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Switch Hitter: A Red Sox Fan Sees The Rays Light

Tribune photo by JIM REED

Bob Chick, former Tribune staff writer, looks over his Red Sox memorabilia. Now he's a Rays fan.

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By BOB CHICK

Tribune correspondent

Published: October 10, 2008

Call it a breakup. After 40 years in the press box, a relationship finally ended. The Boston Red Sox were pushed out of the heart, replaced by the Tampa Bay Rays.

Easy, you say? Nothing like this is easy.

Not for someone who as long ago as 1946 cried himself to sleep when the Red Sox lost. Funny, the child never left me, only the crying. I could see the divorce coming, but it didn't entirely take hold until the Rays played the Red Sox in June. On an early summer night, I watched from the stands with my son David and his family, residents of Westford, Mass. He asked if I was pulling for the Red Sox or the Rays. Sheepishly, I told him Tampa Bay. Now it was clear. Now I had hope.

For too many years, the Rays looked like a used car beyond repair. There were always one or two good parts but too many bad ones. Nothing worked. They were hopelessly overmatched in the American League Eastern Division. The minor league system was in disrepair. Prospects few.

For me, it was tough to be a fan, especially when the team had a hard time drawing 10,000 for a midweek game. I felt like a loner. I needed something to cheer about.

Then along came 2008. A team that used to lose close ball games was winning those games in dramatic fashion. A team that for nine years was built without a solid bullpen, solid everyday players and a solid plan to turn it around, now was clicking.

Maybe it was the same annual hope that drives fans to the Red Sox or the Chicago Cubs. Maybe it was the way the team believed in itself. How could I ignore what was happening in our backyard? I wanted to be part of it. Now I am, almost like I felt so many years ago when the Red Sox owned my heart. Now it is Tampa Bay. And I'm not alone.

Love Affair Began Early

The Red Sox were still ingrained in me when they won the World Series in 2004. That helped erase the pain of 1946, when they lost to St. Louis in Game 7 after Enos Slaughter scored from first on a base hit, and the agony of 1948, when they lost a one-game playoff to Cleveland. I still carry that grudge.

My love affair with the Sox began early. As a high school student in the late 1950s, I drove to Sarasota to watch Ted Williams play because he rarely came to St. Petersburg.

And in the late 1940s, at age 9, I took a bus alone from my home in Quincy, Mass., to Fenway Park to watch the Red Sox, an unlikely journey today.

My dad would pull me out of school for a dental or medical appointment. I must have been the sickest kid around. The appointment was in the grandstand at Fenway Park.

Before I knew my multiplication tables, I'd fall asleep on the floor of the porch listening to the Sox on a brown standup Philco radio with its yellow lights on the dial that illuminated the room.

Red Sox crazy, it was.

No peak was higher than when my son, Bruce, played for the University of Georgia. The Bulldogs won the College World Series in 1990, and he was drafted by Boston in the 14th round. That day, my voice went on the disabled list. Maybe my mind as well. An official Boston hat rests on top of an old piano in the family room. Bruce tripled in his only major-league spring training appearance against Mitch Williams and the Phillies in Clearwater.

Rays Were Tugging

Yet the past 10 years, one eye has been on the Rays. A .500 season was but a dream. Manager Joe Maddon predicted Tampa Bay would move up in the standings, but what coach, manager or executive predicts a lousy year?

I purchased a Rays shirt and told my family I'd wear it when I went for my daily two-mile walk.

It was just another T-shirt, I said with a grin. I couldn't find a Rays hat anywhere outside the stadium, a vast change from my Boston heritage.

I looked once more for my 1948 scrapbook that still commands a position in the family room of my home. And the 25 pictures of the Boston Red Sox for 25 cents.

Yet the Rays were tugging.

It's easier to understand with one more quick brushstroke from the past. As sports editor of the St. Petersburg Evening Independent, I served on the baseball committee of the St. Petersburg Chamber of Commerce for several years and wrote as early as 1982 that the city seriously considered a downtown stadium where Al Lang Field was a landmark. The stadium issue was recycled a few months ago.

Yes, I've spent time watching rodeo on ESPN as it scrolls the Rays score across the bottom of the screen when the game isn't on television.

Yes, I'm a traitor even if a well-worn Red Sox T-shirt from the 2004 World Series hangs in my closet.

No, I wouldn't look good in a Rayhawk.

Thankfully.

Bob Chick was sports editor of the St. Petersburg Evening Independent for 19 years and later a Tampa Tribune sports writer for 15 years.

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