Loose Leaf Notes

Watching my newly 5 year-old grandson play T-ball in a Red Sox uniform is more fun than seeing the real deal at Fenway Park.  I don’t follow sports, but, being from the South Shore of Boston, the Red Sox are part of my DNA, and most everyone in my family follows them with a passion.    

Watching Bryce play was more fun than meeting Carl Yastrzemski, the all-time great Red Sox player (1961 – 1983), when he came into the Tremont Street boutique I worked at in 1969.  Truth is, I didn’t’ know who he was at the time.  He had an entourage and I felt like he thought all the young girls working at the boutique, including me, should have fallen all over him.   

When Josh was a kid, he admonished me for not getting an autograph from “Yaz” for him.  “I didn’t know then that I’d have a son someday who would love baseball,” I explained.

My son Josh is the biggest Red Sox fan that I know. I like to joke that his enthusiasm for the team turned half of Asheville into Red Sox fans.  Oddly, when he played Little League here in Floyd, he also played as a Red Sox, and the minor league team out of nearby Salem is called the Salem Red Sox!

I also love the Red Sox because my brothers Jim and Dan loved them. They died in 2001, three years before the Sox won the World Series, after losing for 86 years.  Jim and Dan didn’t even get to see the New England Patriots win the super bowl for the first time ever in 2001.  We like to joke that they pulled some strings in both cases. 

Some baseball players are known for their game rituals, routines, eccentricities or superstitions, every thing from wearing golden thongs or a Jetson’s t-shirt, to chewing on a fingernail, adjusting equipment, or kissing a Babe Ruth plaque before playing. We found out that Byrce has one of his own.  He wanted to put two power ranger toys in his back pocket, saying there was a lot of game time spent waiting and sitting on the bench and that he wanted to have something to play with. 

I didn’t have the heart to say no, so I helped him tuck them in tight.  During the game (which was cut short due to rain), he kept touching his back pocket.  I don’t think Bryce knows anything about luck, good or bad, but I do think he’s still young enough to have his own version of a security blanket.

So it turns out that I follow Red Sox games, afterall.  Bryce’s daddy, my son Dylan, who played for a non-Red Sox team in little league, is following them now too.