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Posted By: Stephen Mitchell

The memory gets a little foggy. After all, it has been now 45 summers ago. It was a season in which my team, the Boston Red Sox, would go nowhere. (Untrue! Actually, they would plummet in the standings.)

Just checked with old reliable (http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS196306240.shtml) so my facts should be right.

Game Number 65 - June 24, 1963 (Cleveland at Boston), a Monday evening game. One of my favorites, Bill Monbouquette, was thought (by me) to be the scheduled starter. Instead, we got recent call-up Bob Heffner making just his second major league start. Veteran righty Gary Bell started for the Indians.

It was a back-and-forth game with Boston never permitting the invaders to gain an edge but the game was tied twice as the Red Sox entered the bottom of the 9th: the game knotted, 5-5. With two outs and Roman Mejias on first, outfielder Gary Geiger homered to center field sending the faithful home very, very happy.

In retrospect, it is strange that while I recalled some of the details of the game (Geiger's homer to center, Mejias on first and no Monbo), I did not recall Lou Clinton or Chuck Shilling (another favorite of mine whose model of glove I still possess) homering. The most outstanding incidents (aside from GG's dramatic walk-off (an unknown term at the time) were a couple of crowd-clearing bat-throwing incidents by Cleveland's Woodie Held.

The final results for the 1963 Red Sox were not up to their late June promise. After that epic game, the Sox stood 36-29 good for third in the league, just 4 games out of first. In the end, they limped home 76-85 (7th), a full 28 games back.

Nonetheless, my first game was an exciting one and the best I've ever attended!