This weekend, I played two rounds of golf in weather that touched 80 degrees while my family and friends in my beloved Boston Massachusetts battled a winter blizzard of monumental proportions.
While my loved ones battled the elements, my worries were minimal, should I play it where it lay?
The storm earned a cutsie little nickname, stolen from a cutsie little fish who starred in a cutsie little Disney movie. However I dare say the folks of Boston found Nemo anything but cutsie.
Really?
Nemo snapped telephone poles and trees like tooth picks.
Scituate Mass.
And rearranged the configuration of shoreline roads.
In took me back 35 years, nearly to the day, when the area was struck by the “Blizzard of 78”.
Scituate Mass, February 1978.
Boston’s South Shore, February 1978.
There were 3500 cars stranded, then abandoned on Route 128 from Dedham to Braintree Massachusetts.
Dedham Mass, Route 128.
A supermarket parking lot, in Brockton Massachusetts, 1978.
In February of 1978, mere days after the famous blizzard, the Red Sox reported to their spring training camp in Winter Haven Florida.
Jim Rice, (LF) Fred Lynn (CF) and Dwight Evans (RF) comprised the outfield on that Red Sox team of 1978.
They were coming off a marvelous year in which they had won 97 games, only to finish tied for second place with the Orioles, two and a half games behind the Yankees.
Before they would embark for Boston and the opening of the season, they acquired this man.
Dennis Eckersley
On March 30th, just days away from breaking camp, the Red Sox sent Ted Cox, Mike Paxton, Bo Diaz and Rick Wise to the Indians for Eck and catcher Fred Kendall; and the final piece was in place for what was to become and epic season.
The Blizzard of 78 was a prelude to a baseball season of monster proportions. With no less than four future Hall of Famers in their lineup, the Red Sox carried the fight to the last day of the season and in fact, one game beyond. Dropping a heart breaking 5-4 winner take all playoff game to the Yankees on October first of that same year, their 99 wins on the season, was simply not enough.
That 1978 Red Sox team remains, to this observer, the best team I ever saw that did not win.
As my friends and loved ones dig out from under this historic storm, may they take comfort in knowing that in a matter of days, the sound of leather meeting leather, and leather meeting wood will be heard among the confines of this lovely little yard in Fort Myers Florida.
And that can mean, only one thing, baseball season has arrived, and spring is right around the corner.
And as for me,
Oh, how I wish, I were there…..
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