If These Walls Could Talk

by Jerry Remy

  We wound up winning 91 games, but that was only good enough for third. We were 11½ games behind the Orioles. There were some good individual years. Lynn led the league with a .333 average and had 39 homers and 122 RBIs. Rice batted .325, with 39 homers and 130 RBIs. Eck won 17 and Torrez had 16 wins.

  Yaz got his 3,000th hit and hit his 400th home run. His 3,000th hit came against Jim Beattie on September 12. It was a single.

  I don’t think there was a hangover effect but there was a lot of pressure on us after we took it to the limit the year before. We were called failures for not getting it done, and we felt like we had something to prove to everybody. It’s hard to prove when you have already won 99. It’s really hard to feel like, okay, we have to win 105. I mean, those things don’t generally happen.

  3. My Coaching Career

  My coaching career didn’t last very long, but I enjoyed it and I had some good kids to teach. I only coached the home games, so I never had to ride the buses like a lot of minor league coaches and managers do.

  It was 1986 and the Red Sox had started to have a pretty good crop of talent. I had future major-leaguers like Ellis Burks, Jody Reed, Sam Horn, Jim Corsi, and John Marzano on the Double-A New Britain Red Sox. We played at a very large old ballpark called Beehive Field. It was definitely more of a pitcher’s park. The Double-A Red Sox played there from 1983 to 1994.

  Burks was terrific at the minor league level. You could talk to him about something and he’d go out and do it. Ellis was just a great kid. He is a great example for everybody else. He was a high draft choice and a guy we knew was going to be a big-leaguer, and he knew he was probably going to be a star in the big leagues, but you’d never know it by his actions. He was so approachable and such a good guy that everything that he got, he deserved. He had a great career. He had trouble in Boston with his back but then he got healthy and he put up big numbers in Chicago, Colorado, and San Francisco. Ellis wound up with 352 home runs and hit .291 for his career. It was great that he was able to end his career with the Red Sox in 2004. While Ellis got hurt and wasn’t able to play much, I know he had a big role on the bench and in the clubhouse as a positive influence. Yeah, he was special, and you could see that at Double-A. He was a guy that stood out at every game.

  The one funny story I have about that year was dealing with Marzano, who unfortunately died very young at the age of 45. He was a first-round pick, 14th overall in the 1984 draft, but his style was one that I didn’t particularly warm up to.

  One night I was coaching first base and he hit a ground ball to shortstop. Like most other grounders he hit, he didn’t run it out. This would really irritate me because I drilled home to all of my players to run hard down the line, because running hard is one thing you can control.

  I always kept a stopwatch with me at first base and I would time guys down the line. One night, we’re playing a game and he’s the last hitter of the game, and he grounded out. He never ran hard to first base. He just jogged down there and never touched first base and the game was over.

  So I kept the clock going and I never shut it off. I put it in my locker overnight and I let it run the whole next day until Marzano came to the ballpark. I told him, “John, come here. Do you want to see your time to first base last night?” I showed him the clock, and I think he got the message about running down the line.

  It was one of those kinds of things that I enjoyed doing as a coach. I wanted to teach the kids to play the game the right way. And when I did something that got my point across, I felt I had succeeded as a coach.

  It’s funny because I enjoyed coaching the guys you knew weren’t going to make it as much as I did the ones who did make it. Those first guys busted their asses down the line. They were out on the field early every day trying to get better. They didn’t take anything for granted. They would go through a wall to try to impress you. But most of them never made it. And that’s sad for me because those kids had dreams, and as hard as they tried they were never going to take that leap to the big leagues (even though they deserved a lot of credit for getting as high as Double-A, which isn’t easy to do).

  Quite frankly, it was tough on me. I wanted these kids to succeed. That was the most difficult part of coaching because you worked just as hard with those kids as you did with the high draft picks who were going to make it and you just wished there was something you could do to get them over the hump. But as a big-leaguer myself I knew that most of them didn’t have the skill set to make it.

