The Joy of Sox Movie

It’s been a busy few weeks – first was the nice article about “Joy” in the Boston Globe, and then our trying to parley that into press passes for Spring training. We’d optimistically made reservations to go to Florida a month ago, but only got our thumbs up on the passes with 2 days to spare. Talk about living in the moment.

At the Sox training camp in Ft. Myers, we were obviously the media rookies, getting there at 7:30am. The veteran reporters didn’t show up until 9, knowing that the players wouldn’t be exiting the clubhouse into the public area until 9:30 at the earliest. But we got to schmooze with the security people, apparently all retired snowbirds from the North who were having the time of their lives in their 2nd adolescence.

Once we got our own magic talismans (aka press passes), we gained entrée into the inner sanctum where press people get to rub elbows (literally) with the players while the masses gather outside the corral-like fence to shout out their pleas for recognition. Out of all the Sox, only our boy Gabe Kapler was good enough to stop off and spend some time with the fans by signing autographs – eventually pleading “I gotta go in 30 seconds, my team’s practice will be starting up”. Some of the minor leaguers were good at bantering – “Hey #53, come over here and I’ll give you a brownie”, one seductive siren cooed. #53 rubbed his stomach and said “I’ve had too many of those already”, and drew a round of laughter.

The Japanese media were everywhere, making up at least 80% of the media pool (the papers gave a head count of 80 from Japan, plus perhaps 15 more from stateside), unfailingly polite and eager to help. While we never quite convinced the representative from the Japanese national network NHK to do a feature story on us, we did learn that Japanese players don’t all practice tai chi and aikido and acupuncture – they’re more Westernized than the American players.

Considering that we only managed to snare press passes with a couple of days to spare, and that we never had a chance to advance plan any meetings or connections, we were pretty lucky with our strategy of being in the moment. Here’s how it unfolded. The first target pointed out to us by security was the incomparable Jim Rice, premier AL slugger of the 80s, best known now for his golf addiction and his surly demeanor. Sure enough, he was unloading golf clubs from his SUV, and his lack of eye contact and monosyllabic answers to my questions made it clear that he had better things to do than talk with some media unknowns. Although to be fair to Jim, his sentence “I got a schedule to keep, just like those other guys” contains a few two-syllable words.

I recognized the Globe’s basketball beat reporter Jackie McMullan, and went over to thank her for a recent article she’d written on traumatic brain injury (TBI) in the National Football League. At Spaulding Rehab, preventive education is always a key goal to lessen the incidence of TBI, and she had used her national platform very effectively to spread the word about this problem. She was as down to earth and considerate in person as in her stories. She also had a lot to say about team coherence in basketball, and spoke about the importance of having outgoing demonstrative players to cement team bonds, whether in women’s college basketball (her specialty) or in men’s professional baseball.


Next up was Johnny Pesky, “the oldest guy here” at 87. Our security insider Russ predicted he’d be an easy interview, and he was, gushing forth on topics ranging from team chemistry to Sox history (it sounds like high school, but it was much more interesting). It’s not often I get to talk to someone who used to shoot the breeze with Ted Williams, so it was quite a treat. The photo of me talking to Johnny will be titled “Pesky and Lesky”. His spring practice pal Luis Tiant was known as the most outgoing and charismatic player of the 70s, but despite his snazzy white Fu Manchu moustache, El Tiante was too busy to give more than telegram responses. And eye contact was also not his top priority.

Then on a whim we decided to head over to the next practice field, not even knowing that that was where Ortiz and Manny were getting ready to take BP against Dice K. We found a niche along the first base line (on the infield, not behind the fence with the peons), and began to scope out the scene when I realized with a bit of a jolt that the man standing next to me was the President and CEO of the Sox, Larry Lucchino. After a quick aside to Joey to buck up my courage, I began with some small talk – “Not sure if you caught this article , but…” And we were off. He was very interested in our concept, wanted to talk more about it, made suggestions about who we should contact (the same bunch of Sox folks who’d never responded to our earlier emails), and he invited us to get in touch with him back in Boston to talk more about how to move the project along. The chat only lasted 5 minutes, but it justified the whole trip, and ensured that other doors would someday magically open (via strategic name dropping, which seems to be the key technique in this game of getting access).

After that surprise, watching BP was something of a let down. Despite Manny, Papi and Wily Mo being in the lineup, no one took genuine hacks at Dice K, and he seemed to be holding back his best stuff too – wary titans feeling each other out. The mighty Julio Lugo, all 5’ 9’’and 172 pounds of him, was the only one to hit anything out of the infield. The high point of BP was looking across the infield later and noticing that Larry L. had taken out the copy of our Globe article and was actually reading it. Definitely a good omen.