On a lovely, albeit breezy (maybe even windy) May afternoon - nary a cloud in that blue, blue sky, temps in the 60's - Polar Park in Worcester opened for business yesterday. I wasn't there. Even if they had been allowing more than 25% occupancy of the stands, I wouldn't have dragged out, even if I had gotten a ticket. Which I probably could not have. Worcester-ites are buying everything up and, hey, they deserve first dibs for sticking it out in Worcester.
Me? I couldn't flee fast enough. One after the other, in chain reaction, my sibs fled as well. I have one cousin who lives in a suburb. (Curiously, she did not grow up in The Heart of the Commonwealth.) So I'm out there a few times a year to hang with her, and to make an occasional stop in at the cemetery where so many of my family members - dozens of relatives (across four generations) descended from Bridget and Matthew Trainor, my Grandmother Rogers' parents are buried. They'll all be spending eternity hanging out with each other in St. Joseph's Cemetery in Leicester, just outside Worcester. Actually, maybe not eternity, as the cemetery is on a spring-fed hill and it's getting pretty mushy. Lots of the headstones are at a tilt, and it's probably just a matter of time before my parents caskets start slip-sliding away and land in the laps of the Sisters of Mercy who are buried at the flat part at the bottom of the hill.
But I digress.
Maybe not this season, but I will be heading out to Worcester at some point to catch a game. Polar Park (named because it's partially underwritten by Worcester's own Polar Beverage) looks kind of nondescript from the outside, but on the inside - which is where it counts - it looks like a thing of baseball beauty.
I always meant to take in a game or two when Worcester had a Can-Am team, the Worcester Tornadoes. But they were there and gone (2005-2012) before I had a chance to make the trek out to watch them play at Holy Cross' Fitton Field. (While on the subject of the Tornadoes: what a name. On the one hand, it's excellent. On the other, the name commemorates a horrific event: the 1953 tornado that wrecked a goodly section of Worcester and killed nearly 100 people, including the grandparents of one of my high school classmates.)
But the Woo Sox aren't the Tornadoes. None of this Can-Am stuff. This is Triple AAA baseball, the major league of the minor leagues. And these are Red Sox prospects, baby. Not to mention that at some point during the season, there'll be authentic MLB Red Sox sent down to Worcester to recuperate from an injury or get over a slump. And there'll be minor leaguers called up to the mother ship.
NESN, the network that broadcasts the Red Sox games, broadcast the Opening Day ceremonies, and the first home game, for the Woo Sox.
And I couldn't help but put it on for a bit.
I was in and out of the den. Even I have better things to do than listen to a parade of pols being interviewed. But it was fun to see them trot out a bunch Red Sox oldies: Pedro Martinez, Jim Rice, Luis Tiant, Jim Lonborg and Worcester's own Rich Gedman, who spent many years catching for the Red Sox. (Six degrees of Kevin Bacon alert: my sister Trish went to high school with Gedman.)
James Taylor and his son Henry sang the National Anthem, Taylor sporting his Number 9 (Teddy Ballgame) Red Sox cap. They sounded a bit flat to me, but that might have been the wind. (I'm so sorry that Taylor won't be performing at Fenway this year. Sweet Baby James is getting up there, but I hope he has one more Fenway outing in him. I've seen him perform there a couple of times and it's just terrific.)
They also had Celtic great Bob Cousy to do the "Play Ball" thing. Cousy is a native New Yorker, but he's lived in Worcester since he came to play basketball at Holy Cross in the late 1940's. The Cooz is 92, but he still sounds plenty sharp and he looked pretty good, even though he needs a haircut: his white hair was just whipping around in the wind.
When I took my walk today, I wore a Woo Sox cap. Representing!
The Woo in Woo Sox comes from Worcester's nickname, The Woo. No one called Worcester The Woo when I was growing up, but the Miss Worcester Diner was known as the Miss Woo, so there's that. The team mascot is Smiley, because one of Worcester's claims to fame is that the smiley face was invented there. (Wish I'd hung on to the original I had when I was in high school. Maybe it would be worth something...)
And notice the heart in the Woo Sox W. That's because Worcester's formal nickname is The Heart of the Commonwealth.
Anyway, yesterday, at least for a while, my heart was in Worcester.
Looking forward to getting out there, which will probably be next year.
In the meantime, inquiring minds want to know: do they play "Sweet Caroline" between the top and bottom of the eighth?
No comments:
Post a Comment