Fenway Field of Dreams

Fenway Field of Dreams: A Baseball Eulogy

By Peter Matthiessen Wheelwright

Among the many attributes of my late mother was her steadfast and irredeemable affection for the Boston Red Sox. She liked baseball, but she loved the Red Sox.

So, I’d like to share with you how this came to be, what it meant to her, and how hard I tried to redeem her from her Red Sox ways.

Now, to gloss the words of Boston Red Sox Poet Laureate, Dick Flavin: “The agony and the ecstasy” is a phrase that describes the highs and the lows of sports competition. But for older Red Sox fans, it’s more like the ecstasy of the agony. Prior to 2004, the team had groveled in despair for so long that its fans came to embrace the pain of it. They wore their defeats and disappointments like badges of honor and were known best for reveling in their wretchedness.

Not so with my mother…

Having had no earlier interest in baseball, she received Red Sox Grace in 2000, a year after my father died. He’d been a respectful but inattentive fan of the team, but she took it on as a calling and did not have to wait long for the team’s 86-year-long drought between World Series victories to come to an end. In fact, she got to witness four Red Sox Championships over the next twenty-plus years. It was a great run and spoiled her greatly.

With each World Series ring that her favorite player, David Ortiz, known as Big Papi, added to his finger, my mother’s relationship to the Red Sox bloomed from a mild interest to a fond affection and on up to a magnificent obsession wherein Big Papi would occasionally, apparently with affection of his own for her, occupy her dreams. In short, she became the penultimate Red Sox fan.

Now, just to be clear about my own position in this: I hate the Red Sox. That is because I am an unredeemable Baltimore Oriole fan.

But “hate” in the lexicon of baseball fans is not what that distressing word or practice means in everyday life. In baseball lingo, telling another fan that you hate their team is a sign of respect, an admission that your team has been bested many times by theirs, and an acknowledgment that their fan’s love for major league baseball is on par with your own. Indeed, you are fellow travelers in both the gloomy basement depths and glorious first-place heights of America’s most favorite heart-breaking sport.

Over the years, my mother and I would exchange text messages about our team’s affairs, and they would become particularly lively when the Red Sox were playing the Orioles. When her team was playing for a 3-game sweep of mine, she would feign an offer of condolences, even sweetly suggesting “Oh dearie, it’s ok if you win this last one.” I never believed her, and my disbelief would be confirmed by the playful taunting pause, and the follow-up message: “…not really.” When she sent me a picture of herself wearing her new Red Sox hat, I photoshopped a Baltimore Oriole over the Red ‘B’ on the hat and sent the revised photo back to her.

Such was our banter.

When the Covid pandemic hit, my mother—who had already crossed into her ninth decade—began spending more time in bed, surrounded by her books and newspapers, with the TV on for every Red Sox game. It was difficult not being able to share a dugout with her, so to speak, but she consented to have a FaceTime call with me every Sunday evening at 6 p.m.

We called our FaceTimes: “cocktail hour”—and indeed there was a bit of alcohol involved—however, our Sundays were more like a General Managers’ meeting where depending on the respective affairs of our teams, we would negotiate a bit of sympathy, trade some playful teasing, and offer up our team’s future prospects.

I came to treasure those Sunday evenings and felt lucky today for having had my mother to myself from within our large family. Some of our best, most fun, and funny times were on those Sunday evenings when we shared my hate for the Red Sox with her love for them.

My mother died on June 3rd, 2022. On that day, my team—the Baltimore Orioles—was in last place in the American League East. But when the season ended a few months later, the Red Sox had clinched that unfortunate honor.

It’s hard not to measure her passing with the Red Sox’s return to the woeful years before she took notice of them. It is as if the Red Sox had never forgotten their 86-year history of dashing the hopes of their acolytes but were simply waiting for my mother to stop paying attention to revisit it.

Of course, that is a silly idea, but it’s the kind of existential thought that diehard baseball fans have when they put their team at the center of the universe.

I once shared with my mother some additional words of Dick Flavin’s—that if you like a good train wreck, follow the Red Sox. Sooner or later, you’ll see one. We had a good laugh. But I’m glad that my mother did not have to witness the recent wreckage, even though I know that, like all baseball fans, she understood and accepted the cycles—that the emotional roller coaster ride of worst to first and back to worst again is—like life itself—just part of the game.

I will miss our Sundays.

This won the 2023 Jackie Mitchell Creative Nonfiction Prize.

Peter Matthiessen Wheelwright is a novelist, architect, Emeritus Professor at The New School, and rabid Oriole fan. As It Is On Earth, his first novel, received a 2013 PEN/Hemingway Honorable Mention for Literary Excellence. His latest novel, The Door-Man, was published February 1, 2022 (Fomite Press) and listed as one of ‘The Best Books of 2022’ by The New Yorker. His uncle is/was three-time National Book Award winner, Peter Matthiessen, who never quite understood his nephew’s love for baseball…Go O’s. www.peterwheelwright.com

Elliot Lin is a college student who spends their free time musing about sports and how they shape or reflect identity. You can find their other baseball-related illustrations here, or on Twitter @hxvphaestion and Tumblr.

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