As we near the beginning of the World Series, one of my most funny baseball memories comes to mind. When I was in graduate school at Boston University I possessed one of the most wonderful things a Boston Red Sox fan could have from 1992 to 1996 – a clergy pass to attend any regular season home game at the historic Fenway Park with a guest free of charge!

The coveted the Boston Red Sox clergy pass would allow me and a friend to sit in any open seat after two or three innings, and of course if someone came late to the game and we were in their seats, we would simply move, but almost no one came to the game as late as the third inning, so we almost never had move to new seats.

There was one notable exception though. One beautiful summer evening it seemed that the baseball gods were on our side as two of the best seats imaginable were still open after three innings – two seats together about ten rows up, right behind home plate, AND Roger Clemens was pitching for the Red Sox! So one of my friends from graduate school and I, after eyeing the seats for three innings, decided to make our way to our Fenway dream seats.

After witnessing about 6 or 7 of Clemens’ pitches from the best seats in one of the best venues in major league baseball, we suddenly heard a tirade of f-bombs coming from our right as two men, probably in their thirties, were approaching us and the seats that we were sitting in. Yes, we were sitting in their seats. Prior to that moment, I am not sure that I knew that the F-word could be used as every part of speech – noun, verb, pronoun, adjective, adverb, article, preposition, conjunction, etc.

One of the guys was so angry that I was a bit scared he might assault us as I imagine a number of pregame beers might have been fueling his rage; but thinking quickly, I pulled out my clergy pass as they approached and proceeded to very calmly explain to him that we had a clergy pass and I had simply thought the seats were available after three innings. As I displayed the pass and spoke, the man quickly realized that he was cussing out a clergy person in front of dozens of persons in earshot, and to make matters worse for the poor guy, he was Catholic and he must have assumed I was a priest.

In a matter of seconds, he went from the F-bomber to a confessant pleading for forgiveness. I lost count of the number of times he said “I’m so sorry father” in the next few sentences. If I wanted to fully take advantage of the situation, we probably could have stayed in the seats as he seemed more than willing to give them up as penance for his F-bombing a clergy person in front of the fans at Fenway, but I assured him he was okay and that I would be upset too if someone were trying to take these great seats away from me.

We found some other fairly good seats that night, but the only thing I really remember about that game were the F-bombs and the poor guy who felt so bad for verbally assaulting a clergy person right behind home plate in Fenway. I did everything I could to let him know he was forgiven, but I imagine some prayers with the rosary might have been made for some time after the encounter.

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