Opening Day

Ten days until opening day for the Red Sox and I thought I’d confess my return to the Sox after regaining the zeal like a classic rainy day fan in 2004 when they broke the curse.

I was an old school Sox freak, back in the mid-60s, when the 1967 Sox lost the World Series to St. Louis and started a forty year tradition of disappointing me and a few million other people each and every fall.

The final straw was 1986, when that retard John McNamara left Bill Buckner in the sixth game against the Mets so Bill could be on the field to celebrate when the Sox won the series.

Hah.

For the next 18 years I literally would avert my eyes, change the channel, turn the page, or excuse myself if the words “Red Sox” came anywhere in my vicinity. I gave up. The rage attack I displayed when Buckner dropped the ball was so profoundly primal that I had to stop watching for my own health.

It took a freak-a-zoid son who is an ultra fan to drag me back into the game,
So, with ten days to go, and on the eve of that other classic Massachusetts Milestone — Evacuation Day (the Suffolk County holiday commemorating the day the British abandoned Boston under the threat of George Washington’s guns on Dorchester Heights, and which coincidently falls on St. Patrick’s Day, a nice benefit for all those city woikers who need their green beer) I present to you three good Sox Blogs:

1.  Wicked Clevah: From Stephen O’Grady at Redmonk, is this side-blog with a high obsessive compulsive humor factor.

2. Joy of Sox: very, very funny.  The Nickname Guide is essential reading.

3. Surviving Grady: courtesy of O’Grady, this is by far one of the funniest things I’ve read.

Author: David Churbuck

Cape Codder with an itch to write

0 thoughts on “Opening Day”

  1. Ah, I remember 1986 oh so well. Nothing like sitting in a dorm room in a Boston boarding school rooting for the Mets.

    The Mets look really good this year!

  2. My token totems of solidarity with professional baseball is my finish cuttting my one acre lawn with a diamond pattern while wearing my Dodger baseball cap.
    Vin Sculley is the equivalent of a living SQL database of Dodger baseball and he at least gives me hope that at long last this could be the year the Dodgers don’t break my freaking heart.
    One of the advantages of living in San Diego is that they still play daytime bess boll so I manage to go down and see a couple of games a year in the sun.
    I’ts not Chavez Ravine in the cheap seats, but it does keep me connected with the game.
    I burn offerings for the spirit of Don Drysdale to come back to the Dodgers soon.
    Yours in Dodger Blue,
    jim

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