Red Sox Win
It was a couple days after the Red Sox won the World Series when I reached my cousin Bobby, aged 80, who was back in his Sharon, Mass. kitchen, fresh from the morning's Tai Chi classes.
"Bobby - you heard?"
"Yeah, I heard. Red Sox won."
With my Grandfather dead, it was Bobby I first pictured after I'd made sure Keith Foulke's final throw to first hadn't found the stands. All those collapses, complexes and curses could be retired.
Bobby hadn't watched. He had turned the team off long before I was born.
He and my grandfather helped me learn the game -- old school stuff, like how to use two hands when catching the ball, how to think before each pitch 'what would I do if the ball came to me,' how to climb back into the batter's box after a knock-down pitch. My heroes were classic Boston goats: Dick Stuart, Yaz, and later, Billy Buckner.
Cousin Bobby never shared my belief that this was the year for the Sox, no matter what year, no matter how good they looked. He'd given them up. Too much heartache. It's not like he turned into a Yankee fan. He just became agnostic.
"When did you stop rooting for them?" I asked after their first world championship in 86 years.
"Forty-nine," he said. "Raschi and Reynolds." Vic Raschi and Allie Reynolds were the two Yankee pitchers responsible for the Olde Towne Team losing their one-game lead to their hated rivals, an unbearable fold. That year Bobby unplugged for good.
I told him how I admired his restraint for not telling his young cousin that a life spent rooting for the Sox might be bad for the heart.
I asked how he knew they'd finally won, since he doesn't get the paper, or watch much tv. He'd been watching the weather report the next day when they cut to footage of the clubhouse celebration. He felt happy for the team, the town, the region. The same way he does when the town firehouse bell sounds, and he knows the schoolchildren have a snow day.
"It's a good distraction from Iraq," said Bobby, always a realist.
Rooting for the home team isn't always the right thing to do, he reminded me. "Sometimes the home team is your country, and they are not always right," he said. "Sometimes they fight the wrong wars."
"Bobby - you heard?"
"Yeah, I heard. Red Sox won."
With my Grandfather dead, it was Bobby I first pictured after I'd made sure Keith Foulke's final throw to first hadn't found the stands. All those collapses, complexes and curses could be retired.
Bobby hadn't watched. He had turned the team off long before I was born.
He and my grandfather helped me learn the game -- old school stuff, like how to use two hands when catching the ball, how to think before each pitch 'what would I do if the ball came to me,' how to climb back into the batter's box after a knock-down pitch. My heroes were classic Boston goats: Dick Stuart, Yaz, and later, Billy Buckner.
Cousin Bobby never shared my belief that this was the year for the Sox, no matter what year, no matter how good they looked. He'd given them up. Too much heartache. It's not like he turned into a Yankee fan. He just became agnostic.
"When did you stop rooting for them?" I asked after their first world championship in 86 years.
"Forty-nine," he said. "Raschi and Reynolds." Vic Raschi and Allie Reynolds were the two Yankee pitchers responsible for the Olde Towne Team losing their one-game lead to their hated rivals, an unbearable fold. That year Bobby unplugged for good.
I told him how I admired his restraint for not telling his young cousin that a life spent rooting for the Sox might be bad for the heart.
I asked how he knew they'd finally won, since he doesn't get the paper, or watch much tv. He'd been watching the weather report the next day when they cut to footage of the clubhouse celebration. He felt happy for the team, the town, the region. The same way he does when the town firehouse bell sounds, and he knows the schoolchildren have a snow day.
"It's a good distraction from Iraq," said Bobby, always a realist.
Rooting for the home team isn't always the right thing to do, he reminded me. "Sometimes the home team is your country, and they are not always right," he said. "Sometimes they fight the wrong wars."
