By his own calculations, Tom Cullity, a former math teacher, figures that out of the 81 years he’s been alive, the Boston Red Sox [team stats] have broken his heart 72 times.
Next to God, his late wife, his two sisters and their families, our boys of summer have been the undeserving recipients of this gentleman’s eternal devotion.
Last Wednesday night, as Tom put it, “The Red Sox put a dagger right through my heart.” Again.
You should understand that when Carl Crawford booted that last out Wednesday night, Tom Cullity was sitting in his wheelchair inside Baltimore’s rain-soaked Camden Yards.
Because Tom is in the fifth stage of kidney failure, he needed two dialysis treatments at Baltimore’s Mercy Hospital in order to see the Sox fold and break his heart for the 72nd time.
“And if he’s still here next year,” said Susan Jarvis, the niece who drove her uncle to Baltimore to see those last three games, “we’ll definitely be going back to Camden Yards.”
Why Camden Yards?
“Because the common man can no longer afford to go to Fenway Park [map],” Tom said yesterday, from the comfort of his South Boston living room, surrounded by the scrapbooks and mementos that document his love affair.
Sixty-five years ago, Tom and his sister, Marion, slept on Lansdowne Street so they could buy $1.50 bleacher seats to see the Sox lose the 1946 World Series to Enos Slaughter and the St. Louis Cardinals.
“That was the game where Johnny Pesky held the ball,” Tom said, still wincing. “Everybody in the whole park was screaming at him.”
The last 72 years of Red Sox history is etched into his brain, all the names, the plays, the batting averages. “On Sundays, after I finished serving Mass at St. Francis de Sales in Charlestown,” Tom recalled, “I’d walk from Sullivan Square to Fenway to save a dime in carfare.
“Sunday was always a double-header, and for 50 cents I could see Jimmy Fox, Bobby Doerr, Lefty Grove, Joe Cronin and Ted Williams.
“Cripes,” he sighed, “for the common man to take his son to a ball game today, it costs him a week’s pay.”
Tom Cullity understands the laws of big business. Though he can call back every piece of Red Sox history, good and bad, over the last seven decades, Tom is not trapped in the past.
“I know it’s become all about the money,” he said, “but I worry about what’s happened to the pride. You have players like Jacoby Ellsbury [stats] and Dustin Pedroia [stats], who play with everything they have, like all those players I used to watch. What I can’t understand is how you can be making all this money for playing a game and still be stuck in this . . . this malaise, almost as if you don’t care.”
On the coffee table in front of him, a tiny Fenway, surrounded by a miniature skyline and team pennants, revolved to the sounds of “Sweet Caroline.”
Source:
No comments:
Post a Comment