To First Base

To First Base

at Fenway Park in Boston, Massachusetts ready for opening day, April 4, 2014,
sketched on April 4, 2014, 8.5" x 6", Winsor & Newton watercolors, 

#3 graphite, on 400 lb. Arches Natural White cold press watercolor paper
unframed, sold framed, $100 plus $5.50 sales tax plus $10 shipping
and to get To First Base you may purchase it.

Note: I have fond memories of going to the Red Sox games with my grandfather, Frank Harold McMillan. We'd start the day taking the bus trolley from 6 Winter Street in Dorchester, the second walk-up where they lived, and to the Isabella Stewart Garner Museum, when it was free as stipulated in her will, and he'd regal me with stories of the eccentric Mrs. Jack.

     Then we'd walk by the victory gardens in the Fens on the way to Fenway Park and he'd chat with the gardeners. Finally we'd arrive at empty Fenway Park early to watch batting practice and have hot dogs for lunch. We could sit anywhere, an empty stadium for the game, usually on the third base line looking down the first base line, and we'd watch the Red Sox lose.

     But we'd watch Ted Williams hit a home run. My grandfather would point out all the little things about Fenway, like the Yawkey's initials, the long-time owners, painted in Morse code on the scoreboard. When a foul ball flew over us I asked him if he'd ever gotten a foul ball, never. In all the years he'd gone to Red Sox games he never got a baseball but he caught the memories and could talk about all of the old time players going back to the 1920s. 
     But as a kid visiting Boston from Bangor, Maine, it never dawned on me that all the Red Sox Players were white until years later. The Red Sox have the dubious distinction of being the last major league baseball team to add a black player to the roster, infielder Elijah Jerry "Pumpsie" Green, in 1959, twelve years after Jackie Robinson broke baseball's color barrier and the year before Ted Williams retired. In 2012 Pumpsie threw out the ceremonial first pitch on Jackie Robinson day at Fenway Park and later in April attended Fenway Park's 100th anniversary celebration. How things change. I wonder what my grandfather would think of Big Papi's swing and smile? We got to first base, on to second.