Boston fans keep seeing red

Sporting News, The, March 22, 2004 by Lesley Visser

I was raised to believe that Jeters never prosper, but, of course, that isn't true. The finest shortstop in baseball will move to third base to accommodate the team with the most revenue and the strongest tradition. The Red Sox will be left again to play the part of the Washington Generals, or Charlie Brown, caught in an epic struggle that will never, ever be decided in our favor.

I first began going to Fenway Park when I was 8 years old--my brother and I once walked five miles to sit in the bleachers, with him ignoring me every step of the way. We grew up listening to Curt Gowdy on cheap transistors under multiple covers. The final week of the 1967 season featured crisp weather, exactly how New England should feel, and the Sox beat the Twins to win the American League behind the heroic pitching of Jim Lonborg. It was the last moment of celebration until October 21, 1975.

I was in the press box during the sixth game of the '75 World Series--yes, it's the night I met my husband, but who cares? At 12:34 a.m., when Carlton Fisk hit his towering home run, I watched Peter Gammons fire off six pages of copy in 10 minutes as John Kiley played the "Hallelujah Chorus." The late, great Boston Globe columnist Ray Fitzgerald pulled his original copy from his typewriter and threw it to the ground. I quietly picked it up, and I have it to this day. It reads, "In the 11th inning, you could feel it slipping away."

Why are those words still so profound today? The late commissioner Bart Giamatti once summed it up best. He said, "Red Sox fans have a Calvinist sense of guilt; we spend our whole lives waiting for the other shoe to drop." My experience is that it hasn't just dropped, it has plummeted. I was there in 1978 when Bucky Dent, who had hit four home runs all year, tapped the cheapest home run in playoff history. I was there in 1986 when John McNamara had Dave Stapleton sitting next to him on the bench in the 10th inning but kept in poor, hobbling Bill Buckner. My assignment that day, by the way, was the clubhouse celebration--their first since 1918! All I remember is someone saying, "Hold the elevator; Kevin Mitchell singled." After the seventh game last fall, when Aaron Boone homered off Tim Wakefield, I sobbed like I had lost my dog.

What is the good news? For the first time, the Yankees are banking on hitting, not pitching, and pitching is what ultimately wins. And even if the Yankees are the best team, they may not win. They might have been the best team in 2002, but the Angels earned their rings; it was the same story last year with the Marlins.

The Red Sox have a great pitching staff. Curt Schilling takes the pressure off Pedro Martinez, giving the Red Sox the best 1-2 punch since Roger Clemens and Bruce Hurst, while the Yankees lost three important pitchers. And even a billion-dollar payroll can't play second base.

I have carried the crumbling baseball card of Red Sox pitcher Ike Delock for 40 years. (Take that, Bob Costas!) The night before I got married, my girlfriends flew in Ike for my bachelorette party. You would have thought we were having George Clooney over.

Baseball isn't business to me; it's personal. And it's the same at CBS. Baseball is the language we speak. Our lead producer for March Madness, Bob Dekas, was an All-Big Ten center fielder for Northwestern; our executive producer, Tony Petitti, played baseball at Haverford. Not many people know that Greg Gumbel played college baseball in Iowa or that the family of Sean McManus, president of CBS Sports, owns a minority piece of the Baltimore Orioles. Dekas, a lifelong Cubs fan, already is bragging that Chicago has the best young pitchers in baseball. We have our annual bet on the Cubs-Red Sox World Series. I remind him that the last Red Sox title was in 1918 when Carl Mays threw a 3-hitter to beat the Cubs. Then Dekas throws it in my face that Babe Ruth won two of those games.

And that's the problem. The perspective is so depressing. We're Navy against Notre Dame, Ralph Nader running for president. One friend told me it's so Shakespearean we should just give into it. It doesn't matter how many people play Hamlet--John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier, John Barrymore, all great, legendary efforts--but in the end, the guy always dies.

In 1975, after Fisk's joyous home run, sportswriter Dan Shaughnessy and I ran through the streets of Kenmore Square, hugging and laughing. Dan called me the other day. I said, "What do you make of all this?" He said, "Well, we're witnessing the greatest story ever told."

"OK," I sighed. I now await Game 7, with the pennant on the line, when Schilling strikes out A-Rod.

Lesley Visser has covered sports for 30 years, for the Boston Globe, ESPN, ABC and currently CBS.