Old Time Family Baseball

I live in Boston.  I have a lot of stories about the Red Sox.  Should I tell you guys the story of that time my husband (then boyfriend) got so drunk at a Red Sox game that I had to pick him up on Beacon Street at 1AM?  He and his college roommates had gotten together and made the intelligent decision to drink one beer per inning.  Plus whiskey.  And then he told me his hand hurt from “too many high fives” and when we got home he fell into the bathtub and started crying.  Or should I tell you about that time that I went to a Red Sox game with my brother and I knew so little about the sport and he was so drunk that we didn’t even realize that Lester was throwing a no-hitter?  Until after.  And we were like “…ohhh.”  

This blog post seems to say more about the company I keep and less about baseball, but we all have our issues to work through, don’t we?  

No, I know what story I’ll tell.  The story of the night the Red Sox won the World Series in 2004.  The night the curse was broken.  I was a sophomore at Boston University and I watched the World Series that year with a fervency usually reserved for judging Oscar dresses.  That year was full of tragedy and triumph.  A girl was killed, an Emerson student.  Shot in the eye with a rubber bullet when a bunch of college kids joyously rioted after the Red Sox beat the Yankees.  

But I probably shouldn’t talk about that.  I certainly tried not to think about it when it happened.  

What I thought about instead was my father.  He is a life-long Red Sox fan, living in a Connecticut suburb of New York City, so things are hard enough for the guy.  And that year we talked on the phone about Johnny Damon (bastard that he turned out to be), Big Papi, Manny, Curt Schilling’s bloody sock, etc etc etc.  It made us closer.  It formed a bond.  The night of game four, my roommates and I watched, rapt.  When the good guys won, we headed to Kenmore Square to be a part of the riots celebration.  I called my dad on my cell phone as we walked east on Commonwealth Avenue.  He was crying.  He said, through his tears, “The first time they broke my heart was in 1967…”

The World Series in 2004, for fans in Boston, and in Connecticut, and in the dorm rooms of Emerson College, contained every experience of the human condition.  The joy and the pain.  The celebration, the over-celebration, the mob-mentality, the rioting by college students because they love an excuse for a riot, the over-correction, the fear, the danger, the death, the sorrow.  I tried to ignore the news story about the death of Victoria Snelgrove, because the 2004 World Series wasn’t supposed to be about that.  It wasn’t supposed to be part of the narrative.  But it was.  And it is.  Or it should be, at least.  The blood red sock and the elation that goes too far and my father joyfully crying.  It’s all part of the story.

Emily Kaye Lazzaro is a playwright and actor from Boston.

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