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Another trip down memory lane
May 1, 2008
I’m not sure how it happened.
My father was not a Red Sox fan. My mother didn’t like baseball at all. My grandfather did not follow the Red Sox. And besides, he died in October 1956, after the first year I remember rooting for the Red Sox.
I don’t know if it was in grammar school, where I heard the boys talking about baseball and the Red Sox, or if it was listening to the play-by-play announcers on the radio on a station I stumbled on while looking for music.
All I do know is that I have been a Red Sox fan since I was almost eight years old, and, despite the fact that I have grown older, wiser, grayer, it is the one thing that has not changed about me. I have followed them through thick and thin, through good seasons, awful seasons, heartbreak seasons, and in the recent years when they have won the World Series. As the t-shirt says, now I can die in peace.
I think I was 13 when I went to my first Red Sox game, in 1962. (I would turn 14 in November.) Until then, I had watched the game on tv a little bit, but mostly had listened to the play-by-play on the radio. In order to get to Fenway from my hometown of Weymouth, my friend Elaine and I had to take the bus to Quincy Square, another bus to Fields Corner, and then the train to Park Street. At Park Street, we transferred to a trolley to Kenmore. The entire process took nearly two hours. The buses and trolleys did not run as frequently then as they do now, so it was truly a long, arduous task to get to the ballpark.
Many of the games back then were during the day. In fact, the night games, if I recall correctly, were mostly on Friday nights. There were lots of doubleheaders on the weekends, mainly to make up for rained-out games. (Mel Parnell once said to Ken Coleman on the radio, "Yes, Ken, this is the first game of a doubleheader, and as you know, the second game will follow the first." Maybe he had a little Yogi Berra in him!)
Often Fenway Park was virtually empty when we went to day games. The Red Sox were lucky to attract 3,000 people to a game back then. Right-field grandstand seats were seventy-five cents for those under 18, and bleacher seats, which were not assigned, were $1. There were a number of “regulars,” the kids who got to the park as soon as the gates opened so that we could see batting practice and talk to the players. The ushers seemed to know us all. Despite the fact that they had the outward appearance of being strict and what we often called “crusty,” they were all really quite nice. At the beginning of the seventh inning, they would often open the gates that separated the right-field grandstand seats from the box-seat area and let us sit in the boxes for the last couple of innings.
We soaked up the baseball as much as we soaked up the sun. We watched the players during batting practice, we called them over to the side of the stands and talked to them, we waited for them after the games and asked for autographs. In those days, the players were much more accessible than they are today, mainly, I think, because they didn’t have to deal with a frenzy of paparazzi and autograph-crazed people. They were polite and, in the case of the non-winning Red Sox, flattered to be asked for an autograph.
We always got to the games in time for batting practice, watching both teams warm up, hit fungoes, do their drills and get ready for the games. One day I caught a ball during batting practice. California Angel player Albie Pearson, the shortest guy in Major League Baseball at the time, hit it foul to the left field grandstand, and I only got it because it bounced off the empty stands in front of me three or four times before flying in front of my face, when I snagged it. What a treasure! I never caught another ball at Fenway, although I did catch another one at a minor league park about 40 years later.
One day, long before game time, I had my scorecard in my hand. I always kept a scorecard for every game, mostly because my mother always needed proof that we actually went to Fenway for the afternoon (that’s where I had permission to go—nowhere else—so sometimes she’d ask how many runs were scored, and she’d compare it to what was in the newspaper the next day). I was filling in the lineups that day when a guy in a suit walked by. He asked me if I knew how to keep score. “Sure,” I replied.
“Show me how you keep score,” he said.
I opened the scorecard and demonstrated that when a player hit a single, I would write “sing” in the box, “so” for strikeout, etc.
“No, no, no! You have it all wrong!” he said. “Let me show you how to do this.” He explained the numbers for each player—1 for the pitcher, 2 for the catcher, 3 for first base, etc. “Now, when a player grounds out to the shortstop, that’s 6-3,” he said. “A swinging strikeout is a K, when someone strikes out looking, you write the K backwards.” Then he proceeded to teach me some of the other nuances of scoring. “That’s how we do it in the booth,” he said.
