This year, the Red Sox are certainly not on that short list.
Last Friday night, my friend and I went to Fenway Park to catch the first night of the last series of baseball this year for both the Red Sox and the Yankees. In years past, an end of September ticket to a Sox game (versus the Yankees no less!) was an item to be treasured, revered. Fall baseball! This year, the biggest motivation my friend and I had for attending this game was that it would be one of Derek Jeter's last; that we might have the opportunity to watch him play once more before his retirement became official. (You know it's bad when a Sox fan is looking forward to seeing a Yankee on the field more than almost anything else at a home Sox game...)
It didn't much matter who won the game on Friday night as neither team was headed to the playoffs and truthfully neither team even played any of their all-star heavy hitters, because why risk the injury? As the game wore on, it became more and more apparent that even Jeter himself would not be making an appearance that night. Still, as I sat in the bleachers with my friend, watching the fans sitting all around me as well as those in other parts of the ball park that were flashed on the big screen in between innings, I couldn't help but smile. Everyone knew the outcome of this game didn't matter. Yankee's fans had come donning Jeter shirts, intent on seeing one of their beloveds one last time. Us Sox fans...well, I like to think most of us simply came for the love of the game, the ball park, the team, this town.
******
When my friend Hannah and I went to Old Faithful in Yellowstone earlier this month, we arrived just as the most recent eruption was ending. By the time we parked our car and got up to the geyser nature's show was over - for the next ninety minutes or so. She and I wandered around the park ranger station and the gift shop killing time. Eventually all we had left to do was make our way over to the benches surrounding Old Faithful and wait. As the next projected eruption grew closer, more and more people joined us on the benches. We overheard various bits of conversation, people watched until our hearts content. And then, right within the ten minute window, as promised, Old Faithful began her performance. The crowd oohed and aahed, cameras clicked, people clapped. And I felt tears spring to my eyes.
To me there has always been something uniquely special about those sort of communal moments; perhaps that is one of the reasons I have always enjoyed the 4th of July and fireworks as much as I do. I just find it so innocently charming and endearing that a mass of strangers, from all walks of life, can gather together and await something as breathtaking and perfect as a geyser exploding into the sky or fireworks bursting into the air with colors and noise, In days where people can be far too busy looking down at their cell phones or wondering what event will happen next...always next, I find it perfectly wonderful that we can still share communal moments now and again, no matter how grand...or how small.
The same goes for those dear old baseball games of mine.
In my office at work, I have several pieces of Red Sox regalia. One afternoon this summer, one of my co-workers poked his head in the doorway. "Kelli. I've been meaning to ask you for ages. What is the secret? What did your Dad do to create such a Red Sox fan? I've got three little girls at home and I'm desperate to have at least one of them love the game as much as I do."
I laughed and explained that in truth, my father had nothing to do with my Red Sox adoration. It's a matter of living here in Boston, first of all, as I genuinely believe there is something in the water. I told him about an old ex-boyfriend of mine, who was the biggest Red Sox fan I knew when we started dating. "The games were always on," I explained. "I didn't really have much of a choice but to learn and fall in love the team too." I elaborated further, telling my co-worker that even though the boyfriend had long since vanished, the baseball had stuck. He and I both agreed that there's something magical and uniquely wonderful about a summertime ball game. Yes, we all want our teams to win, sure the World Series titles are great. But to me, there's something perfectly wonderful about hearing a ball game on in the background while you garden outside. Or passing two old men sitting in lawn chairs who are listening to the game themselves. It's the lemonade and the hot dogs and the cold beers on a summer night, the kids who idolize their favorite players, the neighborhood gang of children gathering together to play their own ball game in front yards all across this country.
Perhaps that all sounds too much like a Norman Rockwell painting, but so be it. Baseball is one of the few things that spans generations. It is timeless. A classic.
When my friend and I walked down the stairs and into the belly of the ballpark at the end of the night on Friday, we both paused for one quick moment, staring out at the stadium light field, taking a breath. Goodnight Fenway. Goodnight Red Sox.
Until next year! she and I agreed, as we parted ways on Lansdowne Street. I walked home, pulling my Red Sox hoodie a little closer around my neck, aware that cooler air was moving in, coming our way, that the seasons are changing.
******
Every year, at the end of the final Red Sox game of the season, the radio announcers read a quote from former Commissioner Bart Giamatti. It is how they end their broadcast and I have always loved it. What I love just as much though is the familiar comfort in knowing that it will all come around again and again, each and every year.
190 days until Opening Day.
2 comments:
I'll see your Bart Giamatti, and raise you a Roger Angell.
"Within the ballpark, times moves differently, marked by no clock except the events of the game. This is the unique, unchangeable feature of baseball, and perhaps explains why this sport, for all the enormous changes it has undergone in the past decade or two, remains somehow rustic, unviolent, and introspective. Baseball's time is seamless and invisible, a bubble within which players move at exactly the same pace and rhythms as all their predecessors. This is the way the game was played in our youth and in our fathers' youth, and even back then--back in the country days--there must have been the same feeling that time could be stopped. Since baseball time is measured only in outs, all you have to do is succeed utterly; keep hitting, keep the rally alive, and you have defeated time. You remain forever young. Sitting in the stands, we sense this, if only dimly. The players below us--Mays, DiMaggio, Ruth, Snodgrass--swim and blur in memory, the ball floats over to Terry Turner, and the end of this game may never come."
I had a similar, visceral reaction to seeing Old Faithful. I even wrote a story about it--maybe I'll share with the writing group sometime, even though it's been through multiple drafts at this point.
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