Play ball!
Welcome back to the Sox, baseball fans need you
It’s the smell we missed the most. The fake crowd noise could be pumped through our television speakers and the modern-day cameras could catch angles of the pink and purple sunsets behind Fenway Park that our own eyes might’ve missed. But the smells, those were irreplaceable. Today, we welcome back not just Red Sox baseball to our lives after a long, cold, stressful and relentless winter. We also welcome back, for the first time in 550 days since the Sox last hosted an audience, the parts of the game that light up our senses and remind us of those first baseball memories.
There were no Fenway Franks being served in 2020, no wafts of Italian sausage on the corner of Jersey and Van Ness streets and no grease traps to be cleaned from the charred grills.
There was no beer being poured, no faint smell of someone’s Budweiser breath from a few seats over and no reminder of a spilled beverage when we caught a sniff of the bottom of our sneakers later that night.
There was no leftover aroma of kettle corn on our T-shirts, no perfume of a chicken tender basket that sat on our lap and no trace of cotton candy stuck to the top of our lips.
If you smelled someone’s sweat and sunscreen at any point in 2020, it surely wasn’t the same flavor as the perfectly unpleasant concoction that requires nine innings in the hot sun to marinate.
These are the joys (and frustrations) we missed out on over the last year, six months and three days.
When Nathan Eovaldi takes the ball and throws what is certain to be a triple-digit fastball to officially open the 2021 Red Sox season this afternoon, some of these smells will be back.
We’ll think of all the time gone from then until now and all that was lost in that span. For some more than others, it’s been a difficult (an understatement) year. Baseball in itself won’t change that, whether you’re at Fenway Park or watching from home.
But baseball can help us move forward. It’s the only major sport played over the full duration of the summer, the only game we can catch through our airwaves as we drive to the beach or sit on the deck while the kids splash around in the pool.
It won’t help us forget, but it will help us forge on.
It helps that it’s a whole different ballgame in 2021.
Alex Cora is back for a chance at redemption, and with his return comes a renewed confidence in the locker room of a team that just finished with its worst winning percentage since 1965.
Fans will cheer for their beloved Xander Bogaerts, Rafael Devers,
Eovaldi and Eduardo Rodriguez, among others who have earned a place in their hearts.
Chaim Bloom and Co. didn’t spend a ton of money this winter, but made a few additions (and a few subtractions; so long Andrew and Jackie). The new players, and the lost ones, will be watched with scrutiny as Bloom is charged with bringing entertainment to our Boston summer, from April through September, and maybe just October.
Anything less than an enjoyable summer — a full summer, at that — at the century-old park will be a failure on his part, and fans are certain to let him hear about it.
Watching this team a year ago was often painful, if not dreadfully boring. Playing without any fans in the stands, and with record-low TV ratings of those watching from home, was something new for everybody.
Perhaps it was the great separator of those who are in the game to compete, who’d give everything they had to win a single matchup in front of nobody but him and his opponent, just so that, if nobody else, at least the opponent knew who was better on that day, and of those who are in it for the widespread glory.
Players who had forever been great suddenly stunk. They had their reasons, to be sure, but 2021 will provide no excuses.
There are too many former Red Sox players, coaches and front office members throughout the league now. Another stinker of a year, this time in front of Boston’s loyal fans, won’t be sliding off folks’ backs too easily.
The Celtics have faded, the Bruins are interesting and the Patriots have a lot to prove. But it’s the Red Sox who can bring us our summer.
For everything we’ve endured the past year, for all the long days at home and the pain we were forced to sit with, too often alone, baseball owes us something. Opening Day owes us something.
Finally, we get to hear it, to see it, to feel it, to smell it. It’s hard to remember a time when we needed it more.
Play ball.