My Dad used to wax rhapsodic about the days of his youth, when Major League Baseball played two All-Star Games in one season. Whenever he spoke of this, we’d all just smile and nod and assume Dad had been hitting the grape juice a little too hard. But it turned out he knew his shit: from 1959 to 1962, there were two All-Star Games held each season.
Now, years later, I find myself in a similar situation.
I swear I can recall a Sox-Yanks game in the Bronx back in the early ’90s in which the Sox held the lead in the ninth with bespectacled wonder Greg Harris on the hill. The Sox secured the final out, but just as they were heading to the showers, the umps pointed out that a fan had run out on the field as the final pitch was being thrown, nulling and voiding it. (I should point out that I’m a little unclear on whether or not it was a runaway fan or an errant beer cup, Billy Joel CD or Gatlin gun. But something ended up on the field to get the umps all hot and bothered.) The Sox begrudgingly re-took the field, play was resumed, and, wouldn’t you know, the Yanks came back to win the game.
At the time, I was sickened. And while I probably wasn’t thinking conspiracy, it certainly seemed like Moneybags Steinbrenner had pulled a fast one on us all.
Today, however, I can recall very little about the game, a fact surely attributable to my over-reliance on cheap beer to get me through the day. And while I think this 1993 Sox-Yanks contest might be the game in question, I’m not totally sure, and can’t find anything online or from the fellows at the local bowling alley to support my belief that this game actually happened.
Did I dream it? Am I pulling a Clemens and “misremembering” a game against the Royals for a Boston-New York mash-up? If anyone out there has any leads, or a memory less alcohol-impaired than mine, do drop some knowledge in the comments section.
I’m not crazy. Nerdy, sociopathic and contemptible, yes. But not crazy.
