A Day of Light And Shadow

A Red Sox fan, so devoted he listened to their games over the phone in Paris, recounts the glittering glory and the chilling finale of the one-game Boston-New York playoff of 1978.

... In February, with a cable-television bill, a notice had arrived: coming attractions. exciting baseball action. red sox baseball on channel f. The notice had said nothing else, but it had stopped my heart. Having lived in New York and having been a Red Sox fan since childhood, I had spent hours sitting in parked automobiles on the East Side of the city where reception of WTIC in Hartford, which carries Red Sox games, was the clearest. Eventually I had obtained through a friend in Boston an unlisted air-check phone number that tied directly into WHDH broadcasts. From anywhere in the world one could hear whatever it was that WHDH -- and, subsequently WITS, with a different number -- was airing at any moment of the day or night. WHDH was -- just as WITS is -- the Red Sox flagship station, and one had only to be prepared for an exorbitant phone bill to listen to any Boston game, or season. Between 1970 and 1977 I had spent nearly $15,000 listening to Red Sox broadcasts. In a hotel in Paris I had heard George Scott strike out in Seattle. From my father's home in London I had heard George Scott strike out in Detroit. From Palm Springs, Calif., I had listened to at least 100 complete games, attaching the phone to a playback device that amplified the sound. One could actually walk around the room without holding the receiver. One could even leave the room, walk down the corridor and into a bathroom to stare glumly into one's eyes in a mirror and still pick up the faint sound of George Scott slamming into a double play in Baltimore

The most significant athletic event in my lifetime.

Fifteen thousand dollars in phone bills.

Endless Red Sox thoughts on beaches, and in cables, and while watching movies with Anthony Quinn in them.

And most of the summer of '78 spent in a darkened kitchen with Channel F....

Issue date: Feb. 6, 1979