Turns out the guy in the suit was Curt Gowdy. He sometimes came back through the stands to check on me and see if I remembered what he had taught me. “Yes, sir, Mr. Gowdy, I’ve got it,” I’d tell him. I still score every game I attend, whether it’s a major or a minor league game, and I use the “Gowdy method.” Someone once asked me where I learned to keep score, and I owe it all to Curt.
Just as we arrived at the games before anyone else, we always left well after everyone else did. The souvenir shops that now exist on Yawkey Way weren’t there back then, so we just wasted time, dawdling, on the off chance that we might see a “stray” ballplayer.”
Sometimes, when we were walking from Fenway Park to the Kenmore train station, we would run into someone who looked vaguely familiar. It would sometimes be a player from the visiting team, making his way to what was then the Kenmore Hotel, where the visiting players stayed. Once, we began walking, and a guy stopped us and asked, “Do you girls know how I can get to Filene’s Basement? Which train do I take?” We explained he needed to go to Kenmore, about a block away from where he was, and that he needed to make sure to take an inbound trolley to Park Street, then either walk to Washington Street or take the train one stop to Washington Street station.
“That’s great, girls, thanks,” he said, and then he let this slip: “I have to go buy myself a new suit before I get home from this road trip or my wife will kill me.”
“Wait a minute,” I recall saying, “Do you play for the Washington Senators?”
“Yes, I’m a relief pitcher—Buster Narum,” he replied.
“Well, we’re heading that way and we have to pass by where you’re going, so we’ll show you,” I said. (Now, my mother always told me not to talk to strangers, but this was a PROFESSIONAL BASEBALL PLAYER, and I actually had his baseball card!)
We waited for the trolley with him and he told us about his last road trip. Remember, in those days, baseball players didn’t make huge amounts of money. We talked a little more about baseball with him, showed him where Filene’s Basement was, and he asked if he could buy us a soda or something.
“No, thanks, we have to get home,” we said. “We’ll be back at the ballpark tomorrow, though.”
When we got on our train to go home, we were so excited that we couldn’t even speak. We were bouncing around on the train while many people stared at us and wanted to know why the two 16-year-old girls were so excited and talking about baseball.
On another similar encounter, I was walking by myself. Somehow my friends were otherwise occupied with something, and, frankly, I can’t remember what it was. I had my completed scorecard from the day’s game in my hand. I saw someone come out of one of the side entrances to Fenway. He said hello to me, and I recognized him immediately. It was Rick Reichardt of the team then known as the California Angels. He was either a rookie or a second-year player. I started talking to him, even though I was pretty shy at the time (not anymore!). He was headed for the Kenmore Hotel, and I told him that my career plan was to go to journalism school and become a sportswriter.
In the early 1960s, women simply did not pursue sportswriting as a career. Rick told me that if I really wanted to do that, I should be prepared to withstand a lot of harassment from many different camps—players, owners, fellow sports reporters, players’ wives—and that I should think about this for a long time before I made that kind of career choice. He pulled a scrap of paper out of his pocket and gave me his address and said, “If I can help you out when you’re at the point of making this choice, let me know.”
A few days later, I wrote him a letter, thanking him for his advice, telling him that I really appreciated the time he took speaking with me. He responded with a handwritten note that said, “You’re a nice girl, and you don’t want to put yourself through what you’d have to do to become a sportswriter. I know you know your baseball and love it, but try another aspect of journalism first and then see what happens.” I still have that letter.
There are so many more memories of those early days, and I am collecting mine and those of others. Even though it was more than four decades ago that these things happened, and the Red Sox have come from the depths of the standings to the pinnacles of being World Series winners twice, I have always been there for them, hanging on every pitch, every crack of the bat, every speck of dirt that flies in the air on a stolen base attempt.
I may live in New York now, but my heart and soul remain somewhere between Landsdowne Street and Yawkey Way, somewhere between the bleachers and the press box, somewhere between Kenmore Square and the first scent of a Fenway frank.
Indeed, Boston, you’re my home.
-ImpossDream67 ~RSM
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