First Place
(continued)
By Carl Schonbeck

In the meantime, the Red Sox were making some good runs at the pennant [13] without having much to show. Of course, 1978 is the year everyone remembers. The collapse. Thirteen and a half game lead. The Boston Massacre. Clawing back. Tiant two-hitter against Toronto to clinch a tie. Up two nil at home. Yaz the hero. Only three innings to go. Bucky fouls it off his foot. New bat. Wind blowing out. One last try. Pinella in right. Yaz against Goose Gossage. Down into Nettles waiting glove. Yanks AL east champs for the third straight year [14]. The horror, the horror...

It might sound like a cliché, but looking back, if there were one moment where I could say those innocent summers of my childhood ended, it would be in the heartbreak loss and setting down of my hero that early October afternoon. At times, I wonder how many other Boston bred, soon to be 40-somethings might say the same thing. For me, those autumn shadows moving across Fenway symbolized the approaching shadows of my own life. There were hard facts and changes to come I didn't feel ready to face. It was the last summer the four members of my family went on holiday together. The disease eating away at my father's body and mind, which would claim him a few years later, was showing little sign of abating. Things at home and school were going from fair to worse and baseball was quickly ceasing to be the cure all it had been just a couple of years earlier. And oh yeah, I was now an adolescent.

One afternoon during the summer of 1979 I was over at Craig's house when unexpectedly he said, "Hey, let's go inside, I want to show you something." This was unusual. The standing rules at his house seemed to be we weren't to go in, ask for snacks or even request a glass of water (what else was the hose there for?). Of course, this was the total opposite of my own home, where my mother's Irish hospitality was such that our friends seldom had it half as good with their own families. Craig and I stood in the living room (!) where he took an LP from its jacket and placed it on the turntable. "No talking, just listen and then tell me what you think," he said in his usual semi-authoritarian way. The crackling, twangy guitars, the oddly distinctive nasal voices with their strange accents, the great melodies ... I knew at once I was hearing the Beatles but they'd never really had any impact on me. Suddenly, the Fabs were all I wanted to know about. Within a few months I had bought armfuls of Beatles and Stones albums (the stuff on the radio in '79, like today, just didn't seem as good) and started taking guitar lessons. By the time Yaz got his 3000th hit [15] late in the season, I was a part-time fan if one at all. Music was in and baseball on its way out.

By late 1980/early 1981, three things had become certain. Jimmy Carter would not have a second term, the Beatles, thanks to a sicko with a 22 calibre pistol, would never reunite, and the Sox weren't going to get the championship those great late '70s teams had tantalized us with. One by one they left or were traded; Lynn, Burleson, Remy, Butch, Pudge, Lee...even the mighty Tiant [16] went to the Yankees. Yaz was playing out his final act. Rice and Evans would be the keepers of the flame when next time rolled around. Not that I cared very much. Between trying to unlock the mysteries of both blues guitar and high school (much more luck with the former) and doing my part to hold my family together in the face of my Dad's worsening alcoholism, I had plenty beyond the Sox to keep me busy.

By the time my father died and I was released from Marlborough High School, both in 1983, I had little idea of who was even on the team. Yaz had called it a day. It was time to move on. Baseball was for kids. I started working odd jobs, rarely staying at any one of them very long. My hair was 1969-approved length. I was making new friends with plenty of 1969-approved habits and spending more and more time out of the house. Home was for sleeping and grabbing a quick meal now and then. Days passed without me seeing my Mom or sister. My guitar playing got good enough that I was asked to join a local rock band. We played the dives, spent our money on the things musicians spend their money on and dreamt of being "discovered." It was my dream of major league stardom all over again, this time clad in leather and denim together with the roar of a Fender twin reverb. Sports had become so low on my list that I was nearly punched out after innocently asking a club owner in Worcester to turn off the television as the Celtics celebrated their championship in 1984. Hey, the noise was keeping the punters from digging the band, man. The Sox, meanwhile, could have been playing on Mars for all I cared. In the film Bronx, there's a scene where Robert DeNiro's son says something like "It was 1968, I was eighteen, the Yanks were in last place and I couldn't have cared less." At least he knew where they were in the standings.

It wasn't until early 1986 that the Red Sox entered my life again. I had passed the better part of three years running from my father's death, getting high, and dreaming of becoming a famous musician. I was spending most of my time in Worcester playing sleazy bars, frequenting a lot of less than upstanding people and getting nowhere. Many of my friends, old and new, were heading down slippery roads I didn't care to take. It started to dawn on me that no one resembling Brian Epstein (or even Tom Hanks in That Thing You Do) was going to bound into Sully's Timeout Pub and say "Hey, you guys are great, I want to take you to London!" The band broke up, and shortly after our bass player was put in a mental institution. Too much reality. I was scrubbing pots and pans for a bit of coin while wondering if I might be joining him. Going nowhere. I actually started to miss those baseball/bike riding summers and trips to Marshfield of old. I wanted to go home and get to know my Mom and sister again. And I wanted to see my old pals the Sox.

I also had a strange premonition I wouldn't be living in New England much longer. Everything felt distant and temporary. I'd always wanted to travel, preferably in a band-touring mode (anyone who had done it assured me it was miserable) but now I really started to catch the wanderlust. A lot of my friends had gone out to California, but they always seemed to return spiritually and materially bankrupt, vowing never to leave Middlesex County again. That was no good; there had to be another way. I turned 21 and knew something had to change. The Sox appeared to have a pretty good team, from what I could see. There were some relatively new guys named Boggs, Gedman and Clemens [17] who seemed up to snuff with my 1975 heroes, but then again, who could tell? Mick, whom I had stayed in touch with over the years (Craig and I had become bitter enemies in high school), suggested we hit the home opener on April 18. It was the best idea I'd heard in ages. It would be my first visit to Fenway without my Dad (he'd always taken me to at least one game a year, usually leaving the tickets under my dinner plate Pretty Boy Floyd style; how I loved that!). Mick had changed. In our ball playing days he was the skinny, hyperactive kid you sent up on the neighbour's roof to get the ball. Now he stood at six foot four and did Nautilus bodybuilding day and night. He was aggressive and no one you wanted to mess with. He also drank a lot and apparently did steroids. Even so, it was great going back to Fenway with him. We roared in on the green line, knocked back a few brews and even got on the telly trying to grab a foul ball. The Sox lost 8-2. It was almost like old times. Walking into the kitchen that evening, I noticed my Mom had a worried air about her. Before she could say anything, the ABC special report image that would become so familiar a few years later flashed on the screen. We were bombing Libya. Little did I know then that only 12 days later I would be eligible to join in. I enlisted in the Navy on the first of May and left for RTC San Diego a week later. The time had come to go. The Sox would have to do it without me. Though I hadn't yet decided anything as Mick and I watched Clemens strike out nineteen Mariners [18] on our newly acquired NESN, I knew I was about to do something drastic. Sitting with Mick and I was Bob, a Marlborough native my Mom had started to see. We hit it off. He encouraged me to go out and do what I had to do, things that fathers say. This made my departure a lot easier. I had never been out of New England before but I literally counted the minutes leading up to my departure. I couldn't wait to land in San Diego.

 

 

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