Becoming a sports fan as a kid
How would I know it would become a lifetime blend of affection, addiction and affliction.
Tim Wilson
This blog is part reminiscing and part therapeutic exercise. Last year, the Bruins Stanley Cup pursuit may have ended with a thud but if I have learned anything as a sports fan – “there’s always next year”.
Growing up in the Boston area in the sixties you didn’t so much choose to become a fan as you were swept up in a delightful mania. How would I know it would become a lifetime blend of affection, addiction and affliction.
It started with the Red Sox for me – the 1967 Red Sox. What a year for an 8-year-old to become a fan. It’s funny that I really don’t remember anything about baseball or the Sox before ’67. But there is so much I remember about that season.
I’m not going to tell you I remember my first game at Fenway Park. I don’t. I didn’t get to Fenway a lot as a kid but it didn’t make a difference. Radio was still big in my house. And in the morning that meant listening to WHDH and Jess Cain, the man who would write and sing “The Carl Yastrzemski Song” about “the man they call Yaz.”
I remember hearing Ken Coleman describe Jose Tartabull throwing out Ken Berry of the Chicago White Sox at the plate for the final out of a game. Also etched in my mind is the call of Yastrzemski’s diving catch in the ninth inning at Yankee Stadium to preserve Billy Rohr’s no-hitter until the rookie gave up a single to Elston Howard with two outs.
I certainly won’t forget the tragedy of Tony Conigliaro getting hit in the face with a Jack Hamilton pitch that ended his season. Fortunately for 8-year-old me, I didn’t see it happen.
While I had become a rabid Red Sox fan I was also still an 8-year-old kid. Best evidence of that is what I did the day the Sox clinched the pennant. I was watching the final game of the season against the Twins when my friend Marty came by with the game in the late innings and still in doubt. Marty wanted to go to Mosca’s bakery for mocha cakes. I was hungry and it sounded like a great idea so I left the Sox to fend for themselves. We got back just in time to see Jim Lonborg mobbed by fans and carried from the mound in a scene Ned Martin described saying “there’s pandemonium on the field!”
Thanks to the Angels eliminating the Tigers a few hours later and there being no playoffs back then, the Sox were off to the World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals.
One of my favorite memories from that time was how the Sox being in the Series took precedence over everything. Nobody may have bought into that as strongly as the nuns and lay teachers at St. John’s grammar school.
There were no night games in the World Series at the time and that meant the games would start before we got out of school. Not a problem. First, once we finished lunch at our desks, Mrs. Herman handed out crayons, construction paper and scissors so we could make Red Sox pennants to tape to our rulers and wave furiously. Then they wheeled to the front of the class the big black and white TV that only was turned on occasionally for something on PBS. We watched every minute of the game until the bell rang and then sprinted home to catch the rest.
Don’t blame me that I didn’t see the writing on the wall for a team nicknamed “The Cardiac Kids” during a season with “The Impossible Dream” as its theme song. When it came to an end, there was no shortage of villains on that Cardinals team that beat the Sox in seven games. But what sticks in my head is one who was featured in a cartoon that appeared in the 1968 Red Sox Yearbook on the final page of a review of the ’67 season. It depicted a young boy with tears running down his face as he scrawled on a wall “Julian Javier is a herk.” That kid could have been me.
About the author: Tim Wilson is a lifelong resident of Massachusetts. He is passionate about his family, Marquette University, bicycling and all Boston sports.
Love the enthusiasm!