A CURMUDGEON'S JOY IN MUDVILLE

As of this writing, I don't know where our beloved Boston Red Sox will be, come World Series time. I know where I WANT them to be, but for now I'll opt for the safe haven found in the old adage: "God made the world round so we wouldn't see too far down the road."

A few years ago, I had a headful of notions about what it would be like to see a fieldful of millionaire prima donna baseball players (when they weren’t scratching and spitting) go about hitting and catching in the flesh.

Heading south to Fenway Park, I figured I had it all figured: I was about to witness a hit ‘n spit, catch ‘n scratch, blow-by-blow, big league slugger-fest.

Maybe.

Why? Because I believed that all of us in any other profession could feel high & mighty about our jobs and how we do them. When we go to work (step up to the plate) we are expected to set about the task before us (swing at the ball) and accomplish it (connect bat to said ball) efficiently and productively (get a hit) every time.

I knew that any baseball player who did the above job an average of three-plus out of ten times he attempted it, was considered a sultan. And, anyone who did it four out of ten times all season would either be God or Ted Williams (mention the “Splendid Splinter” at Fenway and people stop munching in mid-Crackerjack to mentally, if not bodily, genuflect).

I confess. Walking up the grandstand ramp at The House That Ruth Left, I was in the grip of a hard, grumbling heart. Spoiled rotten bunch of boo-hoo boys of summer. Overpriced bat-scratching, mitt-spitting varmints. Just who did they think they---

Then, it hit me.

I walked into the Red Dog Saloon and there it was, the granddaddy of all spittoons: the Green Monster. Suddenly, it was Curmudgeon Day at Fenway, and I was born again, cast out of my grownup, foul pole cynicism and back into the head’s up batter’s box of boyhood baseball.

When I paid the twenty bucks for a three-dollar BoSox cap, it felt like a coronation.

When I topped off the foot-long fat-wurter in the bleached bun with runny relish and ulcerating mustard and slurp/burped it down, I tasted it twice and never looked back once at the five-dollar bill.

When I bought the Italian Ice from the icy Italian, I said goodbye to another fiver without a woebegone in my bones.

When “The Wave” went by, I shot up my arms and whooped along with my fellow grandstand surfers, watching my piece of the riptide roll around the stadium in thirty thousand ripples.

When I heard the crack of the bat --- and saw that beautiful orb blast out of the infield like it was cannon-shot, arcing out and over the heads of the opposing outfielders who were running like you run when you know the bus isn’t going to stop, dropping from the sky and plunking into the sea of us like it was ours all along, and, most surprising of all, like it belonged to ME --- nothing else mattered.

Not the high-priced heartburn or Boston traffic. Not the three-plus hours of my six-foot-two frame impossibly set in a five-foot-two folding chair. Not the backed-up line in the men’s room hoss trough, or getting out of the Impossible Dream’s human & vehicular gridlock.

Just the lore of the game --- where Pesky’s Pole, Duffy’s Cliff, the Red Seat and those good ol’ three-for-ten boys down there in the shadow of the Monster sparked the memory of a scrawny little leaguer at the plate and his yeehawing father in the bleachers --- when the kid got the whole piece of it that day, and it sailed out of a yesteryear into the bleachers at Fenway Park.

That one was for you, Dad. This one’s mine.

And, now it’s ours.

A gift of time past from the greatest pastime we have.

Go, BoSox!

Copyright 2006 B. Elwin Sherman. All rights reserved.