Boyhood Redux
I spent my boyhood in Massachusetts. I arrived there ready to start fourth grade and only left as I was about to begin 11th when my father was transferred to Detroit. The Bay State is where I climbed trees, enjoyed backyard football, joined Boy Scouts, and did all manner of Sawyeresque activities.
It was also where I came to like baseball.
Needless to say the Red Sox were my boyhood favorites. I saw my first major league ball games at Fenway Park. I still remember that night game in 1966 when we sat out in right field not a D-cell battery's throw away from the Yankee's Roger Maris. He caught a few pop-ups but mostly he taunted us Sox fans mercilessly. Carl Yastrzemski, Jim Lonborg, Rico Petrocelli, George "Boomer" Scott, and Tony Conigliaro were some of my youthful favorites. My sadness knew no bounds in October 1967 when my beloved Red Sox lost the World Series to the St. Louis Cardinals. That Bob Gibson pitched and won three complete games that series was a Herculean feat lost on me at the time.
And even though I left Massachusetts 34 years ago to become, among other things, a very loyal Baltimore Orioles fan, I still harbor a soft spot in my heart for the Red Sox.
So it was with no small amount of joy and excitement that I followed this year's ALCS and World Series. Of course watching the final game last night was complicated by the fact that a very nifty total lunar eclipse was ongoing during the game. There I sat watching the game in my family room becoming ever more hopeful as the game came to its ninth-inning climax and then during the commercials I zipped out to the deck with binoculars in hand to watch the eclipse. After the game I snapped a quick photo of the moon fully in Earth's shadow.
Seems the Man-in-the-Moon is part of Red Sox Nation.
K-
You snuck up on me and started blogging again! You've been missed.
We lived in Mass. for a couple of years when I was very small and Daddy was still in the Air Force so I also have some residual fondness for the Red Sox.
I've installed the new MT version and MT-Blacklist as well. I think it must be working because my spam has decreased (knock on wood) considerably in the past few days.
TW, your kind words made my day. While I have been making my blogwalk regularly the last few weeks, there just hasn't been any thing blogworthy to write about. Some health issues (basically that I'm a hypchondriac despite being an otherwise rational, analytical fellow) also depressed my blogging desire.
Anyway, the new MT and MT-Blacklist has done a good job decreasing spam. Deleting it is much more easy.
K-
I like this group of Sox but I am surely sorry that Yaz, Bernie Carbo, and Luis Tiant never won a World Series. I love the Sox I grew up with on TV.