There is nothing quite like hearing your first Red Sox spring training baseball game of the year from Florida. It is sort of a continuation of life thing and it means that winter is running out of power. Sure there will be a blizzard around St. Patrick’s Day. That seems to be a law of nature. But spring is coming.
On Saturday, I was making the traditional dump run with a side trip to the post office to pick up an Irish bread from South Carolina. Don’t ask. When I started the car, the radio came on with the familiar sounds of Joe Castiglione broadcasting a baseball game, the first one I’ve heard all year. I cannot explain it, but it made me feel good. Real good.
I never had a chance. I was born in Kenmore Square, a long fly ball from Fenway Park. My father took me to Fenway when I was 8 years old. I was a goner. I made a scrapbook from the Boston Globe sports pages, specializing in Clyde Vollmer. He was a sensation in the 1950s, winning a bunch of Sox games with late-inning home runs. “Clyde Vollmer likes westerns” was one of my clippings, I remember. I don’t know where my car keys (or my car) are located, but I remember that. They called him “Dutch, the Clutch.” You can look it up.
Everyone loved Ted Williams, the greatest hitter who ever lived. He was a god. But my favorite player was center fielder Jimmy Piersall. Piersall was a flake and his mental health problems were the basis for a terrible movie “ Fear Strikes Out,’’ starring a geeky Anthony Perkins as Piersall. No one believes it now, but the Fenway bleachers used to cost 50 cents. Yes, 50 cents. I was there one afternoon when Piersall had enough of that ballgame and sat behind the flag post. I was not there when he hit a home run and ran the bases backwards, prompting a rule change. But, I was there one summer night when he had a throwing contest with Willie Mays. Piersall could throw.
Those were the days when ballplayers made a little more than your father did, and they had to work in the off season to pay those heating bills. I was a stock boy at the First National Store in Dedham, Massachusetts. When I walked out of the back room, there was Piersall selling Cain’s Potato Chips. Honest to God. I made 35 trips to the back room in the next hour just to see him and say “Hello.” Today, he would call security.
Sure, the Sox were World Series champs in 2004, 2007 and 2013. But young people today have no idea how bad the Sox used to be. They always lost to the Yankees. Before the three wins, they had not won since 1918, when they sold Babe Ruth to the (ptui!) Yankees. But we went to Fenway anyway. And read about every game. They could hit with the best of them. But they never had any pitching.
Apparently they still don’t. While I listened to the car radio on the way to the dump, young pitcher Henry Owens was on the mound against the Miami Marlins. They expect a lot from Owens. That could be a bad idea. By the time I turned the game on, he had already issued four walks in the third inning, along with a few infield outs. The bases were loaded. This could not end well. Derek Dietrich (never heard of him) hit a two-run double for the Marlins. The Sox were down 2-0. The very next batter, Xavier Scruggs (nope, never heard of him, either) hit a three-run homer and the Sox were down 5-0.
I hadn’t even made it to the post office, let alone the dump.
I turned the radio off and listened to a James Taylor tape. Eventually, they lost, 11-8.
Damned Red Sox.
Emmet Meara lives in Camden in blissful retirement after working as a reporter for the Bangor Daily News in Rockland for 30 years.