FATHERS, SONS AND THE SOX
My father’s father died at the age of 51, just a couple of days before my first birthday. So I never knew him. What it’s also meant is that I’ve never taken Father’s Day for granted, and luckily for me, I’ve enjoyed many, many more Father’s Days with my dad than he ever did with his.
When I was a kid, growing up in Hamilton, Ont., I became a huge baseball fan and fell in love with the Boston Red Sox ( fervent Canadian nationalists questioning my patriotism please note: the Blue Jays did not yet exist). The plucky underdog Bosox of Carl Yastrzemski, Jim Rice, and Dewey Evans pushed the heavily favoured Big Red Machine of Cincinnati to a seventh and deciding World Series game in 1975.
That series — immortalized in a beautiful soliloquy by the late Robin Williams in the movie Good Will Hunting — featured one of the most memorable home runs in baseball history. In Game Six, in the bottom of the 12th inning and the score tied at 6- 6, Sox catcher Carlton Fisk hit a deep blast to left field. The only question was, would it be fair or foul. Fisk motioned several times with his arms, begging the ball to stay fair, and when it hit the fair/foul pole, signifying it was a homer, it was a moment of rejoicing for Red Sox Nation. The Sox would go on to lose the series in seven games, but the journey was unforgettable.
So when I graduated from high school a few years later, and my dad asked me where I wanted to go to celebrate, he got a fast, twoword reply: “Fenway Park.”
That was my first time to, as they call it today, “America’s most beloved ball park,” and I’ve made the pilgrimage countless times ever since. In fact, if I can share a dirty little secret, after doing my undergrad at the University of Toronto, I did my master’s in broadcast journalism at Boston University, because it was the closest post-secondary institution to Fenway Park that would have me. Oh, and coincidentally, they had a very good journalism program too.
Over the years, Fenway Park has been one of those places I’ve regularly escaped to, to enjoy the uniqueness of baseball in Boston. And my circle of Fenway fanatics has opened wider, to include many good family friends, and now my kids as well.
When I turned 50, I thought I’d deputize my mother into this love affair, and so she and I did a weekend at Fenway. We saw one of the park’s most rare and historic moments, when Boston rookie Daniel Nava hit a grand slam home run on the very first pitch he ever saw in the majors. In more than 140 years of Major League Baseball, that had only ever been done once before. What a moment. And I was there in 2013 with a childhood friend and my oldest son when Big Papi, David Ortiz, crushed a mighty grand slam home run against the Detroit Tigers en route to winning Boston’s third World Series of the 21st century. (I consider that an appropriate award for my patience, since I waited three decades to celebrate a Sox World Series win. Other older fans waited 86 years between titles, in 1918 and then not again until 2004. Toronto Maple Leafs, please take note.)
This year, my dad and I decided to do Father’s Day weekend at Fenway, with the two of my kids that still live in Canada ( two others live in Europe). Furthermore, this would be my 13-year-old daughter’s first trip to the park, and we were both counting down the days in anticipation. She’s the only girl on her all-boys baseball team and watches so many Sox games on TV with her dad, some will no doubt consider it a form of child abuse. But her first game at Fenway couldn’t have been more memorable.
On Saturday, the home side beat the Seattle Mariners 6- 2, with one of her favourite players, Jackie Bradley, Jr., hitting not only a home run, but also a foul ball in her direction which she out hustled and out muscled a guy twice her age to snag! On Sunday, we took our seats on an impossibly gorgeous, cloudless day. All Major League teams wore pale blue uniforms in tribute to fathers everywhere. As we looked out at the magnificently manicured green field, the blue sky, and ex-Blue Jay David Price pitching for the Sox, my father leaned over to me and simply said: “This is perfect.”
Amazingly, it got better. Price and the Sox won a thriller 2-1, and all kids ( including big ones like me) were invited onto the field to run the bases after the game.
My dad is now 82, and thankfully still in pretty good health. In fact, he walked the hour from our hotel to the ball park with no difficulty at all. I’m incredibly grateful I’ve been able to experience all these wondrous moments with him, in a way that, sadly, he never did with his dad. And on this weekend, 38 years after our first trip to Fenway Park, we continue to make new happy memories with a third generation of Paikin Red Sox fans. Happy Father’s Day? Absofrigginlutely.