MEMORIES PT13

It was while living on Capen St that I became infected with the disease that
strikes many New Englanders:I became a Red Sox fan. Now, it's true there are
some folks who by some strange quirk of human nature are fans of the New
York Yankees but these are mainly poor benighted souls who fall into two
categories: people who live in Connecticut or Western Massachusetts, or
college students from New York who come to Boston for the superior
colleges and who are beyond being helped to see the error of their ways.

In my case I had already known about Ted Williams before we moved to
Boston. Who didn’t know about the greatest hitter in baseball? I was
lucky enough to see him play in person at Fenway Park when Dad took me
and two of my friends to a game as my birthday present. We sat in the center
field bleachers close to the left field end and it was close enough to see his face
as he joked with someone in the bullpen between innings. I even drank Ted’s Root
Beer that was put out by the same folks who made Moxie!

After Ted retired Carl Yastrzemski took over in left field and Dick Stuart came along
to play first base. In those days there were games that didn’t sell out and Sox fans
who remained loyal suffered through some interesting and sometimes bizarre
seasons. I remember watching them on the old WHDH (which was Channel 5
back then) or listening to them on WHDH radio. Curt Gowdy was the Voice of the 
Red Sox, and Narragansett Beer was the main sponsor. (“Hi Neighbor! Have A
`Gansett!”)

Eventually the team’s fortune improved but by the 1967 Impossible Dream year we
had moved out of Boston to the southern suburb of Abington. By then it was too late;
I was a full fledged member of Red Sox Nation and remain so to this day.

In fact, the first sign of Spring for me is not a robin but the news that the equipment
van is on it’s way to the Sox Spring training camp in Florida!

((362 Words))


Written for the Family History Writing Challenge