T his decade of crouching behind home plate at Fenway Park, Rich Gedman still saw himself as a kid in the center-field bleachers. Lou Merloni set major league records for utilityman popularity. And when Carlton Fisk left Boston in midcareer, he looked at himself in a White Sox uniform and wondered, “What am I doing here?”
For New England children who grow up to play for the Red Sox, their dual identities of player and fan are as inseparable as the swirls of a candy cane. They know how the next generation of children from Southie to Maine to the Berkshires idolizes them, because they were once those children. It can be a blast. It can be a burden. It is something that Rocco Baldelli, the pride of Woonsocket, R.I., knew was about to land on his shoulders, as he played his first game for the Red Sox on Wednesday night after signing with them as a free agent in the off-season.
“It’ll be easier than if you started your career here, that’s for darn sure,” another Boston outfielder, Mark Kotsay, told Baldelli in the clubhouse the other day.
“Think so?” Baldelli said.
“Because you have some experience in how to handle people to a certain extent,” Kotsay said. “You’re going to be able to say no.”
“Down in Tampa, I didn’t have to deal with that stuff,” Baldelli said. “Not even close to what I’m going to have to deal with now. I’m not going to be able to talk to everyone who says, ‘I’m from Rhode Island!’ I’m going to have to worry about what I’m doing on the field.”
Baldelli took the field against his former team, Tampa Bay, the only one he had played for since graduating from high school in 2000. Starting in right field, he received a standing ovation in his first at-bat, in which he struck out. He went 1 for 4 in Boston’s 7-2 loss.
Six months ago, Baldelli’s single for the Rays drove in the run that ultimately knocked the Red Sox out of the American League Championship Series. Now he is one of them.
Largely because of a cell disorder that leaves him easily exhausted, Baldelli’s role with the Red Sox will be limited. He will serve as a part-time outfielder who starts and pinch-hits only against left-handers. But his imminent popularity in Boston seems unlimited. Humble, unfailingly polite and still only 27, Baldelli is home.
“He’s a hot April away from being one of the fan favorites here,” said Merloni, a Framingham, Mass., native who played infield for the Red Sox from 1998 to 2003 and now works as a local sports analyst. “You’ve already got David Ortiz, Josh Beckett, Dustin Pedroia, Kevin Youkilis. You’re going to have a fourth outfielder in that group, which isn’t easy.”
The Rays left-hander Scott Kazmir, who faced his old friend in that first at-bat Wednesday night, added: “It’s only fitting that he’s with the Sox. Every time we came to Fenway he had a whole cheering section. This is kind of where he belongs.”
New Englanders who play for the Red Sox enjoy a unique stature: Gedman, Fisk, Jerry Remy, all the way back to Mike Ryan of the ’67 Cardiac Kids. Most of all, it was Tony Conigliaro, the heartthrob who embodied the promise of spring and decline of fall more than any of them, especially after his near-fatal beaning in 1967.
Baldelli’s favorite player while growing up in Woonsocket, an hour’s drive southwest of Fenway, was Gedman, who was raised in Worcester, Mass. Baldelli walks down the same dank Fenway tunnel as Gedman, Ted Williams and Carl Yastrzemski knowing exactly what he is entering, literally and figuratively.
But this tale has its limits. Baldelli was not a crazed Sox fan growing up. He also rooted for the Atlanta Braves and went to Fenway only once or twice a year. He said he signed with Boston as a free agent this off-season because of the team’s first-class reputation, not to be close to home. And he already is establishing boundaries even tighter than Rhode Island’s. Beyond dodging the barrage of requests for New England luncheon appearances, he is refusing to beg teammates for extra tickets.
“We all get six, so six it is — I’m setting a precedent early,” Baldelli said with a laugh. “I don’t want to make it seem like I don’t appreciate what people feel. I understand it. But it’s tough. I’m not going to be able to talk to everyone, say hello to everyone and meet up all the time.”
Merloni recalled how his family and friends had the hardest time with him being a homegrown Red Sox. Mama Merloni was not prepared when she took her groceries to the Framingham Stop ’n’ Shop cashier and was told, “Your son stinks — he struck out with the bases loaded.”
Red Sox Manager Terry Francona said of Baldelli: “I think he likes the fact that he can see his family, his friends. But I also think he’s getting a quick understanding that he’s going to have a lot more friends.”
As for at-bats, Baldelli will mostly pinch-hit and occasionally start in either right field (spelling J. D. Drew) or center field (Jacoby Ellsbury) to give those left-handed hitters a rest.
His cell disorder, reclassified this winter from mitochondrial disease to channelopathy, has been less troublesome than it was last year, when he returned in August and hit .263 with four home runs in 80 at-bats. The condition still keeps him from playing more than a few days in a row and participating in all the training drills, which he felt awkward about until the Red Sox captain, catcher Jason Varitek, pulled him aside early in spring training and told him not to think twice about it.
“He’s an easy guy to root for,” third baseman Mike Lowell said. That sentiment is shared even by opposing players, who have followed Baldelli’s triumphs, then trials, and now his return to New England.
“Even when he was with us, we’d joke with him that he’d end up in Boston,” Rays outfielder Carl Crawford said. “We always felt he was going to be there someday anyway.”
Source:
nytimes.com
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