Weiss Up

With some tawdry bunting plastered on the mezzanine but only one successful bunt laid down in the diamond, the Boston Red Sox inaugurated their home campaign Thursday with an exciting, 7-6, loss to their top rival in the American League East, the Baltimore Orioles.

Fenway was itself, resplendent in its deformity despite two soggy postponements of the opener. The park was all decked out in new red and blue seats and bedizened by half-hearted efforts at new banners. The green wall was still the green wall. Typically, Kenmore Square was thronged, Jersey Street was alive with peanut-pushers, and on Brookline Avenue the black nun who collects coins in a basket was back at her post.

Both clubs played sloppy ball for three-and-three-quarter hours, but made it close by exchanging the lead five times and pursuing an outcome for 11 innings. The final bungle belonged to the Hose, though, as Doug Griffin gave a run to the Birds in the top of the 11th with a two-base throwing error.

The new gloves in the Sox defense played flawlessly but not brilliantly. Terry Hughes scratched the same dust as Brooks Robinson at third and went one-for-five. Hughes made no errors and before each pitch waggled his butt in the air, but Robinson looked like a long-legged goose searching vainly for its eggs when he let Tommy Harper lash one between his pins in the second inning, to give the Bosox a 2-0 lead.

Bernie Carbo in right made a spartan effort on Rich Coggins's home run in the third before collapsing like a hill o'beans at the foot of the wall.

In the seventh inning, starters Tiant and Jim Palmer went to the showers and in the bleachers grown men began to take off their clothes. The streakers galvanized the bleachers by running from top to bottom. But in the left field stands a fat man with his shirt off drunkenly played the exhibitionist, puckishly pulling down his pants at various inspired moments. The fans booed when equally fat policemen swaggered over to curtail the brouhaha.

Later, in the tenth, Oriole left-fielder Don Baylor camped under a pop-up, and someone behind me hollered, "Drop it, niggah." It reminded me of another Red Sox-Orioles match-up last September when the Orioles led off a fruitful first inning with Bumbry, Coggins, Tommy Davis, Baylor, Paul Blair and Earl Williams--all of them black. The man in front of me sullenly counted off the players out loud. When Williams came to the dish he pronounced to his son in a pained prophetic tone, "Well, that's six of' em." The kid asked, "Six of who?" His father told him he'd explain later, but before long the kid caught on.

After Thursday's incident, my cohort said flatly, "Boston's a racist town." And Thursday, in spite of the loss, Fenway was having a Boston day.