Baseball, sadly, is not what it once was. Football is more popular around the U.S. and basketball has carved out bigger audiences too. Baseball just messed up too many times. Whether it was canceling the World Series due to a strike or the owners taking baseball back from the commissioner or, well, we could go on. Baseball has just screwed up plenty of times.
Yet it still speaks to something in our character, as the movie Field of Dreams points out. There is something elemental about the game, something beautifully
American. It’s generally fair, it’s democratic by nature and, as George Carlin pointed out in his classic routine Baseball vs. Football…in baseball, you go home.
And in the classic 1975 World Series between the Boston Red Sox and the Cincinnati Reds, home was exactly where Carlton Fisk was going.
With the score tied 6-6 in the 12th inning, Boston catcher Fisk was up to bat and he connected. The ball looked like it could either be a foul ball or a home run and Fisk, no doubt both exhilarated and exhausted, waved it to stay true.
It did, and Boston took home a legendary win.
Didn’t matter ultimately: in the 1970’s, nobody was stopping the Big Red Machine and the Reds won Game 7, 4-3.
Carlton Fisk, though, had a moment for the ages.
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