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We carried you
in our arms
on Independence Day.
And now you throw us all aside
and put us all away.
– “Tears of Rage,” Richard Manual and Bob Dylan
I’ve had this propensity to weep for aging male athletes waving to crowds since I was ten years old. That year I got choked up watching the long ovation for John Havlicek during his last game, even though to that point I hadn’t really followed basketball very closely. It didn’t matter, I guess. I was still moved by all the gratitude and sadness of the roaring mob’s goodbye. As the years went by I began to anticipate these moments—last games, retirement ceremonies, the hanging in the rafters of numbers, limping arthritic reunions—the way some other person might anticipate going to a sappy movie to “have a good cry.”
And so I was looking forward to last night, when dozens of Hall of Famers would be introduced prior to the All-Star Game. And things were looking good. I was taking it slow, working myself up to a nice happy wet-eyed moment in which I would stand there in my living room alone, clapping and croaking hoarsely “Yeah! Yeah!” In fact, I had already risen from the sofa and was pacing around the room by the time they got to the third basemen, so I think I looked away from the screen before getting a good look at all four Former Greats standing there. All I saw, besides the unmistakable figures of Brooks Robinson, Mike Schmidt, and George Brett, was some bearded guy in a Yankees cap.
“Graig Nettles?” I wondered. That didn't seem right, but who else could it be?
Turned out it was the guy pictured here.
I’m pretty sure he was the only Former Great on the field who chose not to wear the cap that is on his head in his Hall of Fame plaque. Shortly after Boggs’s introduction, Dave Winfield was introduced wearing a Padres cap, but he acknowledged his bond to the Yankees by producing a second cap and holding the two caps up together. Gary Carter did something similar a bit later. This seemed the classy thing to do, the only way to pay tribute to both fan bases that had supported those players for many years.
Of course, it would have taken a bit more courage to stand there in Yankee Stadium in a Red Sox cap than in a Padres or Expos cap. Before I describe a few of my immediate reactions to Boggs' failure to display such courage, let me just say that I hate it when the ritualistic sentimental fugues I lapse into during Former Great moments get marred by baser emotions. Spite. Hurt. Anger.
Gutless, I said. You’re dead to me, I said. You’re a nauseatingly sycophantic ass-kisser, I said. Nobody thinks you’re cool, I said, tears of rage starting to form.
We carried you in our arms, Wade Boggs. It was on Independence Day, as a matter of fact, right there in Yankee Stadium, and a real Yankee, Dave Righetti, struck your ass out to clinch a no-hitter. It was humiliating for this Red Sox fan to see, salt in deep wounds, but I stuck with you. I stuck with you when they started to write that you weren’t a team player. I stuck with you despite your robotic lack of flair, despite your abundantly obvious self-absorption, despite your embarrassing involvement in the Margo Adams mess, despite the hints of cowardice in your “pulling a hamstring” to protect your batting title lead over a real Yankee, Don Mattingly. When you wept in the dugout in 1986, I wept too. And if you’d had the guts to wear the cap that is on your plaque in the Hall of Fame, I'm sure I would have wept again, but happily, joyfully.
It took a while, but I had finally become able to accept the existence of the harrowing image of you up on a goddamn horse in pinstripes. You got yours, I could finally say (though it took a World Series win or two for me to be able to say it; I don't deny that I'm a small man). After all, you deserve it. You were a fantastic hitter, a scientist so devoted and pure that you turned science into art. You came along during a rough stretch in my life and the life of my team, my awkward adolescence coinciding with the dreary, lonely Last Days of Yaz, an era that would have been devoid of hope and light without your yearly assault on the summit of the Sunday batting averages. I want to see you in my mind in a Red Sox uniform, peppering doubles off the Monster. But now all I see is you in pinstripes, up on that horse. So Wade Boggs, here’s my response to your appearance last night: Fuck you and that horse you rode off on.
