I
have been a Red Sox fan since 1946. My big brother, Paul, was a Red Sox fan so
that meant I was too. He also got my mother hooked. My brother worked on broad
leaf tobacco in the summer (all our neighbors grew it) so my job was to listen
to the games and write down everything every Sox player did. Of course that was
when there were only eight teams in each league. When the Red Sox game would be
rained out, the radio station would do a teletype play by play of some other
game. Oh! Those were the days, indeed!
The
Red Sox always had good players. Sometimes they even had good teams, but never
good enough to capture that World Series. We waited a long, agonizing time for
that to happen. My two favorite players have to be Ted Williams (left field
slugger) and Mel Parnell (left handed pitcher who pitched a no-hitter in 1956 against the Chicago
White Sox).
That
was then. This is now.
Even
with two World Series Championships under their collective belts, the team went
into major meltdown in September of last year and they haven’t pulled out of it
yet even though it is not the same team. There aren’t many players left who
were there last year. This year they are injury plagued necessitating calling
up a lot of AAA players…who have played very well, by the way!
In
all my years of watching the Red Sox, I have noticed this: if they are playing
very good before the All Star Game, they hit the skids after and pretty much
disappear. If, however, they are playing lousy prior to the All Star Game, they
seem to catch their second wind and come on like gang busters to the finish
line.
We
all know how they have been playing up to this year’s All Star game. Will we
see the “historical” Red Sox from here on out? I hope so. This year has been
painful to watch.
Only
time will tell.
