My First Game…
Neither of my parents took me to my first major league baseball game. That’s probably a bit rare, but it’s true.
It’s certainly nothing I hold against them. It’s because of my parents that I love baseball, and it’s because of baseball that I even exist. I’ll let you do the math, but the normal human gestational period is 40 weeks, and my birthday is 40 weeks to the day after the Red Sox clinched the 1967 pennant. Let’s just say my parents were very happy Red Sox fans.
I fell in love with baseball during the 1975 World Series, and I have my parents to thank for that. We all watched those games as a family, on a tiny 19-inch black and white TV that had horrible reception. My dad seemed to live and die with each pitch, and the abject joy he displayed when Carlton Fisk homered to win Game 6, well past our normal bedtimes, sticks with me to this day.
It stuck enough that the next year, I decided I wanted to go to a Red Sox game for the first time. They were playing on my birthday, in the middle of summer when there was no conflict with school, so it seemed like the perfect time to go. My parents agreed, but there was one problem…neither of them could take me.
My birthday fell on a Wednesday, and it was a day game, which ruled out my dad being available because he had to work. As for my mom, she was very, very pregnant with my younger brother, Rich, and it wasn’t an easy pregnancy. She’d been told to stay off her feet as much as possible, so sitting in Fenway’s center field bleachers - which didn’t even have seat backs at the time - wasn’t a great idea for her.
Enter my Aunt Mary.
At the time , I barely knew her. She was my mom’s older sister, and she, her husband Peter, and their four sons, had lived in England for most of my life. Uncle Peter worked for a hotel chain, and his job had forced them to move away sometime before my earliest memory. They’d only moved back to the Boston area the year before, and I was still getting used to these people with the funny accents.
What I knew even then, though, was that Mary was a happy soul. She was always talking, or laughing, or eating. She talked a million miles an hour, in sort of an indecipherably garbled Boston-London accent mashup, but she brought fun to every occasion, and stepped up to take me, my brother, and her boys to my very first Sox game when my parents couldn’t.
I had the time of my life. We sat in dead center field, far above and away from the action, munching on popcorn and Fenway Franks, laughing at the ridiculous White Sox uniforms they wore that season, and being awed by the fact that the guys we’d only seen on television were now right in front of us.
There was Fred Lynn, reigning MVP of the league, standing with his back to us in the bleachers. To his left was Dewey Evans, and to his right, the great Carl Yastrzemski, Yaz. Rooster Burleson was at shortstop, Jim Ed Rice was the designated hitter, and Pudge Fisk eventually came in to play catcher. It was glorious.
And it was a fun game to watch. I’ll spare you the play-by-play, but you’re welcome to read that in the game story I wrote for SABR’s Games Project. It came complete with four lead changes, three ties, a brief rain delay, and even an inning of free baseball when they couldn’t settle it after just nine. I wish I could say the good Sox won, but it wasn’t meant to be.
What was meant to be was me getting to attend my first big league game on my birthday, and I have my fun Aunt Mary to thank for that.
About three weeks ago, at the age of 83, Mary passed away. She’d been widowed almost thirteen years earlier, and it was simply time for her to go hold Uncle Pete’s hand again. I will miss her terribly, and already do.
But I’ll always have that memory of her, generously riding herd by herself over six little boys so I could have the birthday present I wanted. And the next time I get to Fenway, I’m going to sit in dead center field, hopefully for a day game, and have some popcorn and a Fenway Frank. And I’ll look up, and smile, and whisper my thanks for a gift I can never repay.