Page 274 - 1975 BoSox

’75—THE RED SOX TEAM THAT SAVED BASEBALL 267
put a young ensemble cast around Buck. Fox Sports 1 Cable, the network’s new cable o shoot, got rights to 40 Saturday games. Approachable and very knowl- edgeable, Stockton was inexplicably assigned largely to other sports, leaving June 12, 2010, as perhaps his best Fox baseball memory. In the lead Game of the Week, Boston hosted Philadelphia in ex-Santa Clara University team equipment manager, minor-league journeyman, and 27-year-old Sox rookie Daniel Nava’s rst game.
Stockton, then 68, was Fox’s play-by-play man, the Red Sox continuing to form a vine around his trellis. Before the game Boston radio Voice Joe Castiglione suggested that Nava “swing on the rst pitch, because you only get one chance.” In a bases-full second inning, the modern-day Joe Hardy did, amazing Stockton, 37,061 at Fenway Park, and doubtless Nava himself by pulling Phillies pitcher Joe Blanton’s pitch into the Red Sox bullpen: only the second big-leaguer to hit a grand slam on his rst big-league pitch.
Learning of his call-up that day from Triple-A Pawtucket, Daniel’s parents had almost missed a ight to see him play. “I told the girl at the desk that my son was going to be playing left eld in Boston, in front of the Green Monster,” said Don Nava. “ ey had to get us on,” and did. In the stands, camera
ashing, dad’s and mom’s Kodak moment was captured by Game of the Week. As Nava entered the dugout, the magic moved Stockton, who, likely recalling 1975, said “ ere’s just something about Fenway Park.”You could say that about our friend behind the microphone, too.
Sources
e vast majority of this biography’s material, including quotes, is derived from my books Voices of e Game: e Acclaimed Chronicle of Baseball Radio & Television Broadcasting — From 1921 to the Present (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992); Our House: A Tribute to Fenway Park (Chicago, Masters Press, 1999); Voices of Summer (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2005); e Voice: Mel Allen’s Untold Story (Guilford, Connecticut: e Lyons Press, 2007); Pull Up a Chair:
e Vin Scully Story (Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, 2009);
and Mercy! A Celebration of Fenway Park’s Centennial Told rough Red Sox Radio and TV (Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, 2012). e magazine Diary of a Winner 1975: Play by Play and Day by Day, published by Shamrock Publishing Co., Boston, was also helpful — a game-by-game diary of the 1975 Red Sox. In addition to newspapers cited in this article, I listened to audio and saw video supplied by noted broadcast expert Tom Shaer, president of Tom Shaer Media, Inc. Wikipedia was a valued source for Dick Stockton and the
1975 Sox. Bill Francis of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum was a nal authority for statistics and other facts. I inter- viewed Stockton on August 8, 2014, for 90 minutes. His voice and enthusiasm denote preternatural youth. Other personal interviews, some with principals now sadly gone, made this a better story: Joe Castiglione, Jack Craig, Curt Gowdy, Ken Harrelson, Ned Martin, and Larry Stewart.