Red Sox Rule

It was a brilliant summer day with puffy cumulus clouds drifting over the Back Bay. Only one image of the proceedings remains, Dave "Boo" Ferris hurtling his body and the baseball toward home plate. Each time I sit near the spot of the point of view of that picture in Fenway Park, the big right hander drives off the rubber once again.

The year was 1944, and my Uncle Henry was taking me to my first big league game. It began at Frye's Cigar Store on the corner of Main and School Streets in downtown Brockton, Massachusetts. Yes, they had tickets available and my lifelong passion for the Red Sox had been ignited.

With the return from the war of Ted Williams, Bobby Doerr, Johnny Pesky, Dom DiMaggio and the rest there could be no doubt that an era of Red Sox baseball dominance filled with World Series trophies was about to dawn. My grandfather's daily summer exercise of two hours of uninterrupted pressing of his deaf ear to the Philco to learn of the latest exploits of our returning heroes as they mowed down the hapless Yankees would pay great dividends for decades.

The images of 1946 are vivid, the picture perfect swing, the grace of nonpareil middle infield play, a ball struck hard into the triangle causing ten thousand hearts to stop only to have life restored by the Little Professor gliding under the harmless sphere. And there were mighty men on the mound for the locals. Tex Hughson and Joe Dobson would join Boo in bringing glory to the home team.

I adored Bobby Doerr and practiced all of his graceful moves in my backyard. My dream was to play second base for the Sox but, as I could not bear the thought of supplanting him, poor Pesky whom I liked only slightly less would have to give way at shortstop so that I could team up with my hero in the middle. There were minor impediments to the dream such as lack of speed, power and talent, but they would be overcome by time, nature and practice. Acknowledging at least the size deficiencies, I would bat leadoff, followed by Johnny - moved, sensitively, to third base, the mighty Splinter, "The Big Cat Rudy York at cleanup, Bobby fifth, and Dom would be moved to the eight hole, also with due regard for his feelings for having to step aside in favor of the new rising star from Brockton. With that lineup, we would dominate well into the sixties.

But the impossible happened, Country Slaughter with reckless disregard for sound baseball raced all the way home from first. Don't you believe for a moment that. "Pesky held the ball!" That simply did not happen. Slaughter just erred by running when he shouldn't have. Honestly, that's it; you could play it again a thousand times. He should not have run. Oh, from the vantage point of almost sixty years, I guess the Cardinals probably can claim they won and that I'll have to grant them at least a nod. But it was not fundamental baseball; it wasnt, really, honestly, I'm telling you, cross my heart and hope to die.

It was only after that debacle that through overly intense readings of tea leaves and careful explorations of the entrails of small animals that had been killed on roads all across New England that `it' was divined. There was no curse from 1918 until October of 1946. Only after Slaughter completely screwed up was the curse discovered.

New England remained a strange place in the middle of the last century. It was still under the influence of the descendants of those who'd spotted a witches brew in Salem and who were ever at the ready to see the hand of Satan working its evil. Predestination was the accepted orthodoxy of the controlling tribe, and they were ever capable of working backward to find a preordained reason for every sin. And why did Slaughter run? The devil made him do it. It mattered not that. "Pesky held the ball" which as I said he did not do; Johnny did nothing wrong. Satan made Enos commit the sin of bad baseball. The search for reasons was on.

What was in those dried entrails? Success in 1918 and failure in '46. Babe Ruth and Harry Frazee, even a dolt could connect those dots. The curse was born. And so it grew. How could Bucky "xxxxxxx" Dent have hit that ball over the Green Monster? Of course, the devil guided and speeded his swing. How could solid Bill Buckner have missed that grounder? I've watched that play a thousand times and swear that there was a bad bounce. Oh, they'll tell you otherwise, but it wasn't till well after the nine hundredth time that I saw that Satan's handiwork was evident. Look for yourself; you'll see it if you look carefully enough even if it takes you all winter, it'll be worth the effort.

How could heroes like Yaz, Dewey, and the ever calm and resolute Spaceman not prevail? The clear sighted Radatz, the finesse around the bag by Dr. Strangeglove, the ever calming Jimmy Piersall, and the smoking bats of Rice and Lynn, the power of the Golden Boy and Junior, and the wondrous left arm of Mel Parnell and so many other stars too numerous to be named that what all New Englanders knew - it could only have been a curse. They knew and, with the full complicity of the Evil Empire, convinced the inhabitants of every Middlsex village and town, as well as those in hamlets from Portland to New London and beyond that we were forever doomed.

My sainted mother watched a thousand games in both black and white and color. She knew the names of the wives and children of all of our worthies. She never believed for a minute - nor did I - the stories of their excesses while on the road - clearly, the knights of the keyboard were at their vituperative worst.

I remember well when television replay first came into use and visiting with her during an important game - they all were - when our center fielder made a spectacular catch to Ma's cheer of approval. Unbelievably, we watched the screen and she screamed, "My God, he did it again." There was nothing that those good boys could do wrong as far as she was concerned.
There was always a hint of respect when "The Baltimores" and "The New Yorks" were in town. Yogi and Whitey while surely nice lads from good homes drew her full measure of scorn and distaste, and that nasty Earl with his Raleighs in the dugout and his too smart tongue with all those swears - ah, you know what I mean...

After all the disapointments, I decided to make the far more exciting world of government manual and memorandum writing my career. It was selfish decision but the call from the glamour world of bureaucracy was simply too strong to resist.

In turn, my own sons, all the way from far off Virginia, absorbed the ambiance of the old park. The flashing Citgo sign, the rush from Kenmore Square, the brick façade of Yawkey Way, "Scoah cahd! Get yoah scoah cahd!", the smell of Fenway Franks and all the rest.

But a new day has dawned in New England; the Puritans no longer reign. A team resides in the Back Bay. No longer do twenty-five taxis deposit twenty-five individuals in the Bronx to face down what used to be their `betters'. Never again will "Who's your daddy?" and "1918!" rain down from beer blushed bullies. Now the stands will be silent as the patrons chew their nails. From now on they'll worry that Ortiz, Manny or Trot will smash the babe's bulbous bronze nose with a heroic swat. Now they must fear that their paper warriors will be hitting nothing but air as Pedro pulls the string on his changeup or that a weak grounder to Bellhorn from a Lowe offering will squelch yet another aborted rally.

There never was a curse, just the lunatic ravings of those who believed in Halloween. The scruffy boys from the Back Bay have exposed the empire and its curse for what it is, merely a tiny man with a too heavy check book and an overworked right arm howling at the moon from behind a pin striped screen.

RED SOX REIGN! RED SOX RULE!