Fenway Finale: Finishing With a Whimper

"It's been a great year for the Red Sox." This guy is walking around and around Fenway Park with a battery-powered bullhorn and three Red Sox banners. "You can't come up with winners all the time...It's been a great year for the Red Sox...It's been a great year for the Red Sox..." And it's been a great year for Anastasio Somoza.

It has been, if nothing else, an unusual year for the Beantown Bombers, with none of the last-minute anguish that made Red Sox fans in 1978 feel like stockbrokers on Black Tuesday. This year the Sox booted it early, and as I watch their last game in Fenway, against the Toronto Blue Jays, they are twelve-and-one-half games out of first place in the American League East. Nobody knew how many games behind the Blue Jays are--nobody has the instruments to measure such distance.

A Big One

Before the game starts, they give an award to Carl Yastrzemski--a big trophy. Carl had his 3000th hit this year. Last November, Carl's boy, Ed "A Man Called Flintstone" King, made Governor. Carl's a winner. He mumbles a few words through incredible static. The crowd cheers. I've heard Carl has to tape up his Achilles tendons so tight that he has no feeling in his feet. I've also heard that Carl voted with his feet. Carl's a winner.

Two down, and Fred Lynn approaches the plate. Lynn has the prettiest swing in baseball and a grace in centerfield that evokes DiMaggio, at least for those who remember that inspired Yankee Centurion. It's hard to capture the feeling of exaltation a player like Lynn can create, how he can--man versus ball--extend the horizons of human potential, at least during the brief span of a game. Lynn spent most of the year in pursuit of the Triple Crown, and he's a fair bet for the Most Valuable Player award, though it might go to either Ken Singleton of the Orioles or Don Baylor of the Angels. Lynn, meanwhile, whiffs--but what a great whiff.

Hail to the Earl

It's unlikely--things being what they are--but the MVP should really go to Earl Weaver, manager of the Baltimore Orioles. Singleton said that without Weaver the Orioles would be playing .500 ball. The biggest cliche of the 1979 season is that the Orioles are a good team having a great season, and the difference is Weaver. After all, the team doesn't have a single .300 hitter, and, for all the talk of great pitching, only one real stopper--Mike Flanagan.

And since my birthday's not too far away, I'd like to blow out all the candles and wish that someone would knock off the Orioles this year--California or maybe the Brobdingnagian Pittsburgh Pirates--with about 16 homeruns in a four-game sweep. The Orioles are the most boring team in baseball, a gaggle of colorless Holy Rollers. Around the league they tell this story about how Tippy Martinez, Baltimore's top bullpen twirler, invited Earl Weaver to a 7:30 a.m. Sunday prayer breakfast.

Weaver: Well, ah, Tippy, I don't think I can make it.

Martinez: But Earl, don't you want to walk with God?

Weaver: I'd rather walk with the bases loaded.

Or so the story goes.

Umm! Cookie

Don Zimmer, on the other hand, would rather walk through Quincy Market. He'd like to start at Regina's and then grab maybe a couple of dozen chocolate chip cookies and some souvlaki, with a big finish at Durgin Park and maybe a half-gallon of beer. Zimmer's face looks like an aging Vegas stripper's silicone-sagging buttocks. He's already cost the club a fortune, what with bolstering the dugout bench and increased drag on the team bus, and he's not exactly defraying the expenses with World Series checks. And look what he's done to the country: House Speaker Tip O'Neill said he was "hahtbroken, just hahtbroken" when the Sox lost against the Yankees last year. No one knows how long O'Neill's funk might last. Don Zimmer may have cost Jimmy Carter the presidency.

In Your Ear

Back at the ballgame, they've turned up the static again, and the crowd is getting ugly. The Red Sox are down 1-0 following a big Toronto third inning, which is to say as big as Toronto third innings ever get. The static continues, louder--it's like that night Elvis Costello cleared out an unsimpatico crowd by telling his roadies to turn up the white noise.

I decide to go downstairs for some beer and Twinkies.

"You got anything to smoke?"

I offer him one of my Marlboros. This is not, I gather, what he wants. With beer at 90 cents a pop, dope has become cost effective, a weird Republican alternative: more bang for the buck.

Groping

When I get back to my seat the two pubescent girls in front of me are frantically tickling each other. The peristaltic motion. And as if in celebration of the girls' new-found progenitive capacity and the spirit of hopeful spring, the Sox rally to tie it in the sixth. Dwyer hits a double, Allenson a single. Sizemore hits what looks like a sure double-play ball, but Allenson comes into the keystone like a cruise missile. Dwyer scores. Bang. An inning later Butch Hobson hits his 28th homer over the Green Monster with Fisk on base. It looks like the game is on ice, except that Don Zimmer has decided to unleash the awesome firepower of the Red Sox bullpen. Soon somebody named Rick Bosetti is trotting around the circuit and the scoreboard reads Toronto 5, Red Sox 3. The crowd, of course, blames Zimmer. The scoreboard flashes:

To our season ticket holders and all our loyal fans, thank you for your support. People begin to file out.

Last Hurrah

That is a shame, because they miss Freddie Lynn's 39th homer of the year, a frozen rope to right-center in the eighth which brings home Sizemore and ties up the game. Nobody really wants to stay for extra innings against the Blue Jays at the end of the year, and Pudge Fisk complies by clubbing the first pitch of the bottom of the ninth somewhere near Kenmore Square. As Yogi Berra once said, "It ain't over 'til it's over." Well, it's all over: Red Sox 6, Blue Jays 5. They can let the grass grow in Fenway. And after a perfunctory series in Detroit, the Sox can relax, play golf, smoke dope and work out on the Nautilus, and manage their investments. And their fans can dream--about the pennant and the World Series and the horrible hatchet murder of Don Zimmer.

'Til next year...