Baseball through the ages

In the midst of hot-stove-league transactions, I am reading a terrific book called "The Housekeeper and the Professor'' about a forgetful Japanese math professor (his memory lasts only 80 minutes) and his doting housekeeper.

Baseball plays a key role in the book, as it is an important way that the prof and the housekeeper's 10-year-old son connect.

When the three of them finally go to a game together in Hiroshima, they had a reaction that reminded me of my first trip to a Red Sox game more than 56 years ago..

"As we reached the top of the stairs that led to the seats above third base, all three of us let out a cry,'' the housekeeper-narrator writes. "The diamond in all of its grandeur was laid out before us - the soft, dark earth of the infield, the spotless bases, the straight white lines, the manicured grass. The evening sky seemed so close you could touch it, and at that moment, as if they had been waiting for our arrival, the lights came on. The stadium looked like a spaceship descended from the heavens.''

No one ever compared Fenway Park in Boston to a space ship - more like a rickety old barn. But, as I recount in my memoirs (anticipated completion date at this rate: 2020) I had a similar reaction the first time I saw the field.

"If I ever get to heaven, my arrival could be no sweeter than that moment I saw Fenway Park,'' I wrote.

"We loaded up into our ’41 Buick, and drove to the Salem railroad station. On the trip to North Station in Boston, I looked out wide-eyed at the passing factories, apartments and triple-deckers, as they got denser and denser as we approached what even then everybody called the Hub of the Universe.

When we got off the train, I intently held my Dad’s hand as thick crowds of tall strangers surrounded us as we squeezed into a Green Line car for the 15-minute subway trip to Kenmore Square. We made the short walk to the ballpark, and then started walking up the ramp towards nirvana.

"And there is was: the scene burst upon me. The bright sunlight reflecting off the emerald grass that I had before seen only as a shade of gray on our black and white TV. And there were my heroes: Ted Williams, Jimmy Piersall, Jackie Jensen, Sammy White, Ted Lepcio, in brilliant white uniforms with red trim.

"In a later item for his paper about our trip, (for a column that reads much like a modern blog, by the way) my Dad reported that his normally shy son ate and talked his way through all nine innings, until the Kansas City Athletics were deservedly vanquished.

"It was as perfect a day as I've ever had in my life.''