When I was a boy, maybe eight or nine, my father took me aside to show me a baseball. I’d seen the ball before. It had been sitting on his dresser for as long as I could remember. But I’d never taken it off the dresser for a closer look or even given it a second thought.
My father, after graduating from West Point in 1934, was a cavalry officer–horse cavalry–at the Presidio of Monterey in California. It was there he met and married my mother, the daughter of the post commander. The Presidio was also where he met and spent a baseball season with Dom DiMaggio, the younger brother of Joe.
Lieutenant Barnes was the coach of the post’s baseball team, the Presidio Rounders, and DiMaggio was his centerfielder. DiMaggio was a teenager, 18 or 19 at the time, and was either doing summer Army duty at the Presidio or was a ringer who merely worked there as a civilian. It was never clear which one it was. DiMaggio was the star of the team.
My father explained all this and pointed out the autographs on the ball. Every player had signed his name. One of them, my father said, had gone on to play in the big leagues. Not only that, he was still playing for the Boston Red Sox. And his signature was on the ball in neat script: Dom DiMaggio.
This may seem like an insignificant incident. But for me, it was a life-changing moment. I was instantly a follower of the Red Sox. In those days–the 1950s–it was impossible to get sports scores in timely fashion. There was no Internet or cable, and not much on the radio or TV. You had to wait for the next day’s newspaper. When it came, I turned first to the sports section, developing a habit that’s never gone away.
Dom DiMaggio soon retired. I was sorry to see him go, but his absence changed nothing. What I didn’t realize was the special phenomenon at play: There are no former Red Sox fans. It’s for life.
And there’s another phenomenon. Being a Red Sox fan is time consuming. You think about the Red Sox a lot, musing about their lineup, wondering why they couldn’t get enough good pitchers. Over the years, I suspect I’ve spent hours, days, even months, contemplating this or that about the Red Sox.
When I was 10 and 11, I played Little League baseball. I made sure to get number 10 on my uniform. That was the number of my favorite Red Sox player, Billy Goodman. I saw the Red Sox in person in the late 1950s and 1960s when they came to Washington, where I grew up, to play the Senators. I saw Ted Williams. But in 1972, after the Senators moved to Texas, the closest the Red Sox came was Baltimore. And that was a hike.
When I was 35, I spent a year in Boston as a Nieman Fellow at Harvard. The program is for journalists. When I was interviewed, I told the judges that one reason I wanted to get the fellowship was so that I could attend Red Sox games. I don’t think the judges believed I was serious. But I was, and I saw many, many games. This was 1977 and 1978, and tickets weren’t hard to come by.
Years later, I met Walt Day at a Christian conference at, of all places, Harvard Law School. He was chaplain of the Red Sox. He invited me to talk to the team at the chapel the next morning, Sunday. I accepted. I don’t recall what I said. But I do remember Tim Wakefield, the knuckle-baller, sat right in front of me. My son, Freddy, sat in the back of the room, next to Nomar Garciaparra.
There’s a sequel. My friend Lionel Chetwynd, the Holly-wood screenwriter and producer, knew the owner of the Pittsburgh Penguins hockey team. So when my son was 10, Chetwynd arranged for a hockey stick used in a game by Mario Lemieux, and autographed by him, to be sent to Freddy.
You can probably guess the rest. This was a life-changing experience for Freddy. He became a passionate Penguins fan. When we went to two recent playoff games in Washington between the Penguins and the home team Capitals, he insisted on wearing a Pens jersey. He’s a fan for life.
I never saw Dom DiMaggio play, and I never met him. But my father did and that was enough. DiMaggio died recently at 92. My dad was proud of his association with DiMaggio. After showing me the autographed ball, he put it back on his dresser. It stayed there until the day he died.
FRED BARNES
