Free Peanuts: A Father-Daughter Day at Fenway

For me, baseball is sacred. As a wayward Catholic, watching live baseball is the closest that I get to having a religious experience.

It stems from my childhood. Each year, starting when I was 6 years old, my father would take me to Fenway Park to watch a Red Sox game, just the two of us. It meant everything.

I can still vividly recall those sensory experiences from my youth—the smell of the sausage and onions as they sizzled on a flat grill from food carts on Yawkey Way; the hawking of vendors selling concessions, walking up and down the aisles; the awe that comes from seeing the Green Monster when entering the ballpark from the concourses.

For many years, I wrote a column for a small paper in Boston that hooked me up with tickets so I could return the favor and take my dad to a Red Sox game.

Then, my father, my brother-in-law and my son started attending annual games at Fenway, extending the tradition—but given the price-gouging by the Red Sox ownership, that yearly trip to Fenway has been discontinued until the gluttony ends.

But I never thought my daughter would be interested in sharing the Red Sox experience with me.

Until she did.

Paige, now 21, was sleeping in her crib, my wife pregnant with her brother, when I woke her from sleep to watch the 2004 Red Sox win the World Series with me in our old house in Manchester. She obviously doesn’t remember this, but it meant a lot for me to share that experience with my child.

While she was growing up, my wife and I would take the kids to Fisher Cats games, and as Paige got older, I taught her to score a baseball game as well—yes, I’m that relic you can still find in the stands, chewing on his pen while trying to figure out how to score the double-steal with a throwing error.

Recently, Paige, who is a student at Boston College, surprised me and asked if I wanted to go to a Red Sox game with her. My heart melted, and, of course, I agreed.

We had tickets for last Sunday’s matinee, where the Red Sox were playing the Houston Astros, after dropping the first two games in the weekend series. It felt like a must-win game to me. So I took the bus from Londonderry into South Station.

It has been quite a few years since I’ve bounced around Boston, and I had some difficulty finding the Green Line, but I eventually ended up at the Cask N’ Flagon, where I saddled up for a few while waiting for my daughter to meet me.

We entered the ballpark at the top of the first inning, and that initial awe of seeing The Green Monster still never gets old for me. We found our seats in the right field grandstands, and I gave Paige my bank card, and she went to get us drinks and returned with a beer, a vodka-lemonade, and a bag of peanuts.

“What’s with the peanuts?” I asked her. “I didn’t know you liked peanuts.”

“I do now,” she said. “When they ran your card for the drinks, it didn’t go through. So I told the woman at the counter that it didn’t charge the card, so she gave me a bag of peanuts for free because I was honest.”

And they were some of the most delicious peanuts that I can remember. For some reason, certain things taste better at the ballpark—hot dogs, beer, peanuts—and everything tastes better when it is free.

The Red Sox ended up getting shellacked by Houston 10-2 on Sunday, and the game was pretty much over by the fifth inning. In fact, in order to preserve the bullpen, first baseman Dom Smith pitched the ninth inning, throwing an Eephus pitch.

And we later found out that Jarren Duran had a regrettable encounter with a fan that game, which resulted in a two-game suspension.

But I still had a wonderful afternoon watching baseball with my daughter. With her away at college most of the year, I forget how much I truly enjoy her company.

And, folks, if you have the chance to take your daughter to the ballpark and share some peanuts with her—free or not—I strongly encourage it. Take it from me, it is the type of experience that never leaves you.