  I remember that Reed was really struggling at Double-A, and he was a guy who was going to play in the big leagues. That was plain to see. He was hitting about .228 and I had a beef with Lou Gorman because Lou called me to get my opinion about calling him up to Triple-A. They needed somebody at Triple-A but I was against it. I wanted him to fight out of this slump. I thought it was important to do that because when you’re in the big leagues and you’re in a slump, you’ve got to fight out of it. There’s no place to hide, and I felt like it would be more beneficial for him to remain at Double-A after being in this terrible slide and fight his way out of it and end up having a decent year. And I thought that would serve him well throughout his career.

  I told Lou how I felt, but they would have none of it. They wanted him to go up. And he went to Triple-A and he had a fresh start. That .229 average that he was carrying at Double-A was gone, and I guess he had a pretty decent year at Triple-A, hitting .282. Eventually I guess I was wrong, but that’s how I thought at the time. I thought, let’s teach this kid at this particular level how to fight out of a slump, how to battle through a year, how to fight through adversity. I thought that would be more important for him in the long run than giving him a fresh start.

  That’s also the same year that I had Glenn Hoffman, who had been the major league shortstop with the Red Sox and one of my longtime teammates, down there with me, because he was going through some difficult times.

  They were always checking on Hoffy to see how he was doing. We got very close and we did a lot of talking. It was more of a mental thing with him. We’d spend most of our time talking, instead of working out. He just had a meltdown. It was very sad to see because he was such a nice guy and I loved him. I tried to do the most I could possibly do to help him out. I think the pressure of Boston was a little bit too much for him.

  He was down there with me for quite some time. As a matter of fact, one time they sent me home from coaching just to be with him. We would work out in one of my neighbor’s batting cages, and we’d end up hitting 10 balls and talking for a half hour. I was kind of like his psychiatrist.

  It was kind of weird, but I loved him so much that I’d do anything for him. He’s a sweet guy and he’s spent years as a successful coach for the Dodgers and Padres. He’s just one of the best people I’ve ever been around in this game.

  4. Ah, Fenway

  For me, Fenway feels like a second home. As a kid growing up in Massachusetts, not all of the games were on TV, but we listened to them on the radio with my grandfather hoping someday I’d be able to go to Fenway Park.

  I believe I was nine years old the first time I set foot in Fenway. I remember walking up to that runway between home plate and first base and the first thing that hit me was the Monster and the color, that green color. It was just amazing.

  The Red Sox were taking batting practice and you saw the Green Monster, the green grass, and you saw the colors of the uniforms, which really stood out to me. My memory is forever ingrained with the red piping and the red-white-and-blue socks they wore in those days. It’s a memory that I’ll never forget.

  Our family used to go to the games quite often because in those days you could walk up and get really good seats. Personally, I used to hope that we’d get to go to a doubleheader. I remember when we did get to go to one, the lights would come on at some point right before it got dark. I had chills just being there because as a kid, the Red Sox were something you listen
ed to and something you saw on TV. Being there was like an out-of-body experience.

  I remember driving up from Somerset, up Route 24, and you would finally get to that Braintree split. I used to start looking for the lights not realizing that you couldn’t see them until you were about a block away. Every ballpark I’d go by and saw lights I would say, “Is that Fenway?” And my father would say no, my grandfather would say no. We’d continue on and I must have said this four or five times before we actually got there. Then when you get there, it’s in this little neighborhood and it was stunning to me to see the light towers. I can remember it like it was yesterday, and to be honest I’ve never really lost that feeling of the first time I ever saw Fenway in person.

  I still get the same feeling as I drive in now, even though I come in from a different direction. But I always take a peek when I get to the Mass Pike and you look at the city and you say, “I’m going there.”

  It has a very special place in my heart because my love has always been baseball and my love has always been the Red Sox and my love has always been Fenway Park.

