Word: sox
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Fred Lynn and Rozzie Brayton got drafted by the big leagues that year, and after graduation they each joined the Boston Red Sox organization. The Red Sox nurture a lot of farm teams, though, and since Lynn was drafted second and Brayton tenth, the two never met until spring training in Winterhaven, Florida, a while back...
Baseball's that way: Red Sox pitcher Bill Lee was in the locker room last October after Boston had lost the World Series. Someone was praising Reds pitcher Don Gullett. "Right," said Lee, "Don Gullett is going to the Hall of Fame. And I'm going to the Eliot Lounge to play bumper pool." So it goes. Little more than two years from that day in Omaha, Fred Lynn is the sensation of baseball, Athlete of the Year. And Brayton? Brayton's at Barney's, eating a roast beef sandwich...
...professional baseball player, and after two and a half seasons, he's a borderline case, teetering, insecure about his position, and very, very vulnerable. He's semi-successful, a make-or-break case.. If there are six planes of consciousness in the spiritual world of the Boston Red Sox organization, Brayton has made it halfway; an exemplary mortal. He began at the bottom, with the Elmira Red Sox. He actually transcended the next rung, skipping the Winterhaven farm team, and played for all of 1974 for the Red Sox in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Then last year he made...
...something," he says. Brayton went to exclusive Milton Academy; his father is head of a large clothing company in Pennsylvania. This isn't held against him in baseball, where there are "just a bunch of guys, like at Harvard or anywhere else. Hell, look at Varney." And indeed, White Sox catcher Pete Varney '71 comes from Quincy, Massachusetts--his background has none of the trappings of the Harvard stereotype, unless it is the very real stereotype of the local kid plucked up by Harvard athletics. With an occasional exception. Brayton says, ball players don't know or care...
...still feels like he's stuck, sometimes. Like the buses: "Ask any player--the worst thing is thing is the buses." Even though the Red Sox are a "class organization" like the Phillies and the Dodgers, teams that take care of their own, life in the minor leagues can be lackluster. The big stadium is there--the hint of what could come in a wild dream--but the stands are usually near-empty; loudspeakers play "Knock Three Times" between innings and the "bullpen" is likely to be a bench near the left field line. The Eastern League has a grueling...