October Baseball

    I remember the World Series as a frustrating time of having to run home from school to catch the middle-to-final innings of the baseball games on television, wondering why everyone in the world got to watch the entire game except us kids in school. It seemed it was always the Dodgers and the Yankees, except for the few years that the Milwaukee Braves got to play and my mother cheered for them as only an old Boston Braves fan could do. Of course there were no wild card games or series, and no division play-offs. We had the American League and National League, about sixteen teams, two pennant races and winners, and then the World Series, played on sunny afternoons on black and white TV. Both leagues played under the same rules, pitchers came up to bat or were taken out of the game, good hitters had to take the field as well as hit, and managers had to manage.

I also remember being a Red Sox fan and never being able to root for the Sox in the series until 1967. That was the year we played the Cardinals and I arrived at Fenway in the wee hours to wait in a mile long line for standing room only tickets. And then watching batting practice from my standing perch in the back of the back row of the first base grandstand, afraid to move and lose my spot, I saw the great Cardinals pitcher Bob Gibson warming up and knew there was no way that the Sox were going hit this guy. No way. And so it went, 1967, 1975 and again in 1986, until 2004 when they finally did it. Those of us who were die hard fans from the 50’s and 60’s onward will never forget that full moon over Fenway and the childlike thrill that came, along with a few tears, when the Sox won it all.

Each October the drama is played out for another group of teams and their fans, kids and grownups alike. Now there are more teams and more games, wildcard and division championships, night games in vivid HD color. And either because of the changes or in spite of them, it is still October baseball, with cheers and broken hearts, winners and losers, heroes and goats, and a great dramatic run to the final game that will determine the World Champion. In these uncertain times that make us all wonder when the next brick will fall, we still have the October Classic.  So as Ernie Banks would say: “Let’s play two!”