I don't usually have positive things to say about the Boston Red Sox. While I am a lifelong Celtic fan and loved the Boston Bruins back when I liked ice, I was also a Yankee (and Montreal Expos) fan. Split allegiances were not that unusual in New York's North Country, where sports teams from New York City, Boston and Montreal were all in play.
In fact, if I had gone to Fenway Park before Yankee Stadium or Jarry Park, I might have been a member of Red Sox Nation today.
Thankfully, I did not.
But when I came across this, I had to give the Sox my first shout-out.
From the New York Times:
“Hi ya, young fella.”
Babe Ruth greeted Arthur Giddon as he did most 13-year-olds, even those in uniform. Giddon chatted with the Babe for a moment but tore himself away because he had a job to do. It was 1922, and as a Boston Braves bat boy, Giddon had to break out the bats, polish some spikes and otherwise outfit his players for that afternoon’s game at Braves Field.
Eighty-seven years later, on Saturday, Giddon will reprise his role for his now-beloved Red Sox — as a special 100th birthday present, he will serve as the team’s honorary bat boy prior to the game against the rival Yankees. The same hands that delivered bats to Billy Southworth and softened Rube Marquard’s glove will do the same for Kevin Youkilis and Jon Lester.
Now at bat boy for the Red Sox: No. 100, Big Pappy.
“I’m going to do whatever they tell me to do, like any good bat boy,” Giddon said in his home in Bloomfield, a suburb of Hartford, before referring to the Boston leadoff hitter Jacoby Ellsbury. “I’m hoping that after Ellsbury gets the first hit I can go out and grab his bat, but I don’t think they’re going to allow me to do that.”
Read the rest here. And Happy Birthday, Big Pappy...
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