Confessions of a Red Sox Fan

Last night, Boston beat St. Louis in Game 7 of the World Series. I've been an ardent Red Sox fan ever since I moved to Boston in 1975, although I haven't lived there in many, many years. If you cannot understand why I continued to cheer for a team that had consistently failed to win the World Series since their last championship in 1918, when Babe Ruth was a pitcher for them, you will probably never understand me at all. So let me try to explain.

Fenway Park opened in 1912, six days after the sinking of the Titanic. The Red Sox played New York in the World Series during that inaugural season. Game 2 of the three-game series ended in a tie, so after seven games, the series was tied, 3-3-1, and it all came down to the 10th inning of the eighth and final game. Boston's Smokey Joe Wood gave up a run in the top of inning, but the Sox rallied for two runs off the Yankee's Mathewson in the bottom of the 10th to beat New York 3-2.

Six years later, the Sox won the 1918 World Series, due in part to the pitching of one Babe Ruth. The next season, the Babe set a major league record by hitting 29 home runs in a single season. However, after the season, Boston sold Ruth to the rival Yankees and the next year, Ruth broke his own record by hitting 54 homers in one season for New York. Perhaps as a punishment for one of the stupidest transactions in baseball history, the Sox were not to win another World Series that century.

It's not as if they never came close, however. They won the American League Championship and were in the World Series many times, including 1967, 1975 and 1986, but bad luck, incredible coincidence and even possibly some sort of cosmic spiritual force prevented them from winning another Series championship.

For example, in 1949, the Red Sox were having one of their best seasons in years. Ted Williams was having a 150-run season (the last major league player to do so). Williams was back from a fighter-pilot stint in World War II (he was later to serve in Korea) and just eight years off his blistering .406 season of 1941. However, the Red Sox went to New York with a one-game lead and two games remaining on the schedule, and lost both games and the pennant.

Their bad luck continued through the next several decades. In 1960, Ted Williams hit his last home run in Fenway Park. A Red Sox pitcher has not thrown a no-hitter since Dave Morehead in 1965. In 1973, Tommy Harper stole 54 bases, but was the last player on the team to get as many as 30 in one season since that year.

However, in 1967, it seemed that their luck was beginning to change. Carl Yasztremski led them to the American League Championship and the World Series, but they lost the championship to the Cincinnati Reds.

Between 1972 and 1986, the Red Sox were in first place eight times after July 4, but won only one division championship during that period. In '72, they were in first place as late as September 26, but finished the season half a game behind Detroit. In '73, they were in first place on July 10 and wound up finishing the season eight games behind Baltimore. In '74, they led New York by seven games on August 23, but finished the season in third place, seven games behind the Orioles, who were in third place by eight games on August 29.

But in 1975, Yaz led the team to another American League championship, aided, in part, by two rookies, Carlton Fisk and Freddie Lynn. As I said, I moved to Boston that year with my family and got caught up in the World Series frenzy, although I was the only one in my family to do so. I took large amounts of teasing and abuse for my new loyalty.

The '75 Series was a classic by anybody's standards. The Sox came from behind to tie the Series up at three games each. I think everyone has seen the film clip of Fisk in Game 6, waving his arms at his fly ball, urging it away from the foul pole and into the bleachers for a tie-breaking, game-winning home run. But in keeping with Boston tradition, the Sox lost the seventh game and the championship, again to the Reds.

My family delighted in teasing me about he loss. "Wait till next year!," they taunted. However, instead of converting me to a Yankees fan like them, the teasing and humiliation only made my loyalty stronger. My logic was, if and when they do win it all, and if I were to have maintained my loyalty through all the intervening years, it would justify the teasing I endured in 1975 and the following years. A Red Sox championship would validate my support of the team through all those years of losses. Redemption would be found in continuing to support the team, through thick and thin, and the longer the quest for a championship, the sweeter, the more rewarding, that redemption would ultimately be.

In '76, the year after their World Series loss to the Reds, the Sox named Don Zimmer manager in mid-season and finished in third place, and rebounded a little the next year and finished the 1977 season at 97-64 and second place.

In 1978, the Red Sox led the Yankees by 14 games on July 19, by nine on August 9. I was a regular at Fenway that year, figuring that this would certainly be their year. Yaz was still playing well, Fisk and Lynn were in their prime, and another young player, Jim Rice, was leading the majors. The Sox fell 3 1/2 games behind the Yankees in September, again subjecting me to chants of "Wait 'till next year!," not only from my family, but also my college roommate, a native New Yorker. But Boston won their last eight straight games, finishing the season in a dead tie with New York and forcing a one-game playoff - surely this was the year of redemption.

I remember the game well. It was played in Fenway but tickets were virtually impossible to get. My roommate (the Yankees fan), my girlfriend (a Sox fan, of course), our buddy Greg (Yankees) and I all watched the game together on a small black-and-white t.v. I had bought a six-pack of beer and a bottle of Jack Daniels for the game: beer to celebrate Red Sox runs, and the whiskey for consolation if the Yankees scored.

The game was almost a metaphor for the entire season. The Red Sox started off strong in the early innings, and Yaz put Boston ahead with a home run in the second inning. However, in the middle innings, the Yankees came back, and in the seventh inning, the Yankee's Bucky Dent (who, I believe, will be forever known in New England as "Bucky Fucking Dent") hit a three-run homer off Mike Torrez. The hit was just a little blooper that might have been an easy pop out in most other ball parks, but due tot he unusual architecture of Fenway, it became a home run as it cleared the Green Monster. The Red Sox struggled to get back in the game and got close, but Yaz popped out in the bottom of the ninth, unable to score the tying run. The Red Sox lost the game, 5-4, and the division went to the Yankees, the eventual World Series champions.

The gloating and high-fiving on the part of Greg and my roommate was unbearable. My girlfriend and I wandered outside, buzzed on the consolation whiskey. The glaring sunshine of the afternoon hurt our eyes after a day spent indoors watching television, and the annoying blare of traffic got on our nerves. The headline on the mid-afternoon edition of the Boston Globe read "RED SOX AHEAD - Yaz Homers in the Second." I bought a copy of the paper thinking it may become a collectors item, a sort of "Dewey Beats Truman" of sports memorabilia. It didn't, but I kept the issue for years anyway, finally discarding it several years later after it was used as impromptu packing material during a move. But once again, the redemption had been denied, and each passing season made me cheer for them all the more strongly to validate my loyalty for the previous, losing years.

I could go on (but I won't) and recount similar stories of 1986 and Bill Buckner's missed ball against the Mets in Game 6 of the World Series, or of 2003 and Aaron Booone's home run winning the ALCS for the Yankees. I no longer need to open those old wounds, however. Once again, just like in 1978, the Boston Red Sox won their last eight straight games, but this time in the post-season, and last night, Boston beat St. Louis in Game 7 of the World Series. They've finally won. Redemption is mine, and it is sweet and it is rewarding. There is joy in Mudville. I've waited 'till next year, and this is it. 1918. 2004.

And finally I can say it, what I've wanted to say ever since I bought the Globe on a Boston street corner in 1978:

Hey, New York: Who's your daddy, now, bitch?