REMDAWG AN ALL-STAR IN BOOTH
Sox Hall of Famer had been in middle of renaissance
A cancer diagnosis in the family always is a crushing, confusing, emotional moment.
Yes, family members with an ear for optimism can turn the doctor’s every syllable into a ray of hope. But that comes later. First comes the confusion, the emotion. The feeling of being crushed.
As we’ve all been there, we all empathize with what Jerry Remy and his family are going through. This is not the first time the popular Red Sox television analyst on NESN has received bad news from the medical people, but that doesn’t make it any easier. You don’t get comfortable being told you’re sick.
Jerry Remy is a private man, and not given to idle chit-chat. We all know that. We also know he has an intensely complicated family situation, though we can’t gauge how he’s coping in his personal life simply by tuning in to a Red Sox game.
But we can agree on this: Never in Jerry Remy’s broadcasting career has he sounded better. Never has he been more focused, more on top of the game being played in front of him. He’s never been more anecdotal. And with the obvious exception of the instant-classic “Here Comes the Pizza” moment from April of 2007, he’s never been funnier.
It hasn’t hurt that former Red Sox teammate Dennis Eckersley has been joining Remy and play-by-play man Dave O’Brien in the booth from time to time. While it’s true that Remy made a surprisingly easy — and, we should add, graceful — transition from longtime friend/broadcaster Don Orsillo to O’Brien, having Eck in there seems to bring him a special joy. With Remy and Eck knowing when it’s time to tell old stories, and with O’Brien knowing when to sit back and let them keep on keeping on, the three men have been showing the potential to be as good a booth trio as the Mets’ Gary Cohen, Keith Hernandez and Ron Darling, which is saying a lot.
But take Eckersley and O’Brien out of the equation and we still arrive here: Remy, even while battling illness in recent years, has been enjoying a professional renaissance that’s breathtaking to behold.
Remy loves baseball, even if at times over the years he’s come across as a crank, such as practically rooting for a game not to go to extra innings so he can get on the Pike and go home. But as a kid growing up in Somerset he was a frequent attendee at Sox games, and he was among the masses storming the field at Fenway on that fantastic final day of the 1967 season. He was 15 at the time, and, of course, a gifted young ballplayer. Yet he was also a fan, always has been. That’s not a given.
That Remy is a Massachusetts native has helped him as a broadcaster. In the pre-2004 years he understood the “1918” thing as well as anybody, and in the post-2004 years he understands that once is never enough. He transitioned to the booth after a caved-in knee ended his outstanding playing career — he was as deft at laying down a drag bunt as anybody you’ll ever see — and he then found a second calling as a color analyst. He got off to a rocky start, sure, but he soon found a breezy chemistry with the late, great Ned Martin. But, of course, Remy grew up listening to Martin. He later developed a rapport with Sean McDonough, and then Orsillo, and then O’Brien.
It’s impossible to write about Remy without acknowledging that his son Jared is serving life in prison for murdering his girlfriend, Jennifer Martel, with whom he fathered a daughter. Jerry and his wife, Phoebe, later hoped to raise their granddaughter, but came out of the case settling for visitation rights.
We mention it here because it’s clear that Remy, despite all the turmoil in his private life, has found peace in the booth in recent years — as well as being able to provide important financial support for his family. Yet it never sounds like he’s going through the motions in order to bring home a paycheck; he has been involved, invested, entertaining. Before games he sits in on Red Sox manager Alex Cora’s press briefings. He still has a can’t-betaught talent for telling you what’s going to happen before it happens.
And now Jerry Remy faces another cancer battle.
As has been the case all the way along, we’re rooting for him.