my love turned to like. I was glad for their successes over the years.
My second son Salvatore was born during the 1986 playoffs. I fed and rocked him through all the ups and downs. Baseball and most Pro sports no longer gives me the feelings I had for them when I was a kid. I’m guess i’m just an old fart now.
GREAT POST!
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