The Boston Red Sox… OK…

It’s hard to explain my ambivalence about this team, but I’ll give it a try. Over time, my feelings for and about the Sawx have evolved about as much they ever could. These days, I tend to cringe or roll my eyes when I encounter their supporters, especially if they’re under the age of 35. (Wanna know what Mets fans would act like if they ever had sustained success? Look north & there you have it – 20 ounces of frothy entitlement jammed into a Sam Adams bottle.)

But there was a time when I actually rooted for them a little bit. Why? Mainly because my mom was from Hartford, Conn., and that was her childhood team. The Hartford Chiefs were the Boston Braves’ minor-league club when she was growing up, but she told me that she didn’t know anyone in Hartford who really rooted for the Braves. Everyone was either a Sox or Yanks fan – Hartford was the imaginary dividing line.

She told me stories of her grad-school days at Simmons College in the late-’50s, going to see Ted Williams play. She lived in the Back Bay where Fenway Park was a 15-minute walk for her. She’d sit in the bleachers for a Sunday doubleheader on a New England summer day – in 1958, that ticket cost 75-cents. She told me how Teddy Ballgame would be in the outfield swinging an imaginary bat between pitches, prepping for his next AB, and how every AB was must-watch.

Although I was a Georgia-bred Braves fan and my “AL team” was the O’s – that’s quite another story – the BoSox were alright with me. I kept up with their players – Yaz, Bill Lee, Dwight Evans, Rico Petrocelli, the ultimately tragic Roger Moret, the regrettably named Dick Pole. I liked backup catcher Bob Montgomery because he didn’t wear a batting helmet (plus, his APBA card for the ’73 season was insane). The Sox had some personality, but when they added Jim Rice & Fred Lynn they got seriously good.

Cut to the night of Oct. 21, 1975. I was a 7th grader watching Game 6 of the very-famous Cincy/Boston World Series. My mom was out playing bridge & I didn’t think much about it, but as the game went along and got crazier and crazier… and crazier, I wondered if she was somehow watching all of this at her bridge club. Maybe she caught up with it somewhere else. Dunno…

As we do know, this game was just nuts, especially as it slid into the late innings… Carbo’s tying pinch-hit 3-run homer in the 8th, the Foster-to-Bench double-play in the 9th,  the Sawx snuffing out Reds rallies in extras, Evans’ miraculous catch/double-play in the 11th… I couldn’t imagine Mom not watching this one, of all games.

So, Fisk hits his winning homer off the Fenway foul pole and, even as a sleepy 12-year-old, I’m thinking, “OK, that definitely was the best game I’ve ever seen.” It was pretty late on a school night, Mom still wasn’t home & my younger sister was long snoozing, so I got ready for bed. But just as I began flicking off lights, I heard her Buick pull up in the driveway, and then the kitchen door flung open.

I came out to the living room just in time to see my mother dumping out scads of wrinkled-up American greenbacks from her purse onto the table… lotsa ones and fives, some tens and a few twenties. It was a scattered mound of money that she finally wrapped her arms around like Tony Montana.

In my pajamas, I looked at her with bug eyes, begging explanation… and she just said, “Carlton Fisk… I waited ’til the bottom of the 12th, threw in, and I won the whole pot.” Thanks, Pudge.

But those warm thoughts didn’t last into the 21st Century. I moved to NYC in 1990 and, since then, I’ve seen some incredible stunts of dumbassery that began to color my attitude about Sox fans (and, by extension, the Sox). 

It probably began during a game that Roger Clemens (then with Boston) pitched. I was in Yankee Stadium’s RF bleachers and these two all-done-up Sawx guys, taunting and cussing like they were on a schoolyard, almost got themselves killed in front of me. 

Back then in the old Yankee Stadium, the RF bleacher seats cost $4.50 and were general admission. However… neighborhood regulars had their own seats and you didn’t dare sit there. The section was full of all kinds of characters. There was a sweet lady always knitting, a teenage girl who loved Roberto Kelly, grizzled types enjoying a beer while debating the future of Kevin Maas or Sam Militello, some nice people…

But, you also saw some folks who looked like they just got off the bus from Rikers Island or maybe hopped the fence from the Bronx House of Detention, a couple blocks away. And, this being the bleachers… no security guards at all. 

I remember Grandmaster Melle Mel, a very muscular, somewhat intimidating rapper from Grandmaster Flash’s Furious 5 crew, was at every game. You were OK if his bunch thought they knew you, but you definitely didn’t cross them – and you definitely didn’t taunt them. These guys did and they were lucky that they only lost their Boston hats and #21 jerseys, which were quickly deposited into the crevasse between the bleachers and the reserved seats. Sorry to say, it didn’t break my heart that they left the bleachers shirtless, capless & deeply humbled.

There was a post-2004 period where the Sawx & the Yanks would play 19 regular-season games and, as a Yankee season-ticket holder (20-game plan), I’d usually catch about three of them. But the games became a bit of a sideshow due to the Red Sox Nation’s newfound success. In fact, it was more like something only Vince McMahon or Jerry Springer would dream up – fights in the stands, idiotic displays of allegiance, youthful stupidity on steroids. And this was a time when AL games took forever…

If I’m completely honest, by the time I witnessed Aaron Boone’s ALCS-winning HR in ’03 or the Sawx cap their historic ALCS comeback in ’04, I was over the Sawx. I’d had enough. The unending trolling became completely boring to me. After Game 7 in 2004, I even mailed the ticket to a friend of mine in Boston (a reasonable one) & told him to “frame it, worship it & pray to it every day because it ain’t happening again.” Little did I know… they’d snag three more titles, judiciously distributed through the years, just enough to keep these people yapping. (E.g. – Why would you wear a Sawx cap & jersey to a Mets/Yanks game, unless you either needed a preposterous amount of attention or had a particular death wish?)

So, here we are again, another 3-game series vs. our “natural rivals.” Both clubs are stumbling around at the moment, with some death-spiral murmurings heard on the periphery. (Atlanta’s 26-29, Boston 27-31.) For our Bravos, just after Spencer Strider and Ronald Acuna, Jr., returned from their 2024 injuries, AJ Smith-Shawver was put on the 60-day IL with an elbow injury he suffered in yesterday’s opener. As for the Sawx, the drama surrounding Rafael Devers’ position switches will probably end up as a 3-part Netflix documentary. 

With all that said, I’ll take a deep breath because I’m resigned to the fact that it’ll never end. Why? When the Sawx weren’t competitive, they were still the top story in their town. And now that their entire fanbase actually expects a title every couple years? Forget it. As was once said by a Red Sox PR director: “If nuclear war were to break out, it would only make Page 2 in Boston.”

Tonight: Lucas Giolito (1-1, 5.27 ERA) vs. Grant Holmes (3-3, 3.68). Go Braves.