“Fenway Burke,” the hero of “Frame Up,” the first novel in the “Fenway Burke Mystery Series” and I have a good deal of common ground.
He can’t name more than two players on the home team but grew up rooting for the Sox through thick and thin.
It’s a running joke throughout the entire series, because “Fenway” is not just a nick- name, it’s the actual name that appears on his birth certificate. He calls it his “Christian” name. One character’s comment was:
“I didn’t know there was a Saint Fenway.”
“You’re not from Boston, are you,” Fenway said.
My ole man was a Red Sox nut. I couldn’t swear to this, because I showed up late and missed it, but when he passed, back in FEB of 2000, four years before the Sox finally broke the curse, his very last words on Space Ship Earth were:
“Maybe next year.”
He was born in 1920, just two scant years after the Sox traded the Babe, and went to his grave never seeing them win in the series...Still he never lost hope.
As I got older, I thought I was immune, that they couldn’t hurt me any more. I was wrong.
Like Fenway, I would never spit on the flag, so I’m for the Sox but not a lunatic about it, still, I’m hardwired to root for the underdog.
For a while there, by being winners, they lost their panache.
They were true to form though and got it back in a hurry.
But then this past opening day they played a near flawless game against the Yankees.
It was a ray of hope, the very same ray they flashed back circa 1952 when my ole man took me to my first game.
It hit me, they still have the power to break my heart...God help us.