First Place
(continued)
By Carl Schonbeck

For the next several seconds it was like having Tom Larson on the old Red Sox Wrap Up show standing in front of me. The guy should been working for NESN. The Mets had scored two in the bottom of the fifth to tie it. The Sox had gone up by a run in the seventh, but the Mets had got a run off Schiraldi in the eighth to send it into extra innings. Calvin was still on the hill [41].

"I'll keep ya posted Boston," he said, and went back inside.

It was dark now, and the evening desert air was starting to feel chilly. The minutes passed slowly. Could any other team possibly put its fans through so much? Suddenly, I heard a loud cheer.

"Boston!" called my kind messenger after several minutes, "we're up 5-3, man! Henderson hit another homerun! We've got it! We've got it! Two outs away!" He was gone again.

Rarely, if ever, has military bearing so totally broken down. I raised my clenched fists into the air. I sang a verse of "The Impossible Dream [42]." I danced a jig. I took my nightstick and swung it like Goober had done earlier, just for old times sake. They'd done it. They'd finally done it.

I now waited to hear that final distinctive cheer of fans witnessing a championship victory. It seemed to come a few minutes later but was followed by another, and then still another. I'd seen enough Celtics finals [43] to know this wasn't how it was done. Something was happening, and it wasn't good. A thunderous roar went up. Maybe that was finally it, the Sox had a two-run lead, after all. The seconds passed. Silence. The Sox were by now shuffling elatedly into the clubhouse and the corks were popping. Randy was lighting a victory cigar and ordering enough glasses of champagne to leave him in debt with the government for several years. My thoughts were interrupted by the loudest cheer yet and the sound of tables being pounded. There was whooping and cries of disbelief. Whatever it was, it was big.

"Hey Boston," called that by now familiar voice a few moments later, "just wanted to let you know we lost."

I was speechless.

"No.... but how? What happened?"

"Don't ask, you wouldn't believe it."

I never saw him again. He was simply the messenger, or as Bob Dylan once said, the wicked messenger.

I had been one of the lucky ones. I hadn't actually witnessed the carnage. Red Sox fans that had pitied me three hours earlier now looked at me with envy. Like my own personal Kennedy Zapruder film, I wouldn't actually see the video of that Mets tenth inning until I got out of the Navy three years later. By then it seemed curiously banal in respect to the horrors I'd imagined in my own mind. The South has Pickett's charge [44]; New Englanders have that tenth inning. There were two out. Hurst had been named the Series' most valuable player. Microphones were positioned in the victor's clubhouse. The champagne had been brought out. Carter singled. Mitchell and Knight also followed with hits. It was 5-4. In came Stanley. Carter scored the tying run on a wild pitch. Mookie Wilson rolled one to Buckner at first. The ball skipped through his legs. The Mets had won 6-5 [45]. Why Stapleton was not put in as a defensive replacement is a question we will still be asking long after the Big Dig is complete and the Sox have a string of World Championship pennants in their chic new ballpark [46].

The following afternoon we repaired to a quieter café on the other side of the base to see the seventh game. Randy didn't look well. Between sips of much needed coffee, he muttered the name over and over, as if it were a mantra. I realized then that Bill Buckner [47] would not be in the Boston area much longer. Like the seventh game of the '75 Series, this one had an anti-climatic feeling, the only difference being the sensation that the miracle sixth game team would actually win it all. The Sox jumped out to a 3-0 lead, but by now it all seemed too good to be true. We watched, we nodded, we muttered the occasional "all right" but no one, above all Randy, got excited. We had been seared by the previous evening's events. We looked on with little surprise or emotion as the Mets tied it and then went ahead for good on Ray Knight's homer. Barrett fanned in the ninth [48] and the Mets had their second World Championship. Not bad for an expansion team. Ray Knight was named the Series' most valuable player. Pete Rose had been MVP in the 1975 Series [49]. His backup at third base that year? A young man named Ray Knight.

I left San Diego four months later. Through the autumn months I had continued to frequent Ocean Beach, go to Tijuana and take road trips with the friends who had made my time in California so wonderful, but these things were by now no longer new. I saw little of Randy following that seventh game defeat and later discovered he had been sent to the fleet. He was now in the real Navy, while Ken, Rick and the rest of us waited our turn and lived out the remainder of our college campus fantasies. The Navy had invested a lot in me and wouldn't be happy to hear I intended to get out after my first enlistment was up. Ken and I drove across America during February of 1987 on the Navy's dime. His destination was Key West, while mine was Norfolk. We passed through an enviable list of places: Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, the deserts of the Southwest, the Texas Pan Handle, Memphis, Nashville, the Mississippi Delta, New Orleans, Fort Lauderdale and finally Key West. It was time to say goodbye. From now on I would speak of Ocean Beach, the Anchor, Randy, Ken and Rick, not to mention that great 1986 Red Sox ball club, only in the past tense. I'd miss them all.

In the years that followed, the Red Sox would pop back into my life occasionally, but never again like in 1986. My ship, the USS Hermitage, would do a six-month Mediterranean deployment in 1988 and I would pass much of it thinking the Sox had hired ex-Reds great Joe Morgan as manager; same name, wrong guy [50]. I would make new friends and become a petty officer. I would leave the service in 1989 and attend U. Mass Boston, often going to Fenway by myself. It wouldn't be the same anymore. I would lose my sister in an auto accident in 1990. I would move to Italy the same year and teach English while giving music another shot. Eventually, I would have a bit more luck with it. Speaking of luck, I would marry my wife Teresa in 1993. The Sox would completely drop off my radar for a number of years. In 1998 I would go to a game at Fenway with my mother and discover she knew the starting line-up, while I could barely name one player. In 1999 I would buy my first computer and discover I could tune into games through the Internet. It wouldn't seem like a bad idea at all. I had a lot of catching up to do.

Today, I'm another of the thousands of ex-pat Americans living in Italy. I like soccer, drink espresso and can make a pretty mean plate of risotto. Sometimes I talk to myself in Italian. My accent is no longer that of a New Englander, but rather a strange Italian/Brit/East Coast gumbo. One August, when Teresa and I arrived at Logan, I suggested we have a drink in the airport bar before facing the final leg of our trip out to Marlborough. Sitting down on a stool, I saw the Sox were playing the Mariners.

"What's the scooah," I asked the barman in my best Randy Kulick imitation.

"Mariners are up 5-1, they knocked out Wakefield in the third," he answered.

Then he asked, "How long will ya be visiting our country?"

He thought I was French.

Oh well, if there's one thing I've learned, it's that you've got to live in the present. After twelve years in Italy, I guess I can't expect to walk into a Boston bar and be mistaken for Lou Merloni [51]. Even so, if the Sox make the Series this year, I think I'll put a game or two on in Spanish. There are some things an Italian soccer wife shouldn't miss out on.

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