Rags to Riches

Boston

(With apologies to Langston Hughes)

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it fade in the night,

like a homer into the screen?

Or succumb to the pressures

of a Big Red Machine?

Does it sit on the bench

with a cast on its wrist?

Or harp on the play

which the umpire missed?

Maybe it just says

"Wait till next year"

Or does it disappear?

Wednesday night the dream disappeared. Joe Morgan hit a Texas Leaguer into short center and like the ringing of a 7 a.m. phone slowly ascending the stairs, creeping through the door and under the pillow, the dream ended.

Boston could have used that dream. For the Beantown has been suffering from a series of little nightmares. The nightmares of daily living, of getting laid off, of black-white frictions, and of cut welfare budgets.

But the dream didn't come. And for me, the worst was knowing it wasn't going to come, even after that glorious sixth game. For the same reasons the Lakers would perennially lose to the Celtics, the Red Sox would succumb to Cincinnati.

A group of guys with sandlot names, Pudge, Spaceman, Yaz and Rico simply don't outmuscle the Machine. It's not in the script; the little guy doesn't fight city hall and win.

It gets tough to take after a while. Always the machine. The Dolphins, the Celtics and now the Reds. That's why it's so sweet to see Ali knock Foreman silly and to see Jimmy Connors vollied into the ground and the Mets win the series.

But now when New York needs it the most, the Knicks can't even buy a team which could start up the dream again. And Boston fans are left with the last place Patriots, the struggling Bruins, and a Celtics team that seems old and tired before the season has even started.

And that wonderful escapism which is sports, will only end up compounding the frustrations already permeating the city scene.

Not me, though, I'm not going to be sucked down into a massive winter depression. I've got a sixth game of a World Series to keep me going. And all winter long I'll be able to hear the echo of 35,000 people cheering on every corkscrew delivery of Luis ("The fans make me pitch better than I can do") Tiant.

I'll feel the atmosphere of frenzied Fenway, a national anthem which was sung by the kids in section 33 as if it was tailor made for drunks; the pre-game crowd chatter, the constant murmur of indistinguishable jock-talk, like a quick search for a station on the car radio.

"I've come 200 miles just to avoid Curt Gowdy's voice. I heard American Opticals named Larry Barnett Man of the Year. Hey Rose, you stiff, go back to middle America. Hey Eddy bring me back a beah will ya?"

But most of all it will be The Game which will pull me through February. That incredible game. And I'll sit back with my Bosox cap on firmly and my 1967 "The Pennant Is Ours" beer mug frothing and begin the slide show.

The cross-hatched cuts of Fenway's grass, the flag blowing out to straight away center, the packed Park shouting "Loo-ee, Loo-ee." Next slide, Freddie Lynn's arching home run finding its way to the Sox bullpen, click, the ugly scene of Lynn's body sprawled at the base of the Monster, a dissolve and a fade-in with the scoreboard Reds 6 Sox 3. Click, the Carbo miracle settling into the center field seats, click, Doyle out at the plate, the victory postponed, Morgan robbed by the golden glove of Evans, and finally the dancing, prancing Carlton Fisk waving his twelfth inning shot into fair territory.

No, the dream hasn't disappeared; it's just saying wait until next year.