The Red Sox? Why the Red Sox?
I was encouraged to share the piece that I wrote and submitted to join the BoSox Injection team, so here it is. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it.
Growing up in Canada most young boys spend their youth absorbed in the hockey world and dream of one day playing in the NHL. For me that was no different. I’d spend countless hours every winter on outdoor rinks and spend weekends traveling all over the province for tournaments and games with that dream of playing in “the show” constantly motivating me. Junior ‘A’ hockey would occupy my years after high school, with the realization I was not making the NHL, but still living and breathing the game of hockey.
All that changed about 8 years ago. Something inside me changed and to this day I do not know what it was. I started watching a lot more baseball, watching the strategy on television be explained to me by the likes of Joe Buck, Tim McCarver, Jon Miller and Joe Morgan, to name a few. I was suddenly studying the box scores of the games played the night before, observing who had multi hit games, how many strikeouts did the cleanup batter have, and who was the winning pitcher. Simple things, but yet to me it was fascinating. And of course in 2003 there was a lot of talk about the Boston Red Sox and at that time, the 85 year curse. I started paying attention to the Red Sox a lot more, making a point of checking out their box score, watching highlights if the game wasn’t on t.v in Canada. I then started reading books on the Red Sox and their storied history, looking up online articles and columns based on the “curse of the Bambino” and getting to know the details surrounding the trade of Babe Ruth. I couldn’t get enough.
I’ve always cheered for the underdog in sports and that year in 2003, when Jason Varitek smashed his glove into the face of Alex Rodriguez, a guy who all but snubbed Red Sox Nation to go play for the hated Yankees, I knew that I had found a team that I could root for. It’s easy not to cheer for the Yankees; they have won more championships than any other professional sports team. They have and continue to purchase the prized free agents as though money is no object. But as the 2003 season went on, I found it very easy to cheer for Boston. Yes, there was heartache in the playoffs that year, thanks to an Aaron Boone home run in Game 7, and although I haven’t lived through the misery as most members of Red Sox nation, I felt a level of disappointment that October that I had not felt before in sports. How could defeat like that keep happening to that ball club, that city, that nation of fans who stand by their team and get their hearts ripped out of their chest every October for 85 years? But I knew, no matter what happened in the years to come, that I would be a Red Soxfan for the rest of my life. The aura of that ball club and the history that goes with it had captivated me. Oh it was and still is very easy to hate the Yankees. The 2004 season would be different I told myself.
If you ask my father where he was in 1972 when Paul Henderson scored the biggest goal in Canadian hockey history during the Summit Series he can tell you to the finest detail. Well, the acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree as I can vividly recall where I was in 2004 when David Ortiz hit the walk-off home run in the bottom of the 14th in game 4 at Fenway Park to give the self proclaimed “idiots” some life. It was my university days and while trying to write a paper on “The economics of agriculture in Canada”, I had one eye on the ball game. Then game five, and Ortiz again is the hero sending the series back to the Bronx. You just knew something special was unfolding in that ALCS and you want to talk about an underdog, how about the likes of Curt Schilling. Pitching on a bad ankle and he threw a gem of a game. Now, the Red Sox just one win away from doing something that had never been done before in baseball history; come back and win a series when down 3-0. Again, talk about underdogs. How could you not cheer for this team, after all they have been through as a franchise. Game 7 was lacking the drama in the late innings, but as a Red Sox fan speaking for the nation, who cares. The Red Sox won and in doing so re-wrote the history books. To top it all off they did it against the bitter rival Yankees. The evil empire had been defeated and now they own a piece of history that is not something to be proud of; the only team in baseball history to blow a 3-0 series lead and lose. I still grin when I think about that year.
It seemed only fitting that the Red Sox would win the World Series that year after all they went through to get there. A four game sweep of the Cardinals and finally, after 86 years of heartbreak and despair, the Boston Red Sox were world champions. I can recall Joe Buck’s call of the final out like it was yesterday, “chopper back to the mound. The throw over to first, and Red Sox fans have longed to hear it. The Boston Red Sox are world champions.” Unbelievable.
The 2007 season was also a special year as I know how hard it is to win a World Series and to win 2 out of 4 years is something to cherish.
I had the privilege to take in my first Red Sox game three years ago when my wife and I took a trip to Boston. We caught the finale of the Boston and Cleveland series on a warm September night in New England. We made sure to get to the ball park early for batting practice and take in the sights and sounds of old historic Fenway Park. I can recall getting shivers as we walked up to gate A from Yawkey Way. Going through the turnstiles I could hear the music playing and I knew I was about to have a dream come true. I was walking into Fenway Park. While my dream of playing in the NHL had long dissipated, a new dream was about to come true. I was going to watch the Red Sox play in Fenway Park. We scored great seats for my first game at Fenway; Loge Box, Section 17, box 121, row FF, seats 2 & 3. I was speechless as I sat through batting practice. So many thoughts raced through my mind. I thought of all the historic moments that had happened, like 1975 when Carlton Fisk somehow waived a ball fair that defied all logic. It had to go foul, but it didn’t. Red Sox had won game 6 sending the World Series to game 7. Finally the curse would be over, but I don’t have enough room to go into what happened in game 7 that year. I thought about 2004 and what it would have sounded like when Ortiz hit the home run to win game 4 against the Yankees. I thought about the legends that had patrolled that beautiful ball park; Carl Yastrzemski, Jim Rice, Dwight Evans, Roger Clemens amongst others. And then I started to think about all that I had read on the history of the Red Sox. Guys like Joe Cronin and Johnny Pesky and his historic right field foul pole; Babe Ruth and how much history one ball player had relating to that ballpark and ball club. I thought about how I was sitting in a ball park where Babe Ruth actually played. And of course I then started thinking of Ted “the splendid splinter” Williams. Arguably the greatest hitter to ever play the game of baseball as evidenced by the last player to hit .400 in a season. I started to get emotional when I thought of all the greats that had played there. What a wonderful place and what a wonderful ball club. It was a night I will never forget and of course the Red Sox won that night 7-1 behind a dominating performance behind Jon Lester. But the score didn’t matter. For those three hours, or there about, I was a kid again. At home watching my beloved Red Sox play baseball, the greatest game in the world.
So, last year when my father asked me “Derek, why the Red Sox? Why do you cheer for the Red Sox?” There you have it dad, that’s why.
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