A False Summer

September, 1981.

Two weeks remain in the baseball season. The American League East is bunched together and the Red Sox, typically, are in the thick of things trailing division-leading Detroit by just half a game.

On a Monday night, third-place Milwaukee, a dynamic, powerful ballclub hitting its stride in the season's final days, arrives at Fenway Park for an old-time, chills-down-the-spine September series.

Detroit is at Baltimore. Cleveland is at New York. A Red Sox win and a Tiger loss puts the locals in first place for the first time all summer.

It is a Monday night in late September. 14,575 watch the Sox defeat Milwaukee, 9-3.

There is no pennant race in Boston.

It is a Tuesday night in late September and the city is talking sports. September is always a time of controversy in this city, and this September is no exception. From a quick scan of the radio talk shows it is easy to find the controversy and the arguments that nourish and fortify sports, raising it from the level of a pastime to a zeal, a religion.

Here is what the arguing is about: Sam (Bam) Cunningham, the Boston College Eagles, Sugar Ray Leonard and Marvelous Marvin Hagler, Larry Bird, John McEnroe, the Boston Bruins.

18,363 see the Brewers beat Boston, 10-8, on two ninth-inning runs.

There is no pennant race in Boston.

And yet some fans will tell you that 1981 has been baseball's best year.

These fans live in Toronto and Chicago. They live in Minneapolis and Cleveland, in San Francisco and Atlanta. There are exciting pennant races in all of those places; excitement for the first time in years.

This has been baseball's best year. Late September, and nobody is out of it yet. There is tension and interest for the lowliest teams, for everybody is still fighting, no team is out of the running.

Baseball's best year plods inexorably toward the World Series.

There is no pennant race in Boston.

And with the Red Sox one game back in the loss column, life goes on at Fenway Park. But the tension isn't thick, the players aren't scowling, the fans aren't as loyal. Even the Go Sox hats are going slower, and the voice of the vendor has a hollow sound.

Like horsehide hitting aluminum.

Just think of what the next month will bring, if we're lucky. Maybe the Sox will end up in a tie for first with, say, Detroit. 1978 with a different ending--how about Dwight Evans playing Bucky Dent and winning it with a homer?

Then it's on to New York, where the Yankees, winners of the first half, provide stiff opposition for our split-season sensations. But the Yankees haven't played baseball -- real baseball -- since June. That was three months, one manager and two pennant races ago. Let's pretend they are outclassed by Bobby Ojeda and Bruce Hurst, the heroes of Boston's second half, and lose in four games.

Next stop, Oakland (or Kansas City or Minnesota...), home of the American League West's designated champion. The scheduled three-of-five series for the American League championship. Let's look back to 1975. Let's pretend we win.

Still there? It's almost November now, and we are in Los Angeles (or Philadelphia or San Francisco or, heaven forbid, Montreal) for the 1981 World Series. The winner of the four-of-seven series will reign as baseball's finest team.

The series goes the full seven, with the Red Sox winning the World Championship for the first time since 1918 on a Rich Gedman grand slam in the bottom of the ninth. Luis Aponte is the winner; 15,667 fans go wild.

And all over New England everyone is proud of the Red Sox.

And nobody will even care what happened to the pennant race.