| | My response to the Varsity Dad question, "What's the key formative age for forging sports-fan allegiances?"
I remember going to my first game when I was 5. Kind of. It was July 15, 1988, and I only know that because on our way in to Fenway my mom was explaining why the Red Sox had fired John McNamara (her explanation was, "because they couldn't fire the whole team.") I remember that conversation and I remember walking up the steps of canvas alley and seeing how BIG everything was. But I'm not sure I was really a fan in my own right at that point.
But two years later I became a fan for real. July 17, 1990. The Twins turned a triple play to kill a sox rally in the 4th, which prompted my dad to explain how rare triple plays are, and how lots of baseball fans go their whole lives without seeing one. I had to go to camp the next morning, so we had to leave the game at 9:00. Which was the bottom of the 8th inning, no out, Sox up one, one on, and Boggs up. After much begging, my dad agrees to let us stay to see Boggs. And, of course, he walks. Despite my best 7-year-old efforts, we leave, and as we're outside waiting for my mom to pick us up, a roar goes up from the stadium. As my dad and I are trying to figure out whether boggs scored from first on what must have been an amazing play, my mom pulls up.
"What happened?" we ask.
"You didn't see it?"
"What?"
"The triple play."
"We saw the triple play."
"Really? How long have you been out here?"
"A couple of minutes."
"Oh, no, there was another one."
Right. The only game in major league history with two triple plays, and we miss the second one by one batter. My dad promised never to make me leave a game early ever again, and he kept his word. That fall I glued myself to the TV for the ALCS (and hated myself for thinking that Dave Stewart just seemed cooler than Roger Clemens).
By opening day 1991 I was smuggling a radio into my second-grade class to listen to the game. As a seven year old, I had no idea how to tune a radio to a particular station, heck, I didn't even know there were different stations, I just figured you fiddled with the knob until it worked. Eventually my teacher figured out what I was trying to do, and though I thought I was being devious, my teacher took my radio, tuned it to the sox game, and had the whole class listen to the game for the last hour of the school day.
So, with a little prodding from my mom, my dad, and my second-grade teacher, I was a full-fledged Red Sox fan at age 7.
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| | Posted 3/1/2007 5:34 AM - 45 Views - 0 eProps - 0 comments
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