  This is the most unique sports venue in the world. Look around the ballpark. There’s a triangle in center field. There’s the red seat in the right-field bleachers where Ted Williams hit that 502-foot home run, the longest in Red Sox history. I always got a kick out of David Ortiz and Mo Vaughn, both of whom hit monster homers with their incredible left-handed power, questioning how anyone could hit one anywhere near that seat.

  There’s Pesky’s Pole down the right-field line. There’s still a ladder on the Wall. There’s Canvas Alley. There’s a Green Monster and now there are Monster Seats. The place is so unique.

  I think that’s why when there was talk about a new Fenway by the Yawkey ownership, it was met with quite a bit of resistance from Save Fenway groups that wanted no part of a new place.

  When the Henry/Werner/Lucchino group came in, I know Larry Lucchino tried to have a new ballpark built. After all, that’s what he was known for after building Camden Yards in Baltimore and Petco Park in San Diego. But he found out very quickly, first of all, how difficult it was a get a ballpark approved in Boston. The Patriots had tried hard to build a stadium in Boston and it got so frustrating for them they had to build it in Foxborough.

  The fondest memories of players and games for me was watching Pedro Martinez pitch. Those weren’t just regular baseball games, those were events. It was like a heavyweight championship fight and I used to look forward to every fifth day as a broadcaster when he pitched because he totally changed the atmosphere of the whole ballpark just by being Pedro. You could sense it.

  As a player you can feel the intensity at Fenway. There were times when we weren’t playing well, and we didn’t really want to come home because we knew they were kind of waiting on us and they’d let us have it. It was almost like we’d be better off staying on the road, so we could win a few games before we went back home. In those days it was a little bit dead because they didn’t have the music they have now. It was kind of a quiet place to be until something happened, whether it be bad or good. If it was bad, they would boo. If it was good, they would clap.

  But when Pedro pitched you could see the Dominican flags waving everywhere in the ballpark. They started hanging the K signs in center field. It was electric in there and Pedro knew it. He played to the crowd. He gave them every reason to cheer and support him. He loved them, and they loved him. It was a love affair between the fans and Pedro like I’d never witnessed before.

  There were a lot of players over the years who the fans loved, from Tony Conigliaro to Carl Yastrzemski to David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez and Roger Clemens. But how this crowd responded to Pedro was like nothing I’d ever seen. He started filling the ballpark. He started making Fenway a tough ticket because the Red Sox started selling out every game. It became fashionable to go to a Red Sox game, and good luck getting a ticket for a Red Sox game when Pedro was pitching.

  It had a totally different feel compared to when I played. The first time I played was in a sandlot tournament. Red Sox Hall of Famer Frank Malzone was my manager and it was the first time I got a chance to play on the field. I played shortstop then. I remember I couldn’t understand a word Frank was saying because he was chewing tobacco and he was hard to understand anyway. But I was sitting at Fenway Park, Malzone, one of the greatest players in Red Sox history was my manager, and I was playing on this field! I couldn’t believe it.

  In those days you could see the park was getting old and run down. It was strictly baseball because there were no amenities to speak of. I don’t think it was really special to a lot of people back then, but it has definitely become that now. Today it’s a tourist attraction and the Henry ownership has put so much money into the ballpark to modernize it yet preserve the wonderful things that we all love about it.

  Adding the Monster seats was an incredible idea. That was the work of Janet Marie Smith, a fantastic architect who built Camden Yards and Petco Park and also refurbished Dodgers Stadium. There’s a whole different vibe in the ballpark now prior to the games, during games, after games.

  One of the greatest events I ever saw there was the 1999 All-Star Game. Because the All-Star Game is a national event, we didn’t broadcast the game, but I watched it. Pedro was amazing in that game. Here he was, pitching at Fenway Park, and he’s pitching against the steroid team on the other side and he just wanted to make them look silly, and he obviously did make them look silly.

