Senior Year
A Father, a son, and High School Baseball
Dan Shaughnessy
* * *
A Mariner Book
Houghton Mifflin Company
BOSTON • NEW YORK
* * *
Books by Dan Shaughnessy
Courtside
(with Gary Hoenig)
One Strike Away
The Curse of the Bambino
Ever Green:
The Boston Celtics
Seeing Red:
The Red Auerbach Story
At Fenway
Fenway
(with Stan Grossfeld)
Spring Training
(with Stan Grossfeld)
The Legend of the
Curse of the Bambino
Reversing the Curse
Senior Year
* * *
First Mariner Books edition 2008
Copyright © 2007 by Dan Shaughnessy
All rights reserved
For information about permission to reproduce
selections from this book, write to Permissions,
Houghton Mifflin Company, 215 Park Avenue South,
New York, New York 10003.
www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Shaughnessy, Dan.
Senior year : a father, a son, and high school baseball
/ Dan Shaughnessy.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-0-618-72905-0
ISBN-10: 0-618-72905-4
1. Baseball—Miscellanea. 2. Shaughnessy, Dan.
3. Fathers and sons. I. Title.
GV867.3.S53 2007
796.357'62—dc22 2006030477
ISBN 978-0-547-05382-0 (pbk.)
Book design by Melissa Lotfy
Printed in the United States of America
VB 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
* * *
To:
♦
JOHN P. FAHEY
ANDRE VAN HOOGEN
JOHN COLANTONIO
JOE KING
MANNY CONNERNEY
JOE SICILIANO
♦
And all those who coach and
teach our children...
* * *
Contents
Introduction ♦ 1
Groton to Newton ♦ 7
Sam ♦ 25
September ♦ 51
October ♦ 63
November ♦ 83
December ♦ 103
January ♦ 119
February ♦ 131
March ♦ 147
April ♦ 163
May ♦ 183
June ♦ 199
Acknowledgments ♦ 227
Introduction
It was getting dark and I was standing in the parking lot beyond the right field fence at the high school baseball field. The kids call it "third lot." It once provided parking for Newton North High School students, but that was before too many kids got cars, so now it's reserved for faculty and seniors during school hours. At this moment, third lot was two-thirds empty and the only remaining cars belonged to the players on the baseball team, plus a handful of parents and friends.
I had my keys in my hand. I'd already said goodbye to my old high school coach, who'd made the drive down from New Hampshire to sit with me and watch my son play. It was a cold New England May day and the game was running long and I had to get going. I was due at a wake for the 21-year-old son of my cousin. The wake was taking place in the small town where I was born, an hour's drive to the west, and the notice in the newspaper said visiting hours would be over at 7 P.M.
It had been an emotional day, sitting on the cold metal slats, watching Sam hit, catching up with my old coach, and thinking about what my cousin Mickey was going through. I hadn't seen Mickey in over a year. We were never especially close. That happens when you have fifty-one first cousins and move away after college. But it was easy to remember everything I admired about Mickey. He was a terrific high school athlete, only two years older than me. He seemed to be better than everyone else at everything: Football. Basketball. Skiing. He was strong, tough, skilled, and movie-star handsome. He had his own rock 'n' roll band. Chicks dug him and guys wanted to be him. It would have been easy to hate the guy, but he was generous and caring, and when I would see him years later he was always humble about his high school greatness. He'd made a fine life for himself, working for the gas company and raising two kids with his wife. Now he was getting ready to bury his son, young Michael, who had died at home in bed, another victim of the national scourge of Oxy-contin. Michael had been a high school football stud, just like his father. He had been good enough to win a scholarship to Wagner College, and there had been a picture in the local newspaper of Michael signing his letter of intent. Now, just a couple of years later, his picture was in the paper again, accompanied by one of those impossibly sad stories about a promising young life that ended too soon.
So I was feeling a little guilty as I stood in third lot, jangling my keys and watching the high school baseball game groan into extra innings. I didn't want to miss the wake, but I remembered that earlier in the day Mickey's brother had told me, "We'll be there long after seven." Besides, Sam was scheduled to lead off the bottom of the tenth and he was due. He had been hitting the ball hard all day, but he was sitting on an 0-4 and I knew his small world would tumble into chaos and panic if he went hit-less for the day. Such is the fragility and self-absorption of the high school mind.
I was wondering about my own mind, too. I am a professional sportswriter, specializing in baseball. I've been a columnist for the Boston Globe for more than fifteen years, covering Olympics, Super Bowls, World Series, Stanley Cup Finals, NBA Championships, and Ryder Cups. I traveled with the Baltimore Orioles, Boston Celtics, and Red Sox back in the days when writers really traveled and lived with the ballplayers. I've written ten books, seven on baseball. I can go to any game, any time I want. And yet I find myself fixated on the successes and failures of Newton North High School and Sam Shaughnessy, my only son and the youngest of three ballplaying children. Sam's sisters had fun and fulfilling seasons in high school volleyball, field hockey, and softball, and I was amazed at how following their games connected me to their school and our community while kindling so many thoughts of my own high school days thirty years earlier. Probably that's why I found myself suddenly skipping Red Sox road trips and canceling TV appearances because of weather-forced changes in the high school baseball season. Random Sox fans wanted to ask me about Curt Schilling and Jonathan Papelbon. I'd rather talk about Newton North lefthander, J. T. Ross.
