Seven Days In May — Part 1
The scent of onions hits your nostrils almost the same moment your feet hit pavement and the smell pulls you towards the old Yawkey Way.
To the average person wandering up and down Brookline Avenue, it’s just a regular May afternoon. Exhausted nurses in wrinkled scrubs wander out the doors at Beth-Deaconess Medical. Parents pushing their sleeping baby in the latest stroller-meets-carseat. Cars honking because someone waited .3 milliseconds too long after a light changed.
You know, a typical Boston Tuesday.
For me, that day was anything but typical. I was there for Fenway. The Green Monster. Home of Yaz and the Splendid Splinter. One of the last grand cathedrals of baseball.
I, a die hard Yankees fan from the time I was born, was there for the Boston Red Sox.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, when travel was restricted and the world realized how much it took for granted, my cousin and I hatched an idea. When travel restrictions were loosened, we (and his wife) would go on a trip. Not just any trip though- a baseball trip.
We decided to concentrate our efforts on an east coast swing- Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington DC.
Seven games, five cities, seven days.
After 18 months of sketching out details, figuring out home schedules, buying tickets of all kinds — after all of this, it was time.
And what a time it was.
_________
I can’t ever remember not loving baseball. My dad, barely out of diapers when Joltin’ Joe took his last swing, had always loved the Yankees — especially Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris.
Naturally, because Dad loved the Yankees, I loved the Yankees. Even when Don Mattingly and his mustache were the only good things on the team, I loved the Yankees. When Billy Martin came and went and came and went again and again, I loved the Yankees. When I was 17 and a tall kid from Kalamazoo, Michigan stepped up to the plate for the first time, I really loved the Yankees.
For me and millions of others, baseball holds a magic like no other sport. Infinite possibility and mind-boggling precision co-exist in the sacred space between the pitcher’s mound and home plate. Outfielders and the occasional shortstop defy the laws of physics and gravity to rob a home run or snag a foul ball. Games can change on a dime, or in the case of this last World Series, with two outs in the top of the 5th.
Get Shari Phippen’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
No walking off the field before the last batter is out. No dancing around with the ball or the puck waiting for time to expire. Even without a fat lady singing, the show isn’t over until it’s over.
Terrance Mann, James Earl Jones’ character in Field of Dreams, immortalized baseball’s impact when he encouraged Kevin Costner’s Ray Kinsella to keep his Iowa cornfield turned baseball field. Mann said:
“[People] will come Ray…they’ll watch the game and it’ll be as if they dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick they’ll have to brush them away from their faces.
The one constant through all the years has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it’s a part of our past. It reminds us of all that once was good and it could be again.
Oh… people will come Ray. People will most definitely come.”
Jones himself would, 25 years after the film’s release, compare baseball’s magic to the metaphysics of space.
It was that magic, that metaphysic, the history and mystery and precision and constancy and passion, and the hot dogs, all of that brought me to Boston that muggy May day.
Still jet-lagged from a red-eye flight and determined to find the biggest Diet Coke on the planet, I stepped out of our rental apartment and made my way down Brookline, the crowd growing as thick as the air was humid as we inched closer to Fenway.
Somewhere between the polish dog stands, the guys hawking beer, and the ticket scanners, something shifted in the air and in me. And when we walked through the tunnel and to our seats, which were close enough to tease the batter but no so close you have to take out a second mortgage to pay for them, well, I cried.
I cried again when we hit the 7th inning stretch and 40,000 people sang “buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack…”
I can’t even really explain why I cried. Maybe it was exhaustion, maybe it was finally fulfilling a dream that had always been just out of reach. Maybe it was feeling like I was where I belonged. I think that’s partly what Mann meant — baseball marks seasons of life, accomplishments, and the change from childhood to adulthood and all the moments in between.
Baseball is the game that welcomes all, from the cheap seats to the concierge. Everyone belongs in baseball.
I can’t tell you who had hits or strikeouts that night. I remember the Red Sox beat the Houston Astros. I remember learning how loud a capacity crowd is when nearly everyone boos Jose Altuve. I remember questioning my familial loyalty when I bought swag from the stadium store.
No matter who you cheer for or against, Fenway Park has to be experienced. Words fail, pictures can’t do it justice. Fenway, like so much of baseball, is a feeling. A million sights and smells and cheers and yells, all crammed into 8 acres in downtown Boston.
We took in Game 2 at Fenway the next night, every bit as magic as the first, with the biggest difference being nachos instead of hot dogs, before hopping on a plane and heading to the Big Apple, Citi Field, and my personal pantheon, Yankee Stadium.
If it weren’t for that dang thunderstorm.
