Well, I didn’t get rich but I had a great time.
Being in a reminiscent mood, writing about annoying Burmese junta terrorists in the last blog item, I fall to woolgathering over the 1967 Red Sox — also with a Southeast Asian flavor.
With so many marking the 40th anniversary of the Impossible Dream season of 1967, I recall my own hijinks back then.
I was in the Army doing my part to lose the big war going on over in Southeast Asia. The Red Sox campaign of 1967 was so astonishing, coming as it did after such a dismal performance in the preceding years. The baseball world could hardly believe its eyes. Sitting on exactly the other side of the world it was hard to have a handle on exactly what an amazing thing was happening but it was exciting no matter where you were.
I was doing time in a small upcountry Army unit in the middle of nowhere but near to a huge Air Force base. My military colleagues were from everywhere and had various baseball allegiances. I was the only Boston fan around. But there were guys there who were from Detroit and those who rooted, strangely, for Minnesota. Baseball rivalries bound us together.
Because of the time difference, the Armed Forces Radio reports on the games — so many of them day games actually played most often when we were sound asleep — were delayed until the afternoon. We would get up and debate the merits of our teams, argue, dispute. And bet. Then, in the afternoon, we’d hear the games or the sporting news. There was no internet, no personal radios and the like up there.
Here’s what I did, on your tax dollars. I would wake up at 3 a.m. or so. I would scrounge a Jeep or a bicycle and drive over to the Air Force base where I knew some people who were Red Sox fans and we would listen to the games on their gigantic radios. I would then pedal or drive back to my “hootch” and get an hour or so’s sleep.
At breakfast time, I’d saunter into the mess tent and engage in the day’s baseball banter. And I would make bets on the games — knowing the results in advance. I made a killing. If the Red Sox won, I’d win. If they lost, I’d win. Of course, I had to be careful and not win every bet and tip the hand — even to those dense sorts who root for midwest treams — that I had some inside info.
So I made silly bets. I would say, “I think that Yaz will hit six home runs today!” “I think the Tribe will score 22 runs.” Of course, people made bets against me and I would be the talk of the Army town for my wild predictions.
I lost on Yaz and I lost on the 22 runs and everyone had a good laugh at my expense, while not noticing that while I was losing small amounts on those bets I was winning larger amounts on game bets made more quietly, at their expense.
I didn’t get a lot of sleep in those exciting baseball days and wouldn’t you know that the war got in the way of my scam? They actually expected me to do some work for a living, if you call that living, and the season finally ended leaving me little else to do but be a soldier. Talk about unfair!
But while the hoary adminition was to, “make hay while the sun shineth,” I made mine while other were hitting the hay and the sun shineth-not. If our war policies had been as clever we’d have won the thing.
