There's Always This Year

There was never a Curse of the Bambino for Sam. He fell in love with baseball one hot afternoon at Camden Yard when he was 19 months old, and even though we live in Washington, Sam and the Red Sox were a natural fit. We listened to games on the radio up on Cape Cod that summer. We joked with Sox fans standing in line at Moby Dick's for lobster. Sam had long, golden-brown curls back then. Johnny Damon had long brown locks back then. (Unlike Damon, Sam did not--and promises he never will--cut his toenails on national TV.) By the time Sam had been a fan for four months, the Red Sox captured their first World Series title in 86 years.

Sam comes from baseball stock. His dad is a Yankees fan. I ardently followed the Atlanta Braves in the years when Hank Aaron was chasing Babe Ruth's home run record. But Sam came to the game on his own, and even when he was tiny, it was his portal on the world. He picked up geography by reciting the city where each team played; he learned his colors (at least red, white, and blue) based on the uniforms; he was introduced to math by the daily box scores in the newspaper. Still, for him, those gray months between November and March, when baseball is just a memory, were dreary. Shuffling and re-shuffling through stacks of baseball cards (most of which were mine from the 1970s), Sam reminded me of a gardener gazing at pictures in a seed catalog. At least when you're older, you know that spring will come again. 

Baseball, of course, did return, and with each new season, Sam drew the rest of the family in a little more. The Nationals came to D.C. and we bought tickets. We started going to the Cape a little earlier so we could take in Cape League baseball. 

This past summer, on the Cape, we went to a whole, new level. Ralph, the hardened Yankee fan, who used to go to games with his father, began to cheer on the Sox. We drove into Boston to see an As-Sox game at Fenway. We turned over a portion of each evening to the Sox on TV. Mornings brought a re-broadcast of the highlights, which, naturally, Sam watched. We played games in the yard and catch on the beach. 

One morning, not long after daybreak, when Sam and I took our puppy to the beach to play, we ran into a fellow dog owner and Red Sox fan who began quizzing Sam on the previous night's game. I stood by as they chatted about who got picked off on first (what's a pick off, I wondered) and discussed the merits of the new pitcher from Cleveland. That's when I realized that although I have 42 years on Sam, he has a deeper knowledge of baseball than I'll ever have and an ability to see the whole field at once, which I can't do. It must come from playing, watching, or dreaming about baseball all the time.

You'd think that his single-mindedness where the Red Sox are concerned would make Sam despondent over their loss last night to the Rays. But strangely he's not. Maybe as baseball is his conduit to the world the Red Sox are merely his conduit to the game. Maybe it's because we've Tivoed enough Sox games to see Sam through the winter. Or maybe it's because a good season is good enough. And in Sam's experience, there really is a future tense where the Red Sox are concerned.