Dirty Water Wins!
It wasn’t too long after I got to Boston in 1973 that I got drawn into following the Red Sox. I passed the park everyday, there were always great stories about them in the papers, and they were a very competitive team. My favorite player was Bill “Spaceman” Lee. But there was so much fatalism and negativity. The fans sometimes booed. Never saw that in Milwaukee. I thought to myself: What’s wrong with these people?
In 1975 there was a great series that really cemented the connection. It was held against another very competitive team, the Cincinnati Red Legs. I lost a $5 bet to a guy from West Virginia on that. Late inning homeruns in Game 6 by Bernie Carbo and Carlton Fisk were among the most exciting in the history of baseball. [Cecelia and I got to meet Carlton Fisk at a card show later on.] But the Sox ultimately lost, and the end was kind of weird – my hero Lee threw one of his absurd Cephus pitches to the mighty Tony Perez [ you can tell that goodbye and call it gone]. And Manager Darrell Johnson brought in rookie Jim Beatty to shore things up. I was critical of this move, something I never was in my Milwaukee days. It was tough but fun to be in the hunt. Someone told me about the curse of the Bambino. I wrote a poem that ran in the Watertown Sun that went something like: “Our Red Sox are handicapped heroes at best.” It was odd.
In ’78 we played a one-game playoff against the Yankee for the division marbles. Don Zimmer and Bill Lee had had an ongoing hissy fit, and Lee was gone. But we were close to winning on an October afternoon and ordered one more celebratory pitcher at Doyles as Bucky Dent came to bat. When it was all over we lost – on a lazy fly ball cum home run from Bucky Dent! I looked around. I shed a tear.
I saw what was wrong with these people.
They were all around me. They and their families had been going through this for the better part of the century.
It was all to end in the 6th game against the Mets .. but it didn’t .. you know the story
At that point, the knowledge of loss was as great as I’d ever want. And don’t think for a moment that I didn’t deeply feel loss in numerous innings in the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd games this year against the Yankees in the American League championship series. But the Sox came back.
Like millions of Red Sox fans [2.8 m attended games this year] I could imagine all the things that could go wrong when the Cards batter hit the ball back to the pitcher in the bottom of the Ninth in the 4th game in the World series with one man on and two outs. Then Foulkes made the play. I cheered and said: “I don’t believe it!” We put Dirty Water on the Stereo and put the speakers out the window, kiddo.
They were loose. These players. That’s all I can say. “Why not us?” was a motto. They did not let no doom or hank run them off. Now on the tube the team is motoring through the streets of Boston [and the River Charles] in World War II amphibious duck boats. They’ve given heartening nods to Pesky, Oil Can, El Tiante, Lonberg and other predecessors, who got to ride in the first duck.
Said Manny Ramirez: “I don’t believe in no curses. You make your own destination.”
12:22:16 PM 
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