Yesterday afternoon, Boggs was driven up Sixth Ave. with media lover and onetime Met Eddie Murray, but not on horseback. (here's my faraway photo: http://tinyurl.com/57qban)
Being a Mets and Orioles fan, I always liked Murray, no matter how dour he was. But I can't have chicken for lunch without thinking about the dreaded Boggs and his facial hair, so I hate him for that, among other things. And last night at the stadium, he was one big chicken.
Amen, brother.
P.S. By the way, care to explain the Boggs autograph?
Would you have ever guessed in the late 80's that Roger Clemens & Wade Boggs would be held in such low regard?
In fact, the media and ESPN conspire to make me tire of it, playing out any game between these two teams as if it were the only thing going on in baseball.
Last night's over-glorification of the artificially lame-duck edifice called the same thing that the replacement will be called was another example of that which will make me ardently support the Tampa Bay team, whatever the heck they want to be called, now and forevermore.
Go Rays.
Oh, and she hates that Boggs on horse photo as well - maybe more than you do.
Who would have ever thought that Wade Boggs, of all people, would bring Yankee fans and Red Sox fans together - in their hatred of him.
My own opinions are vastly different than my mother's.
I do not dispute that. At all. And his classlessness last night was par for his sorry course.
As a Yankee fan, what moved me to frothing rage was the appearance of Steinbrenner, drooling, wheeled out on that cart . . . I choked with my usual inarticulate frustration at that venal, disgusting convicted felon.
But the horseback picture is a mixer I can't resist; exhibit it to a certain fan and it's an explosive combo as inevitable as a bundle of dynamite and a fuse in a Warner Bros cartoon.
But I bet to differ on Boggs -- I think he's hugely underrated as a player, and don't really care what hat he wears at a symbolic exhibition game in the Bronx. I'm sure he'l wear a Rays cap when he's a guest at the celebration of their first pennant or the opening of their new stadium, and I seem to remember Boggs being all sentimental at Fenway several times in the past few years too. This behavior doesn't bother me a bit.
http://www.medicalhairrestoration.com/images/wade_polaroid5.jpg
http://www.firejoemorgan.com/2005/04/glossary-of-terms.html
you have to scroll down a ways (sorry not technically savy enough to give you a link directly to the term).
It's hard not to respect Boggs as a player-for me, the prototypical Boggs hit was that 180 foot single to left, just over the shortstop's head and just in front of the left fielder.
As a person, he's that guy who you meet at your kid's playdate who tries to sell you something.
"I seem to remember Boggs being all sentimental at Fenway several times in the past few years too. This behavior doesn't bother me a bit."
Sentimental about Fenway? Again, just look at the horse picture. The guy's a scumbag.
As a fellow Sox fan of similar vintage...I couldn't have put it more succintly.
Thank you
Now if Roger Clemens had been invited, and hadn't been nabbed red-handed as a steroid-cheat and consigned to some minimum-security purgatory, what cap do you think he would have donned?
Blue Jays?
;o)
In any event it appears that 7 is also greater than 26.
This reminds me of a story. When I was a teenager (98 I think the year was) I went to Sox-Yanks game at Fenway. Pretty good seats, but unfortunately right in front of 2 extremely arrogant Yankees fans. As they came to their seats (in the 2nd inning) they were holloring, "World Champions in your row! Excuse us, we're WORLD CHAMPIONS in your row!" All the way to their seats. It burned me to no end. I can't even describe how angry I was. I vowed to have revenge one day. Well in '05 I had my chance. Sox-Yanks tickets in NY. Of course I got to the game on time, with a good hour to spare, but I could see it all unfolding in my head. Approaching my seats and saying the exact phrase that spun me up so long ago. I couldn't do it. I still wish I had, and it wasn't out of fear or stage fright. I just saw younger yankees fans with their Dad's sitting around and couldn't bring myself to that level. I really wish I could have done it. Anyway, my point is, let us be arrogant. It's our time in the sun.
The funny part is the '26 ring' T-shirts are wrong. The Yanks only have 23 rings, the first WS rings were issued in 1932 by the Yanks.
31 Rings on a t-shirt only symbolize championships. If you're really bothered by that then I think you might want to see someone.
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