Boys of October

by Gina Hamilton
Coastal Journal editor

By the time this column appears, the Red Sox will have won the first round of playoffs and will be on their way toward winning the American League pennant.

And thereafter, the World Series, to begin at Fenway Park. Also by the time this column appears, I will know whether or not my father will receive chemotherapy for a recurrence of his cancer, or whether his season will finally soon be over.

The two things are linked for me, because my father, no matter where he lived, was a Red Sox fan. From earliest childhood, he listened to the Sox on the radio and lived, long before I was born, the rollercoaster I have come to know well ... the faint early stirrings of the heart, the dawning realization that this Could Be The Year, the growing excitement and fear to believe, the peak of perfection, then the slow decline, the fading hope, the twilight ending, but always with the faith that next year Could Be It.

Through the years, he listened to the Sox on a windup shortwave radio from our camp near Hudson’s Bay, on scratchy cassette tapes, and later, videotapes, I sent him in Europe, on cable and satellite television, and, on a tiny blue transistor radio with a little ear plug, dating from the fifties, from Chatham, Mass.

In 2004 he saw his Red Sox win the World Series, a dream denied to his father. It was ironic that he saw them win while living in St. Louis, and should have been rooting for the Opposing Team. He wasn’t.

This year, he’ll see them win again.

An almost unheard of embarrassment of riches ... two World Series wins in one lifetime.

My father is not the type to whoop it up. He might have seen ten Sox games in person, growing up during the Depression and World War II. Because my mother didn’t like the game, he took my brother and me once or twice. Neither of us, as children, had the patience for the thing ... we lacked the understanding and insight to know which part of the rollercoaster we were on. Most of the time, we watched from the livingroom, or listened on the radio while splashing in the backyard pool.

My father would watch the Cubs, too, while we lived in suburban Chicago. He was an equal-opportunity underdog rooter, I guess.

You’d never have guessed by looking at him that he nursed this secret passion. He didn’t talk about the games, much. I would venture to say that his colleages, in their fall uniforms of self-consciously haphazardly- tied neckties and suede patches on their elbows, probably knew nothing about it. He certainly didn’t wear a baseball cap or t-shirt.

But the love was there, all the same.

And even though his boys rarely made it to October, he always had faith that they would, one day. In 2004, I happened to visit him at the end of September. He was, at the time, suffering from the first occurence of the cancer that is now back with a vengeance. We didn’t know what was going to happen, either to him or to the Sox, but we watched the Sox game together anyway, in his three-season room behind his tidy little bungalow in suburban St. Louis.

The Red Sox lost to the Yankees, which set up one of the most amazing events of my baseball life. Even though they tied for the division, because they had lost the season series to the Yankees, they were the wild card instead of being the AL-East champs. I saw it as confirmation of what I had come to understand about the Red Sox all my life. They had lost in the clutch, true, but what a splendid rollercoaster trip it all was.

He said, “You never know. Gotta show a little faith.”

Then, in a twinkling, it was game 4, game 5, game 6, game 7 of the pennant series.

Everyone in the daytime world was walking around like the living dead, having stayed up until 2 a.m. to watch the games. On the morning after Game 7, I called him at a reasonable hour.

He said, “The World Series is an afterthought. They beat the Yankees ... I can die happy.” And then they won the World Series. And my father didn’t die happy ... he didn’t die at all.

Now, three years later, his Red Sox won the AL-East, and my father is facing his mortality again. And even though we haven’t yet talked about it, I am sure he feels the same way.