Friday, September 07, 2007
Magic
Mighty Quinn has been putting up a picture representing the Red Sox' magic number each time it changes. Today he's got Kevin Romine's 1987 Topps (yes, the "wood" year) card. Romine wore number 16, hence his pic for the Sox magic number being 16.
My thoughts turned to that fateful day in 1988 when Romine shone brighter than the sun on a cloudless--well, he did a freakin' awesome thing. 1988 was a great year for me. I was 12 years old, and spent my summer collecting Coke cans. Remember the Disney characters? Mickey was on regular Coke, Minnie on Diet, I think....all the Disney characters were represented, each on its own type of Coca-Cola product. Our holy grail was Doc. We'd found all the other dwarves, but despite rumors that the little geek could be found on Diet Minute Maid Orange Free Light, or something, we never did locate him. Anyway, my neighbor and I each had a stack of soda cans as high as the ceiling.
And after the down year of 1987, the Red Sox were back. That wasn't evident until mid-July, though. We had tickets for the Friday game after the All-Star break. You know the story: Joe Morgan had taken over as interim manager during the break. I think Thursday's game was rained out, which allowed us to see both games of Friday's doubleheader. The Red Sox swept the Royals, on their way to a 12-game winning streak, and an even longer home winning-streak. The next day, Saturday, I was over at my friend Mike's house. I remember my dad was there, too, as he must've been either picking me up or dropping me off. The Red Sox were the Saturday national Game of the Week, but I think either the Yanks or somebody else were being shown on our local stations. Or maybe the Connecticut station had Sox and the NY one had the other game. I remember at one point the Sox game was put into a little box in the corner of the other game, which Mike was probably watching just to spite me, since he's a Yankee fan. The point is, we got to see the bottom of the ninth begin. The Sox had come back from a 6-0 deficit, and Kevin Romine ("Caviar" in our house--derived from "Kevvy R.") was leading off. He homered over the Monster to win it, and the Sox continued to roll.
That was a really special season, with the Sox beating out the Yanks for the division title. I was doing a search on Romine, and found this much better article about his big day.
Red Sox at O's tonight, Lester vs. Cabrera. The O's have been eliminated from A.L. East contention. So I guess that Baltimore writer who predicted, like, a month ago, the O's would finish ahead of the Sox was wrong.
My thoughts turned to that fateful day in 1988 when Romine shone brighter than the sun on a cloudless--well, he did a freakin' awesome thing. 1988 was a great year for me. I was 12 years old, and spent my summer collecting Coke cans. Remember the Disney characters? Mickey was on regular Coke, Minnie on Diet, I think....all the Disney characters were represented, each on its own type of Coca-Cola product. Our holy grail was Doc. We'd found all the other dwarves, but despite rumors that the little geek could be found on Diet Minute Maid Orange Free Light, or something, we never did locate him. Anyway, my neighbor and I each had a stack of soda cans as high as the ceiling.
And after the down year of 1987, the Red Sox were back. That wasn't evident until mid-July, though. We had tickets for the Friday game after the All-Star break. You know the story: Joe Morgan had taken over as interim manager during the break. I think Thursday's game was rained out, which allowed us to see both games of Friday's doubleheader. The Red Sox swept the Royals, on their way to a 12-game winning streak, and an even longer home winning-streak. The next day, Saturday, I was over at my friend Mike's house. I remember my dad was there, too, as he must've been either picking me up or dropping me off. The Red Sox were the Saturday national Game of the Week, but I think either the Yanks or somebody else were being shown on our local stations. Or maybe the Connecticut station had Sox and the NY one had the other game. I remember at one point the Sox game was put into a little box in the corner of the other game, which Mike was probably watching just to spite me, since he's a Yankee fan. The point is, we got to see the bottom of the ninth begin. The Sox had come back from a 6-0 deficit, and Kevin Romine ("Caviar" in our house--derived from "Kevvy R.") was leading off. He homered over the Monster to win it, and the Sox continued to roll.
That was a really special season, with the Sox beating out the Yanks for the division title. I was doing a search on Romine, and found this much better article about his big day.
Red Sox at O's tonight, Lester vs. Cabrera. The O's have been eliminated from A.L. East contention. So I guess that Baltimore writer who predicted, like, a month ago, the O's would finish ahead of the Sox was wrong.
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