Rain doesn’t dampen Series’ memories

It’s raining as I type this column. The World Series starts in a few hours at Dodger Stadium, where, according to my California source, the weatherman has promised the temperature at game time will be 102 degrees, a Series record.

Don’t worry about it. It’s baseball, and the Series is as important as a game can be. I believe the fans in the stands will be more uncomfortable than the players. I’m reminded of an old story about Bobby Jones playing a golf match in hot weather. His sweating opponent complained, “It must be 100 degrees in the shade out here.’’ To which Jones replied, “Right. I’m glad we’re not playing in the shade.”

Stormy weather in Connecticut does not alter the enthusiasm of fans like me, who will sit in a comfortable room in front of a TV screen and watch every bit of it from the time Clayton Kershaw delivers the first pitch until the last out is made or someone gets the walk-off hit.

In a long sportswriting career with the Hartford Courant, I’ve covered a few “Fall Classics.’’ Nothing in sports can match the experience of being there, especially for a guy who has been a devoted fan for decades. But second-best if a guy can’t be there is watching the Series on television.

And before TV, the second-best thing was listening to it on the radio. and before that, it was gathering, with other fans, in front of the newspaper office where the play-byplay would be received by telegraph and posted on a large board.

WHAT A SPORT! The first Series I covered in person was the crosscountry clashes of the Yankees and Dodgers in 1977 and 1978. The Yankees won both times. They were memorable series between teams that had been bitter World Series rivals in the 1950s before the Dodgers relocated from Brooklyn to Los Angeles in 1958.

The following year, 1979, featured the Baltimore

Orioles and Pittsburgh Pirates. I roomed with the Waterbury Republican’s sports editor, Don Harrison, and shared a rented car to ride back and forth between the cities. Harrison was, and is, a walking encyclopedia of baseball

history, which made the trip all the more fun for me.

The Series games were loaded with drama and our peanutfarming president, Jimmy Carter, attended the final game, sitting in a special folding chair, right behind the screen in Baltimore. The Pirates won the game and with it, the Series. (Afterward, you should have seen the peanut

shucks around Jimmy’s chair).

The most exciting Series I experienced as a working reporter was, no surprise, the 1986 MetsRed Sox Series, The “Bill Buckner Series.’’ Reporters flew the shuttle between New York and Boston. It was very cold in Shea Stadium on the night of the “Buckner Game.’’ My seat was in the extended press box down the

left-field line. Joe Gergan from Newsday, seated next to me, had brought an extra pair of gloves and he offered them to me. It was the first time I had kept score and made notes with winter gloves on. But it worked. A good Joe, that Joe.

My late wife, Ethel, not a Red Sox fan, watched every game and kept score, sans gloves but wearing

a Mets’ visor, cheering lustily. Baseball, see?

I made it to other Series games in other years, too, and my collection of memories and anecdotes is vast. Looking back, I have a good feeling about it. If I have reached the point where I’m producing “Old Timer Columns,’’ I don’t feel sorry about that, either. I’ve got stories to tell.