My First Time

On a lark, I decided to look back and figure out exactly when I first saw baseball played in Fenway Park. Here’s what I remembered: I had showed up in Boston for my freshman year at college. And back then, before freshman orientation, before registering for classes, before anything else for that matter, the MIT freshmen were treated to five days of partying, known as rush week. You see, they did not have enough dormitory housing for all the freshmen; and at least one-third of the class had to find fraternities in which to reside. (Hard to imagine such a half-assed system at so sophisticated a school, but in truth, it was a good thing for me, because I never would have stuck it out for a full year in any of the dorms.) So after arriving on a morning flight, and killing the day wandering around Cambridge and Harvard Square, I attended some brief assembly in Kresge Hall (where a couple years later we saw Richie Havens play). The next thing I knew, I was in a car with a bunch of Sammies, riding over to their house on the Fenway, and not long thereafter was sitting in the bleachers at Fenway, which was only a short walk from the Sammy house. But this isn’t really a posting about college, or fraternity life, but rather a reminiscence about baseball.

I recalled a few details from that night in early September 1967, the year of the Impossible Dream: the Sox beat the Yankees; Yaz homered; Mickey Mantle got a base hit; and Sparky Lyle pitched in relief for the Sox. So using those few facts, with the help of baseball-reference.com (which apparently has every single baseball fact from the time of the Mayflower until today) I quickly figured out the following. It was a Saturday night, September 9, 1967. In only a few months that will be forty-four years in the past. The final score was 7-1 Boston. Dave Morehead started for the Sox and got the win. (Truthfully, I have no recollection of Morehead.) Lyle tossed two innings of shutout ball. (Today, there is no way Tito would pitch a star reliever in a six run game, let alone for two innings.) Both Yaz and Rico Petrocelli homered. Over 32,000 were in attendance that night. The game took only two and a half hours.

It was love at first sight. I had been a Giants fan, really a Willie Mays fan, but how hard was it to stay in touch with the Giants in those days, when only one game was broadcast each week? So walking into Fenway that night, with the Sox in the middle of a pennant race, with Yaz on the way to winning the triple crown, and with all my enthusiasm for life in Boston, I was ready for someone new. Plus, how cool was this park, where even out in the right field bleachers (we were only a few rows up from the bullpen, very close to where John sat in July 2004 when the Sox walked off, with Mueller homering off Rivera) it felt like you right in the middle of the action? Later on, on warm spring nights, we’d head to the park, where admission was only a dollar, and where Schaeffer beer was fifty cents, often for no reason other than to drink a few.

Three weeks later, on the last day of the season, the Sox won the American League pennant for the first time since 1946. That night Back Bay was a sea of humanity, with apparently all of Boston out in the streets celebrating. It wasn’t that way ten days later, when the Sox lost Game Seven to Gibson and the Cardinals. But forget about it, by then I was a die-hard RedSox fan, and although I might not have known it at the time, this was an allegiance that would last a lifetime. Not only that, but one I would pass down to the next generation, who also had the good fortune to spend their college years in Beantown. You’d think I’d have the ticket stub, or maybe a program, but no, all I have are some memories made all the foggier by the week that followed. Still, that’s enough for me.