I’m not sure where this story begins.
Perhaps it began earlier this spring, when I got a Red Sox e-gift card as a thank you from a student. By this point last week, I was pretty down on the whole team, but then the Yankees came to town, and the Sox took the first two games of the four-game set. Meanwhile, I had also just tremendously lucked into tickets to the Germany/Paraguay game at the World Cup at face value, so I had an idea. I thought, well, wouldn’t it be cool to go to the Red Sox on Sunday and the World Cup on Monday.
I can talk myself into anything; the answer was yes.
It got yes-er when I looked at the ticket on sale and noted there was a special Germany promotion going on: you’d get a Red Sox/Germany T-shirt with the special ticket purchase.
Click. Done.
A gorgeous, albeit a tad warm, Sunday evening arrived, along with a lovely parking spot on Beacon, as my wife and I rolled into Fenway, collected our T-shirts, and took our spots in the bleachers. A reasonable person would have logically assumed we were German fans in town for the game, which is precisely what the two guys behind us figured when they started speaking to us in German.
Nope.
They enjoyed, quizzically, the fact that we opted into the Germany promo, and then we got into an evening filled with those kinds of things that only happen at baseball games with people you just met…although this one with an international flavor.
J was the younger one, and as it turned out was the volunteer coordinator of the German traveling supporters club. At least I think he was. He also came here using some of his six (SIX!) weeks of paid vacation. S was the other guy: 6’5″ with full arm tattoos, from Germany but living in the Bay Area after some years in Hoboken, where he lived in the same building as Eli Manning.
That Eli Manning.
Anyway, a phenomenal baseball game ended up being played. We met some Irish guys temporarily in town on their way back home from Australia, Sonny Gray took a no-hitter into the 8th inning, Aroldis Chapman blew a save in the 9th, and the Yankees took a two-run lead in the 10th, and it felt like another crushing Sox loss in a season full of them.
Ye of little faith.
Seigler hit a single to score the ghost runner, Yoshida smashed a double, Cheng hit a sac fly, and Duran smoked a line drive over a five-man infield to complete a comeback win and send the crowd into a Dirty Water and Tessie-soaked frenzy. I’ve been to a hundred games (or more) at Fenway; this one is certainly in the top 10.
We bade farewell to S and J with aspirational commitments to “see them tomorrow,” with all the uncertainty attached to such a pledge, but driving home in the aftermath of that walk-off, I couldn’t help but repeat to my wife several times:
It’s not even tomorrow yet.
But unlike in Les Mis, tomorrow came.
I took Monday off, hit up the garden, the gym, and Starbucks as efficiently as possible, and set off for Gillette Boston Stadium. We arrived at my brother-in-law’s place in Norfolk, where he then shuttled us over to Route 1, and after a pleasant mile-long walk, we arrived at Patriot Place as “Don’t Look Back In Anger” was blasting from a bar. That’s a good sign.
That’s always a good sign.
Apparently we weren’t the only ones coming in four hours before kickoff. The place was jammed: Germany fans at the top, Paraguay fans at the bottom, and a party throughout. We ate falafel salads, sang “Sweet Caroline” with the German fans, ran into a few people we knew, and realized that yes, it was a great idea to get there early. We also loved, like really loved, the German fan wrapped in a Hapoel Tel Aviv flag, singing and dancing the whole time we were there. We see you, Hapoel fan.
We see you.
FanFest was a sweltering mess: baking asphalt, long lines, a two-hour wait for bracelets, and way too much commercial sponsorship. So we bailed after a few minutes and entered the stadium with 90 minutes to go.
(All the while I had been texting S, who affirmed that his work meeting was over and he was Ubering down Route 1.)
My wife and I loaded up on merch, we took pics looking out from the bridge under the lighthouse, and it was impossible to miss the anticipation building. We were AT A THING. The world was invited, and the world was watching.
Just as we were getting ready to go to our seats, S arrived and we met in the concourse with him, J, and another random 6’7″ German guy, and we chatted about the Sox game, life, kids, and more. J was happy that we surmised he was 30 years old when he was, in fact, 40.
When the time came to get seated, they told us to come stand with them in the German section because nobody really cared about what seats they actually had and everyone would be standing the whole time anyway. I didn’t quite believe it, but then we were there, with our German flags waving, in the lead-up to what ended up being a historic match, and then some.
Words won’t do it justice. Whatever I had thought it would be like, it was, and it was better. The atmosphere, the spectacle, the flags, the singing, the passion, the ripples of sound and energy that ran through the stands…the lighting, the chanting…it was a world inside a world inside a world.
Paraguay’s first goal was calamitous. Kai Havertz’s equalizer was sublime, and the soaring chorus of “Major Tom (Völlig losgelöst)” after that goal gave me the chills. Germany dominated possession the rest of the game but could not score. My phone blew up when I ended up on the Fox broadcast. Extra time was, in fact, a gift, but when Germany’s go-ahead goal was chalked off dubiously, it felt like the soccer gods were taking a side.
The wrong side.
The shootout was everything, and it happened right at our end. Highs, lows, misses, saves, and inevitably, a clean Paraguay finish in the 6th round after a Germany miss. Celebrations ensued, Paraguayan music echoed through an emptying stadium, and we and our new German friends just stood quietly, not really believing what we had just seen. We slowly, achingly, and stiffly walked outside, carrying a dozen German flags with us, wishing our new friends auf Wiedersehen before the march back down to Norfolk. S might be back in town for the Raiders/Pats game in October; if we can make it to THIS game, we can make it to THAT game.
We finally rolled home at 10:15 after an impromptu dinner at Pressed Café in Newton, recipients of not a few nods and condolences as we were still clad in our Germany shirts.
Listen, friends, it’s a world gone mad and a world gone bad, but I drove to work the next day blasting the German goal song, feeling wave after wave of goose bumps wash over me, and maybe also feeling a couple of wet eyes as well. What did I learn from this weekend? People are good. Experiences are worth experiencing. And sometimes, a million little decisions, and a few big ones, turn a couple of days in Boston into something you’ll remember for the rest of your life.
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