The score was still tied when Sam walked to the plate to open up the bottom of the tenth, and we were definitely losing the light, making it even tougher to hit. The Braintree coach came out to talk to his pitcher. I looked at the sky. I looked at my watch. This was it. I'd stare through the chain link for one more at bat, then get in the car. Darkness was going to make this the last inning, even if the score was still tied after ten.
And then, in an instant, the baseball was screeching over the first baseman's head, over the rightfielder's head, over the chain link, and onto the trunk of the 1998 Toyota Corolla that Sam had driven to school that day. It rolled across the lot and came to rest under a tree. I retrieved the ball while he circled the bases.
There was no such thing as a "walkoff" home run when I went to high school. We had read the stories about Bobby Thomson's Shot Heard Round the World, and all my friends and I knew that the Pirates' second baseman Bill Mazeroski had won the 1960 World Series with a homer in the bottom of the ninth ... but nobody talked about "walkoffs" until Kirk Gibson dropped one on Dennis Eckersley in the 1988 World Series. Eck popularized the term, and no
w there are walkoff homers, walkoff doubles, walkoff walks, even an occasional walkoff balk.
In any event, Sam Shaughnessy had his first high school walk-off homer (a drive-off walkoff, given the dent in the Toyota) and knew enough to take his helmet off after rounding third base. He had seen Red Sox slugger David Ortiz do this a lot. A helmetless head is less likely to be pounded by your teammates.
I walked in from right field and delivered the baseball to my smiling son. I told him not to worry about the dent on the roof of the trunk (not sure my dad would have been so casual about the damage done). Then I got in my car and drove to the wake.
The country roads took me back. They took me to the place where I grew up, the place where I experienced all the highs and lows that were now happening to Sam. I remembered how it felt to have a moment like he had today, and I knew he would hold it in his heart for the rest of his life. Sports have a way of defining our lives, particularly teenage lives. The local high school basketball games were a big deal in my hometown when I was growing up. Most of our parents came to the games and sat in the back row of the small gym. The successes and failures of our team made for conversation around the post office and drug store in the center of town. We connected through sports.
Two decades later, when my classmates filled out a reunion form, there was a question regarding your favorite high school memory. I was struck by how many answered "Dances after the Friday night basketball games." These were not just the ballplayers and cheerleaders. These were kids who had never played on the team, but as grownups they had fond memories of cold nights in a warm gym, when a sporting event was the center of our tiny universe.
The trick is to keep moving forward and not let the glory days of high school become the highlight of your life.
When I wheeled into the funeral home a few minutes after seven, there was a line the length of a football field waiting to pay respects to Michael. Inside, I joined my sisters, cousins, aunts, and uncles and waited for the line to dwindle. In my mind, I pledged not to speak of why I was late or of how the game had ended.
A couple of hours later, the line completely exhausted, I knelt before young Michael and said a prayer. Inside the open casket, there was a photo of Michael celebrating a high school football victory with his teammates. When I stood up, cousin Mickey was there, sobbing, spent, but still strong enough to hug me with the force of a linebacker.
It is a universal truth that it's virtually impossible to say anything appropriate in a moment like this. Nothing is worse than a parent losing a child. The loss is unspeakable and incomprehensible. Only those who have experienced such a tragedy can possibly know what it feels like. But the events of my day had given me special perspective, and for once I felt like I knew exactly what to say.
"Michael must have given you a lot of joy."
"Oh, Danny," he said, smiling through the tears, pointing to the photo inside the casket. "You should have seen him play. And not just because he was my son, either. That was the Acton-Box-boro game. One of the greatest nights for all of them. I loved watching him play more than anything."
There it was. I knew then I had made the right decision, staying an extra inning to see the end of a high school baseball game while my sisters and cousins and aunts and uncles were already at the wake. And as I drove home, back across the roads of my youth, I knew I had to write something down.
Groton to Newton
It's embarrassing to admit, but I kept a diary in high school. Such a dork. Today, a teenager might get away with calling it a "journal," but only cheerleaders and pretty-in-pink girls keep a locked book under the bed and begin each entry with "Dear Diary." Naturally, I still have the two small books (covering junior and senior years), and it's hilarious to read through the well-worn pages. I have a 35-year-old niece who was born during my senior year of high school, and during a recent holiday gathering, I fetched the book to see what I had written on the day after she was born. And there it was. After several paragraphs about sitting next to Eleanor Lehtinen in study hall, and getting a pimple on my nose, and Friday night's big win over Nashoba Regional, there was a single closing line that read, "Mary had a baby girl last night."
In The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager, Thomas Hine wrote, "Figuring out where they fit in—to the universe, the economy, their social circle, their family—is a project on which teenagers spend a lot of their time and energy."
That, and looking in the mirror and thinking about the next game, of course.