  Martinez’s strikeout victims included Barry Larkin, Larry Walker, and Sammy Sosa in the first inning and Mark McGwire and Jeff Bagwell in the second inning. But I will say this: after that amazing performance, I felt like Pedro was never quite the same. I think he started to have a few arm issues after that. I know he just wanted to make that National League lineup in the steroid era obviously look like a bunch of fools and he did.

  A game I was at as a kid was the day before the final game in 1967, when the Red Sox beat the Twins. Rumor has it I was there the last day when they clinched the American League pennant, but I wasn’t. The rumors had me running on the field and all that but that wasn’t the case at all—I watched that one on TV—but I was there the day before, sitting in right field because those were the only tickets we could get, and that was pretty special.

  That 1967 finale against the Twins was a memorable game for Fenway. Rico Petrocelli secured the final out of the 5–3 win by catching a pop-up from the Twins’ Rich Rollins and the ballpark went nuts. Fans flooded the field and hugged and grabbed the players. It was a scene you’d never see today with top security everywhere. I know a lot of people claimed they were there, but it was truly a blissful moment for any kid who grew up loving this team.

  There were other great moments at Fenway.

  Fisk’s iconic Game 6 home run in the 1975 World Series will forever be in the minds of Red Sox fans. It’s the bottom of the 12th and Fisk hit a ball high and close to the left-field line. Fisk is standing near home plate waving the ball fair with his arms and then it’s determined that it’s a fair ball and the ballpark goes nuts.

  Also, Roger Clemens’ 20-strikeout game against the Seattle Mariners on April 29, 1986. Clemens was so dominating. He didn’t walk a batter. It was a chilly night at the ballpark and there were only 14,000 people in the stands. The Celtics were playing an important playoff game at Boston Garden that night and the focus of the Boston sports fan was mostly on that game, Larry Bird vs. Dominque Wilkins.

  Roger allowed three hits and one run, a solo homer by Gorman Thomas in a 3–1 Red Sox win. He won the first of his seven Cy Young awards that season.

  There were obviously a lot of Ted Williams moments, but two stick out even though I’ve only read about them. One was the July 9, 1946, All-Star Game, when the game really meant something. Williams went 4-for-4 with a home run, four runs scored, five RBIs, and a walk.

  And then his farewell game on September 28, 1960
. He ended his career with his 521st home run. At the tender age of 41, he hit .316 with a 1.096 OPS.

  Of course, 1967 will always be special for me, because that’s when I think Red Sox fans became true Red Sox fans. That didn’t even happen during the Williams era, as great as Ted was, and being the greatest hitter who ever lived, not many people came to the ballpark to watch him. But ’67 captured a whole generation of Red Sox fans.

  Ted Williams crosses the plate after hitting a home run in his last game on September 28, 1960. (AP Images)

  That team, comprised of homegrown players, was the team that made us all Red Sox fans for life. And anyone in their 50s, 60s, and 70s knows what I mean. In the 1967 World Series, teachers would bring the black-and-white TV to their classes so the kids could watch the start of the games before they were dismissed. That’s how much everyone was involved. Of course, back then the games were in the daytime, and kids got to watch and really get into the team.

  Playing at Fenway for me was a challenge because I was a left-handed hitter and I didn’t have enough power to use the wall in left field to my advantage, so they could play me shallow and take base hits away. Whereas Yankee Stadium was much bigger in left field, so they had to play you honest—if the ball goes by them you’re talking about extra bases, which is why I always enjoyed playing there more than I did at Fenway as it suited my style a little bit better. But for guys like Wade Boggs and Yaz and Fred who could hit the left-field wall, it was heaven. I’ve always said that Fenway was built for a left-handed hitter who could hit the ball the other way and get some really cheap hits.

  Mechanically it keeps you on target because if you’re shooting for the opposite field it means your head and shoulder are on the ball, so it’s a paradise for left-handed hitters, not for home run hitters. If you’re pulling the ball because it’s so deep out to the bullpens in right field, it can put you in some deep slumps.