Status Updates From '78: The Boston Red Sox, A ...

“…there had been a seismic shift in the public consciousness, as though people wanted to turn down the noise, especially the incredible violence […] As if Boston had become some American version of Northern Ireland, a city that no longer seemed safe, a city that had come apart, Humpty Dumpty lying on the ground in pieces, waiting for all the king's horses and all the king's men to put it back together again.”

“One of the great ironies of the decision to pair South Boston and Roxbury in the first phase of busing was that it took two of the poorest neighborhoods of the city, two neighborhoods that had a high percentage of welfare families and single mothers, and used them as the test case; two neighborhoods that, race aside, had more in common with each other than they did with any of the suburbs that ringed Boston.”

“To Williams, hitting was science, something to be analyzed like some lab specimen under a microscope. To Yastrzemski, it was instinctive, something he had done all his life.”

“Yet there was an acknowledgment that these were two great teams that would be playing the next day, two teams that had survived tumultuous seasons, two teams that had come to understand that baseball could be like a lover you never really can know, a game that always surprises you just when you thought you had it figured out.”