My hideous, humble journal serves as a reminder of how immature and insecure one can be at the age of 18. Looking back, I'm amazed how busy and needy I was in those final days of high school. But I don't need the diary to remember what it felt like when the next game was the most important event in my life. There's an 18-year-old forever locked away inside all of us; that's why you'll always see balding men with big bellies driving sports cars, buying young women drinks, and pulling hamstrings playing full court basketball.
The joy of playing ball never leaves us. If you have hit a baseball over a fence or finished first in a race or even just sat on the bench—satisfied to be a part of something with your friends—you never forget the feeling. It starts the first time we kick a ball into a goal or beat our sister in a footrace when we are 4 years old. It might be in a backyard, on a beach, or in an asphalt alley behind a three-decker house. You don't have to be on Wide World of Sports to experience "the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat": it happens in your earliest days of dodge ball. Not everyone plays the piano or violin, but just about every kid boots a soccer ball and runs a race. Fortunate fathers and moms get a second go-around. Watching a child pass through the same passages connects every parent to his or her own youth.
I had the good fortune to be born in Groton, Massachusetts, in 1953, the youngest of Bill and Eileen Shaughnessy's five children. Bill was a sales executive at a bag company, a particularly boring and low-paying job. Eileen was a nurse. They met when he had his appendix removed at Cambridge City Hospital, where she worked. Family folklore holds that Mom and Dad's first date was a wake somewhere far north in Maine. My father had been pestering the pretty young nurse for a date, but she informed him that she didn't go out with patients. He persisted. She finally caved in, but only because she needed a ride to the wake of one of her roommate's parents. Way to go, Dad. Sounds like the definition of desperation.
My father was a smart, handsome man. He had attended Boston College, where he matriculated with Thomas "Tip" O'Neill, later the longtime speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. It turned out that the Shaughnessys had at one time rented from the O'Neills in Cambridge, and my dad liked to dismiss the great speaker by informing us, "I put the bum through college."
My dad's brother claims Bill Shaughnessy was quite the sportsman in his youth, but by the time I came along, Dad wasn't moving much, unless he was picking up sticks and stones in our rather large backyard (our twelve-room farmhouse was purchased for $7,000 with help from the GI Bill one year after Dad came home from Germany). Dad was thirty-nine years older than me and I never saw him run. We never played catch or did anything athletic together. I guess that's what friends and older siblings were for. This was the 1950s and '60s, and fathers dressed like Ward Cleaver. Bill Shaughnessy wore white shirts and black shoes every day of his working life. He did a little yard work around the house, but that was it. There was one day when he came home from work and found me by the side door with a baseball bat in my hands, and for some reason he decided to offer a little instruction. He told me that he had been a pretty fair power hitter in his day and that he'd once scattered some local girls with one of his prodigious blasts off a park bench. Then he proceeded to demonstrate how he would walk into the pitch as it was coming toward home plate—for additional power. I was only 10 years old, but I knew that was dopey. I thanked him for the ridiculous hitting lesson and watched him go inside where he'd sit in his brown Archie Bunker chair, read his paper, and maybe wind down with a highball be
fore dinner.
My dad never made much money, but somehow kept things afloat and managed to send all five kids off to college. He was a master money manager; we were so frugal we stripped tinsel off the Christmas tree and used it again the following year. When I was in high school, and the other four kids were gone—one still in college—Dad borrowed money from me. My diary entries are quite clear on this. Dad borrowed $250 of the dough I'd saved from working as a soda jerk at the local ice cream and fried clam joint, Johnson's Drive-In. Two-fifty was a fortune in 1970. Minimum wage was $1.60 per hour and making seventy-five cents in tips in one shift was noteworthy in my daily log.
Poring through the pages of my tattered journals, I am struck by how many of the daily entries began with "Dad and I went to the dump this morning." Apparently that was how we bonded. We would load up the trunk of Dad's four-door Ford sedan and off to the dump we'd go, toting bags of papers and trash (coffee grounds, eggshells, and other perishables were discarded in separate barrels and left on the curb to be taken to local pig farms). Dad spilled a lot of wisdom on those dump runs, but I cannot remember much of what was said. The conversation I remember best came in November 1963, when we drove to the dump on a rainy Saturday, the day after our president was assassinated, and he told me that people would be talking about this for the rest of my life. He saved the sex talk for a day when he was driving me to the orthodontist (I was 14!). The dump run was for talking about school and sports and family issues. There are no dumps anymore, only "landfills." Sadly, my kids have never been to a landfill. Or a dump. I have had to find alternative locations for heart-to-heart, dad-to-kid chats.
My mom was even less athletic than my dad. She was a stunning, strong woman who had helped raise her seven siblings (six brothers), making lunches, scrubbing piles of laundry, ironing everything (even socks and underwear), and washing dirty dishes by hand. When she became a wife and mother, it was more of the same. We never had a mechanical dishwasher or clothes dryer. My siblings and I share goofy winter memories of bringing frozen sheets and T-shirts in from the clothesline. We called them "the boards."
Senior Year Page 1
