My Life as a Red Sox Fan - Part I

I grew up in a town in central Connecticut, about half-way between New York and Boston. This was the fifties and sixties. The New York Yankees had Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris in the outfield, with Whitey Ford on the mound and Yogi Berra catching.

Do you detect a mismatch? The Boston Red Sox had players like Frank Malzone and Jacky Jensen. Ever heard of them? Didn't think so. Oh yeh, they had Ted Williams, but Red Sox management made up for that by signing pitchers unfamiliar with the concept of throwing a small hard spherical object along a credible trajectory.

My father grew up in Massachusetts. Oh-oh.

"Anyone can be a Yankees fan," he sagely advised me, sounding like Kane's mentor in Kung-Fu. "They win all the time."

Yes, of course, I would be a Red Sox fan because they always lost. Perfectly logical.

Back in 1958, when I was in the third grade, when families could afford to go to major league games, my father took us out of school to attend the opening game of the season at Fenway Park. My mother wrote to the box office requesting tickets, "good seats right behind second base."

Fenway Park back then did not have the mystical allure it has now. It was simply just another ball park that dated from around the turn of the last century. Little did we know that Fenway Park and Yankee Stadium would be the only ball parks we grew up with to survive the wrecker's ball.

The streets were packed. Vendors hawked their wares outside. Something clearly exciting was going on behind that faded red brick edifice looming just ahead. We passed through the turnstile to a frenzy of sounds and sights and smells. Animated voices richocheted off ancient brick and concrete. The aroma of Fenway franks and roasting peanuts competed with disinfectant from the public restrooms. Giant black-and-white images of past Red Sox greats (admittedly not too many) reminded us that we were entering a shrine, almost a place of worship, the sum total of something far greater than ourselves.

My father handed me a scorecard and together our entire family - mom, dad, me, younger brother, older sister - joined the mobs surging into a concrete tunnel.

We came out into the open to the sight of a splendid emerald meadow. There, for the first time, I beheld the legendary Green Monster, that huge expanse of wall that bounded left field. You could practically detect the curvature of the earth siting the foul line from home plate to the left field foul pole.

The layout of Fenway resembled the school assignments I handed in. No clean flowing lines. No symmetry. No order. Not Neat! Jagged sections of stands protruded into the playing field every which way. Upper sections containing the press box and VIP seats seemed to have been randomly dropped from the sky. And of course that inexplicable slash they called the Green Monster.

What, were they too cheap to put bleachers there? Too lazy? Is this how they solved building problems in Boston? You just filled in the left-over spaces with a wall. It was all so crazy, chaotic.