Imagine peering into a snow globe, watching the flakes slowly swirl and fall over painted figurines and venerable church steeples in the way that can only exist inside a crystal sphere, borne of the imagination and shaped through the idyllic lens of childhood wonder. As you stare, lost in the few seconds it takes for the last of the flakes to settle to the bottom of the glass, you blink hard, trying to understand what is happening in the globe. What is happening is not real. Or is it?
It is an old place. A place dusty with the past, gleaming in the moment. It is not a church but a baseball park. Its brick fa?ade and painted green girders stand like bulwarks against the passage of time. A clock nearby ticks. Yet, in this place, at this spot, it ticks more slowly. There are people gathered about here and there along the cobblestone streets and oil lanterns surrounding the park, whichstands there silently, waiting for them, beckoning them. The figures are intricate but so tiny the faces are expressionless.
Except for two of them. As you stare, the fog of time slowly seeping into the place occupied moments ago by the flakes of snow, you see two of them in clear, exquisite detail. They are smiling, standing arm in arm and appear to be posing as a young man in a dark suit makes a sketch. You look closer, wiping the tears from your cheeks. It is you and your grandfather. At Fenway Park. And at that moment, the fog falls away and you are standing there together, at the foot of Yawkey Way, as a handsome young black man snaps your picture.
~
In 1978, three years removed from the dramatic World Series loss to the Reds and in spite of what would become yet another bittersweet season in which the home town team found itself in a pennant race only to find a way to lose, to lose yet again, when it mattered most, to the hated New York Yankees, a June ticket to see the Red Sox play was not difficult to obtain. Most folks would not have found it a particularly noteworthy way to spend an afternoon. My two brothers and I, ranging in age from four to twelve years, were not most folks. It mattered not that one of our infield grandstand seats was obstructed by a big green girder that helped hold up the upper concourse and roof. What mattered was Jim Rice in left field, Jerry Remy at second base, Carlton Fisk behind the plate. And Tiant, te larger-than-life Cuban on the mound with the strange, about-face, hesitating stretch and the high knee kick.
He bought us all hats and hotdogs and ice cream. He must have spent a fortune. I can still hear the vendor, hawking to an audience with the certitude of a man peddling birthday cake to a baby. “AHCE CREAM HE-YAH! GET YOUR AHCE CREAM HE-YAH!” It was a day I would never forget. I did not know when he led us out of the place, wearing new batting helmets and clutching the remnants of our dripping ice cream cones, that I would not return to Fenway Park for nearly 35 years.
~
I really didn’t give him much of a choice. “I’m coming to visit” I wrote. “And I have a surprise.” You have to stick your neck out and take a bit of a chance when you decide to surprise a man of over 90 years with anything, grandfather or not. Though his health is remarkably, blessedly good, he walks with a cane, battling a foot that seems the sole part of his body out to betray him. “Pipe down” says his heart. “Behave” says his razor sharp mind. Still, the foot carries the day. As the foot goes, so goes my grandfather. Optimistic, fingers and toes crossed, prayers prayed, I booked a flight to Providence from Birmingham. A limo had been arranged. And good seats. Very good seats. I emailed him encouragingly. And I prayed. We can do this. We can do this.
A week later he was in the hospital. In the first hours, the word came down the doctors were planning for surgery.
~
As a grown man, you learn with each passing year to take things as they come, the good with the bad. I suppose that’s called wisdom but it still sounds a lot like Charlie Brown to me. And I was always a Snoopy man. Charlie Brown droops. Snoopy dances. None of which meant I could change a thing. I would still get the chance to spend time with both my grandfather and great aunt and I cherished the thought. All the same, those “take the good with the bad” sayings and the people who said them, were never really my style. I was usually “all in.” Stick your neck out. Hope it didn’t get chopped off. And it hadn’t so far.
A day or so later, surgery cancelled, he was home.
When I arrived, I was unsure whether the game was in the cards. My grandfather is not one to be prodded and I respected his independence. I’d give him some time, size him up and see what happened. As I tried to pay the bill for our first lunch out, he refused. “You can’t pay for this” he insisted, “You’re taking me to the game.”
We were "all in."
~
At precisely twenty minutes before five o’clock on Friday, June 22nd, 2012, a black sedan slowly turned into the driveway at 172 West Street in Attleboro, Massachusetts. A tall, young, uniformed man met us, opened our doors, closed them with the formality of a professional for hire and we were off. North to Boston. North to the home of Teddy Ballgame and Carl Yazstremski, of Cy Young and Tony Conigliaro and, yes, of Babe Ruth.
Our driver was from South Boston, amiable, a Sox lover. By his actions, he treated us as if his career depended on it; by his words, like we were long-lost family. An hour later, in a drizzling rain, he dropped us off at the corner of Yawkey Way and Brookline Avenue. My grandfather and I got out of the sedan and stood there together, staring at the old building, blinking at each other in the misty air. Ghost and flesh merged on that corner. Girders groaned. Painted figurines twitched.
~
My eyes watered for an hour. Sitting here now, I wonder if we’d have cared had there not been a game at all. Thunderstorms, eyeing us for hours, the villain all good stories require, crackled closer. If a villain was necessary, it would come but it would not prevail. The park was alive and we were in it. The rest was proverbial icing on the cake.
They played the game and we watched it. Pictures were taken but few words were passed. Now and then, my grandfather spoke: “He hesitated! He was looking to go to third.” “Look at the hole in shallow center. The shortstop is cheating.” My grandfather is a baseball fan. If I said the game might not have mattered, I take it back. It mattered. The game always matters.
~
They put his name on the scoreboard at the end of the 7th inning.
CONRAD MOREL - WELCOME TO FENWAY PARK
~
The Sox lost 4 to 1. I believe it was better that way. I would not trade the Boston Red Sox 2004 season for all the seasons of all the teams in all the sports in history. Except, perhaps, for the 26 Sox seasons from 1978 to 2004. The 26 seasons in which a young boy, who was told he was from New England, who had two grandfathers who told him the Sox would never win the whole thing, who believed that that one day, one day, both of those grandfathers would live to see that very thing, who had learned to love the players and despise the heroes that left, who had seen one grandfather pass away correct in his prediction and another who could still be wrong….
In those 26 seasons, love had been born. Love for family and for the Sox and for Fenway. And in those seasons, the team from Beantown had always lost in the end. So losing was okay. After all, there was precious little space for wins in the closets packed tight with those childhood memories. As I say, it was almost better that way. Call it the first and last perfect game with 13 hits and 4 runs.
~
How do you describe watching from behind as your grampa leaves Fenway Park for the last time, shuffling out of the park on his cane, his head held high?
You don’t. You return to the snow globe with its miniature, exquisitely painted buildings and tiny figures standing in the snow.
And you look for two of them, standing there, in the shadows of a wonderful, old baseball park. Smiling.
~
The announced crowd at the game between the Boston Red Sox and the Atlanta Braves, played in Fenway Park on June 22nd, 2012 was 37,279.
Plus two.
