Scarcely had the confetti settled in Boston last October when the schedule for 2005 was released, and we Sox fans learned that our World Champions were to open their season against the Yankees. Self-satisfied grins spread across millions of faces (mine included) as we thought about how it would look and feel to see the banner raised proclaiming the Sox to be the Champions in the presence of our dearest enemies. The Banner would flutter in the stiff, cold April breeze, and the players — those who have not been dismissed to other teams around the country and around the globe — would jog out onto the field amidst a deafening roar of fan-gratitude, and would each receive his ring.
Now we find that this might not happen at all.
Of course the Sox will commemorate the World Series win at the home opener. The banner will be raised, and the team will be honored. But rumors have started to swirl to the effect that the ring presentation might be deferred to a later date, and might not necessarily be presented at a baseball game.
Dr. Charles Steinberg, Executive V.P. in charge of Public Affairs for the Red Sox, has mused that the rings might be presented in a more private setting — perhaps an event at the Fleet Center (home of the Bruins and Celtics), or maybe even at a hotel ballroom, as “a fundraiser.” I assume the public could attend this sort of thing by making a certain donation to a worthy charity — probably the Jimmy Fund, or the Red Sox Foundation.
These speculative sentences has hardly been finished before a towering storm out outrage erupted from the citizens of the Red Sox Nation. By the 11th of April, we will have waited four and a half months, on top of more than eight decades, to see this ceremony performed before our eyes. Now to be told that, not only might we not see the rings presented before the reluctant spectators in the visitors’ dugout, we might have to pay extra to see it happen. Extra, on top of the generations of frustrated hopes and seasons that ended in anger and tears. Extra, on top of the increasingly unaffordable tickets to Fenway, on top of the travel and lodging expenses we out-of-towners must pony up. Are we to be told that merely being paying fans wasn’t enough, and that in order to be shown a glimpse of a gem-studded bauble being presented to a grinning millionaire, we’d have to lay down more money, which these days, few of us can spare?
Of course, this brings up the question: Why is it so important to us to see this happen on Opening Day? Why is it so important to us at all? The rings are, after all, just gem-studded baubles, the recipients just grinning millionaires, paid outrageous sums to play a game. Why is it deemed an insult to suggest that we might turn some of this enthusiasm to good use by donating to charity in order to see the ring presentation?
The first thing to get out of the way is the matter of charity. Sox fans do not have to be goaded or lured into giving to charity. The WEEI Radiothon, held each summer to raise money for the Jimmy Fund has raised millions of dollars in the last few years. The Red Sox Foundation is the recipient of more fan generosity. Fans donate to charities backed by individual players. So why, I have to ask, is it necessary from the Red Sox high muckymucks to squeeze even more charity out of the fans by using the ring presentation as bait? Such an idea devalues the rings and the accomplishment they represent. It devalues the fans’ loyalty. It even devalues the charities that stand to benefit, as if no one would support them without seeing the rings as a reward.
There are other reasons we fans have a right to see that ceremony. For one thing, though we must pay, one way or another, to see the games, they are public events. In Boston, and among all who adhere to the Red Sox, the team might as well be in the public domain. Though most of us do not own even a penny’s worth of stock in the team, the Red Sox are the emotional property of every fan. It is not an exaggeration to say that generations have lived and died with the team’s fortunes. I know people who are still anguished about Slaughter’s Mad Dash, and about the crushing end of the 1949 season. People still mourn the shocking and untimely death of Harry Agganis. So many people think of Tony Conigliaro and wonder what might have been. And if the Sox had only had the wisdom to hang onto Fisk and Lynn…
Through all of this – through wars and bad trades, injuries, flukey plays (Piniella’s lucky stab, Dent’s drifting pop-up, Stanley’s wild pitch, Wake’s flat knuckler to Boone), we have not even for a fraction of a second doubted our loyalty to the team. We could no more give up on them than give up on our own dreams, whatever they may be. So many people, sifting through the wreckage of a lost season, have squared their shoulders and said, “NEXT year. NEXT year they’ll do better.”
Next Year has finally come, and we have already paid, in money and in loyalty, more than enough to be granted permission to see that ring presentation.
Do we need to see the rings presented in the presence of the Yankees? Many would answer this with a resounding YES! How many times have we had to endure the mockery of the “Nineteen-eighteen!” chant? How many times have we been called losers, chumps, fools for believing in the team that gave us only heartbreak, while the Yankees went on to compile twenty-six World Series wins? How many times have we had Babe Ruth shoved in our faces? How many times has that team slapped victory out of our hands, and then let us know about it again and again and AGAIN?
I don’t consider myself to be a spiteful person, but I was really looking forward to the Opening Day ceremony. The schedule made up probably two years ago has, with splendid irony, put that team on our field on our Opening Day as World Champions, and we should not turn up our noses at such a generous gift from the baseball gods. Had the tables been turned last fall – had, say, Dave Roberts not safely stolen second, or had Rivera nabbed the ball Mueller hit and turned it into a double play – or if he had simply induced three easy infield pop-ups to end the game and the Sox’s dreams – do we for a moment believe that the Yankees would not rub it in, when the Sox open the season in the Bronx on April 3rd?
OF COURSE they’d rub it in. They’ve been rubbing it in for over eighty years. Not that we should emulate them in this respect, but just this once – just this once! – let them be forced by etiquette to stand and applaud for my team.
If an Opening Day presentation is somehow impossible – if the rings aren’t ready that day (though the manufacturer has publicly assured the team that the rings will be ready whenever they are needed, and if Opening Day is the day, the rings – all 500 of them – will be there), then the presentation must still take place at a packed Fenway. It has to be done in front of the bleacher bums, the families in the grandstand seats, season-ticket holders in the box seats and corporate swells in the .406 Club. If it can’t be done in front of the Yankees, then it doesn’t matter who the visiting team is. Minnesota, Oakland, Kansas City, the Pirates – it doesn’t matter. The fans are the ones that matter.
How many times have we heard the players assert that the fans deserved the win, as a reward for years of undying support? If the fans deserved the win as much as the players, then don’t we deserve the rings as well? I don’t mean that we need material reward (though lower ticket prices would be nice); all we want is to see our baseball heroes receive the symbol of their amazing accomplishment, and we need to see it in the place where it happened – Fenway Park, the shrine of our faith. We need to see it, to feel it again, to cheer it again, to remember how it felt on the Night of the Blood-Red Moon, when Foulke fielded that little one-hopper, and so carefully tossed the ball to Mientkiewicz, and eighty-six years of drought vanished in a flood of happiness. We would look at our seatmates in the park or at home, and tell each other, for the first time or the hundredth time, where we were when they won, and what we felt, and what we did, and with whom we shared it.
That’s what the rings are about. They aren’t about what the Yankees didn’t do. They aren’t about the charity we give anyway. They are about perseverance against crushing odds. They are about loyalty that may be shaken but never broken. They are about forgiveness, and faith, and the love between a team and its fans.
POSTSCRIPT: February 24th
I don’t know if the Sox brass were kind of startled (and a little alarmed) by the eruption of outrage, or what, but today they have anounced that the rings will indeed be presented at the Home Opener. A gust of wind blowing in all directions from New England was widely believed to be a massive collective sigh of relief.
Annie