Red Sox Memories

Day Two in Ft. Myers so far seems a lot warmer than Day One. We spent last night trolling around Ft. Myers Beach, about a 10 mile drive from our hotel. Typical Florida beach town, not much terribly exciting. We did encounter a friendly cafe owner and her one-toothed patron/friend/local beach bum. Delightful. Afterwards, we headed to a bar closer to our hotel and watched the debacle that was the Florida-Tennessee basketball game.

Today is when the pre-camp festivities beging: registration, meet-and-greet cocktail hour, and a Super Bowl watching party. We're so ready to get this camp started. Anything somewhat officially Red Sox related is grounds for excitement and the fact that I'm participating is off the charts.

I'm often asked why I'm a Red Sox fan, since what most people know about me is that I grew up in Florida and live in New York, but my Red Sox roots grow deep. Yes, I was born in Malden, Mass., in the same hospital as my mother and grandmother, but that isn't what qualifies me to be a Red Sox fan. The credit for the shaping of my fandom has to go to my grandmother Ethel, who I called Nanny. She lived in the Boston area her entire life and ever since I can remember, whenever I would go to visit her during baseball season, she would be listening to Sox games on the radio. Or later on as technology caught up to her, she would watch the game on TV, shut it off in disgust, usually with the flourish of mispronouncing some player's name, and then promptly lie down on her bed to go to sleep. Invariably, five minutes later the radio could be heard from her bedroom, with the tragedy of the ballgame carrying out its final inevitable conclusion. These were the ingolorious days of the '80s and '90s, of course, where the Sox would flirt with ending the Curse, only to drive the stake deeper into our hearts. Nanny was only 4 years old the last time the Sox had won the Series, so she had a lot more water under the bridge than I had, for sure, and it ate at her just as deeply as it did me.

I have a couple of fun memories of going to ballgames at Fenway Park with Nanny and it always makes me smile when I think of them:

1) In the summer of 1995, I was a counselor at Camp Ramah in Palmer, Mass. and was able to take a weekend off to go visit Nanny in Boston, about an hour and a half away. She took me to a game against the Detroit Tigers. I remember sitting in the grandstands along the right field line, shaded by the deck above. All I remember about the game itself is that Mo Vaughn hit two home runs. The feeling of having the team's slugger come up to bat, with the entire stadium demanding him to hit a home run, and him delivering not once, but twice, was euphoric. As I look at the box score from that game, I see that the Sox went on to win 12-11 in the bottom of the ninth, but all I remember is the Mo Vaughn home run show.

2) In 2000, I moved to Boston after graduate school, in part to be closer to the city I always loved and in part to spend more time with Nanny. Soon after I moved there, we went to a game against Tampa Bay. It was an unseasonably cold August night and we were sitting in the bleachers. The ninth inning came around and the score was tied and I noticed that Nanny, though excited about the game, was starting to get tired. I wondered how much longer I could reasonably ask her to stand out in the cold of a game that could go on for a few more innings, at least. "Let's stay through the bottom of the ninth," I said, "and then we can listen to the rest in the car on the way home." After a scoreless top of the ninth, the Red Sox quickly got two outs with a man on base and it didn't look good for sticking around for the end of the game. Then, the Devil Rays intentionally walked two batters to load the bases so that they could face Rico Brogna, a veteran on the last legs of a modest career. With the crowd properly revved-up for a bases-loaded, two out, bottom of the ninth situation, Rico Brogna not only delivered the game winning hit, he sent it soaring over the right field fence for a walk-off grand slam. I just remember jumping up and down in the stands, and Nanny jumping up and down with me. It was the last game Nanny and I went to, just the two of us. She never did get to see the Sox win another World Series; she died in 2003. The first person I thought of when the Red Sox finally won it all the next year, as I gathered with a small group of friends in my Pittsburgh apartment, was Nanny. I know she kept her radio on for that one.