This weekend, I’m making my long awaited return to Fenway Park – a place I haven’t been in over 10 years.

As a young lad, going to Fenway was a yearly ritual. I’m pretty sure my first game was during the 1990 season – the Roger Clemens era, yes, but also the Mike Greenwell and Jack Clark era. That was the season the Red Sox set the record for grounding into the most double plays (174). Now the Sox are better known for records like selling out every seat since 2003.

I’ll never forget that first game though. On the way in, taking the Green Line T from Framingham, MA, my Uncle Ronnie informed me that when someone on the opposing team strikes out you bound out of your seat and yell “Sit Down!” as menacingly and berating as possible. With my hat already nearly pulled fully over my eyes and a glove that may or may not have had velcro capabilities, my uncle probably thought it was more likely that I’d be asleep by the fourth inning.

Well, unless his true intentions were to create the most jawing 6-year old in New England that night, he should have never gave me those instructions. I’m pretty sure the game went into extra innings, and the Redx Sox pitchers K’d the opposition a few times during warm-ups too (how else could I have told no-less than 35 batters to “Sit down!!” – which is what I approximate).


I’m sure there’s backyard whiffle ball or youth league soccer glory from the late-80s documented on a beta-max in the attic, but I can’t really recall that. I remember vividly however giving the Red Sox opponents – let’s call them the Blue Jays (remember how annoying the early-90s Blue Jays were?) – the business though.

In honor of my sure-to-be triumphant return to Fenway…as well as punk little kids everywhere, I’m once again putting the sports blogger intelligentsia to task, and asking bloggers far and wide to send me a brief anecdote on:

My Earliest Sports Memory

I’ll post the best on Friday in A.M. (email: mikeehayes@gmail.com)

While you channel nostalgia check out photos of kids goofing off at sports events or engaged on the little tyke field of battle…