The Sox

I was born in Leominster and raised in Fitchburg, Mass. The year of my birth was 1951. At that time, the Boston Red Sox hadn't won a world series in 33 years.

My father, who had a lifetime passing interest in the Red Sox due to his fascination with Ted Williams, was born in 1927 and died suddenly in 1967. He never lived to see the Red Sox win the series. Think about that for a second.

My maternal grandfather, a gruff Irish police detective with a permanent cigar in his mouth, was 10 years old in 1918 when the Sox won their last series. It was he who brought me to Fenway for my first exposure to the sacred grounds of the Bosox's many triumphs and disasters. He sat me down and told me not to squirm, to act like it was church. I was six. We kept coming back to Fenway every summer until we moved to California, flying across the country the night that Mazz hit the homer that won it for the Pirates in 1960. I saw Williams in the twilight of his career and remember the summer night when my grandfather came by and told my dad that Williams had had his last at-bat in the majors and punched it out of the park. I remember my dad's smiling response: "Figures."

In 1918 my paternal grandfather was off to war with the American Expeditionary Forces. He was a doughboy, a grunt, a private. He brought his violin to the trenches and played it to the amusement of French and German alike. I imagine that he had climbed aboard the troop transport that fall with the confident swagger of a young man whose team had just won the world series, confident in an allied victory, confident in so many world series to come.

How would either of my grandfathers know about the Curse of the Bambino? Neither would live to see their beloved Sox win another world series. Hubert, my father's father, lived into his late sixties. The last ten years of his life were spent trapped by a stroke which left him helplessly dependent on such saints as my Aunt Maureen and Uncle Dick. But still I remember visiting him in the early seventies, when I hitchhiked across the country, He was in front of a radio listening to Curt Gowdy broadcasting the Sox.

Laurance, my mom's dad, lived into his nineties. He earned his pilot's license when he was in his eighties. He had everything he wanted out of life, except for one thing: the Red Sox rose to the occasion ever decade and a half or so to win the AL pennant, but never the Series.

This morning I saw a picture of Johnny Pesky (some people have names that draw them naturally to baseball) embracing Curt Schilling after the win. Pesky, who ended up managing the Bosox in the sixties, held the ball on a relay, enabling Enos Slaughter of the 1946 Cardinals team to score, sealing the fate of the Red Sox. I thank the ruler of the universe that Pesky lived to see this again, that he is in command of his faculties and a sufficient sense of humor to bask in the moment.

Maybe Hubert listened to that 1946 Series on the radio in the offices of the Fitchburg Sentinel, where I believe he was working at the time. Laurance would in my fantasy be listening in his police Cruiser. He was still in uniform back then. My dad was nineteen, doing what nineteen-year-olds do I suppose, but listening. Could they have closed the circuit with Johnny Pesky that day in 1946?

Twice in my life as a father I brought my son and daughter to Fenway. I feel ghosts there, ghosts who live between the squeaky green seats made for thinner rumps and made thinner by yearly coats of paint. I imagine these ghosts are now at peace. Hubert, Laurence and Dick. Rest in peace.

I will sit there again in Fenway. And I promise not to squirm.