Philocrites

Red Sox parade watch.

by Philocrites

I watched the Red Sox victory parade from an almost perfect spot: The northeast side of the Longfellow Bridge, directly above the duck-boats' route up the Charles River. They did seem to take forever to get into the water — we heard the roar from the street-side crowd and could see the very tops of the boats as they traveled up the road past Mass General Hospital, but then we waited a good 45 minutes before the boats came churning up the river from the Museum of Science dam. The crowd on the Boston shore successfully got the wave going up onto the bridge while we waited, although I couldn't see whether it kept going all the way over to Cambridge. And when the boats finally came by, seven or eight guys stripped down to their boxers and hurled themselves out into the river from the bank: a curious sort of homage! (Update: Here's a boston.com photo taken from very near my position on the bridge.)

Alarmingly, some dolt threw a baseball directly at Pedro Martinez as his boat came by. I couldn't believe what I was seeing when the ball hit him right in the head. It took a second to realize what had happened, and then a lot of us booed whoever threw it. (I'd guess the boat was 50 yards from the bridge when he was hit, and maybe only 15 yards from the shore.) Pedro, who was perched up almost on the roof of the duck boat when he was hit, was holding his head as the boat passed directly under us. Later, I walked over to the Cambridge side and saw the boats come back along the Cambridge shore; Pedro, who may have had a towel on his head, was smiling and waving again, so I don't think he was very badly injured. I hope that fan got a black eye or two for his stupidity.

Even though the day was misty and cool, every last person was grinning ear to ear. The Red Line trains stopped midway across the Longfellow Bridge so passengers could watch the boats go by, and the train conductors blew their horns and waved out the windows at people like cheerleaders. One man came up to me and called his wife to come over to see the button I was wearing: "I gotta feeling!" the button reads, with a picture of John Kerry superimposed on the Red Sox logo; "This is our year!" "I hope so," the guy said. "I hope so!"

Copyright © 2004 by Philocrites | Posted 30 October 2004 at 3:39 PM

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