As a kid growing up in Atlanta, I was a big fan of the Boston Red Sox. The reason why is simple and maybe a little strange. You see, I was a left-hander. In all of the games with my sports-loving group of friends, I threw the football and the baseball with my left hand. And I was the only one who did; all the others were righties, and because of that, they made fun of me and my weird left hand. Kids can be cruel, you recall.

So anyway, my dad was a newspaper reader. We subscribed to the local paper, and every morning at breakfast he would pull out his favorite sections — the front page and the comics — and leave the rest. The rest always included the sports section, and I started reading it daily (a habit that has never left me decade and decades later). One day I came across an article about the Red Sox winning an important game thanks to the pitching wizardry of a man named Mel Parnell. And wouldn’t you know it, Mel Parnell was a left-hander! Instantly, I was a fan. No, really, more than that. I was totally enraptured with Mel Parnell — I began closely following the team and especially its star pitcher with the same intensity and devotion that our dog Toby now lavishes on his chances of getting a helping of bacon from the breakfast table.

It became evident to my juvenile mind fairly soon after that the rest of my buddies didn’t care all that much for the Red Sox and couldn’t even recognize the name of Mel Parnell. But that didn’t matter — I memorized his pitching stats as if they were guideposts to the Holy Grail, and and now nearly six decades later — I can still remember without a pause at this moment that Mel Parnell won 25 games in 1949 and only lost seven times, Not only that, but I can assure you that his ERA that year was 2.77, and I swear I didn’t have to look it up. I was a kid who learned to appreciate the importance of Earned Run Average way back when.

Long story short: I have never stopped being a fan of the Sox, no matter where i lived. And i never stopped remembering Mel Parnell. Few people could have experienced any greater sadness than I when I heard the news that he had died last year at the age of 90. He will never know what inspiration he gave me, and I am and will be grateful to him to my very last day.

The joys and frustration of being a Red Sox fan have continued without change, too. The year 2004 is a memory no less burned into my mind, and 2007 only slightly less so. And now in 2013, like so many others in the Red Sox nation, I’m excited again by the remarkable new edition of the team. It’s a delightfully renewable pleasure, and I’m aglow after watching the Sox clinch another World Series appearance last night against Detroit. But if there is any regret — and it’s only a trickle — it would have to be the fact that somehow, in some magical time-traveling way, Mel Parnell couldn’t take the mound for Boston in that first WS game. I know he would shut down the Cardinals.
Just call me a dreamer.