"Dear Mr. Fred Lynn"

Ah, 5th grade! King of the Hill. Top of the Heap. A Number One. Life was good at Latimer Lane School in Simsbury, CT. I had a cool teacher, Mr. Cashman who, along with the other 5th grade teacher, Mr. Stepanian, used to play kick ball with us at recess. We had a "bubble hockey" table in the classroom, a bunch of us boys formed an informal club that, all these years later, I can't recall if it revolved around yo-yo's or cool erasers on the ends of our pencils. Or maybe both. I discovered that it was OK to like girls. I acquired the nickname Wiggy. We got to listen to some kid's 45 record of "Brass Bonanza," aka the New England Whalers fight song, which on the B-side had an epic fight between the Whalers and the Minnesota Fighting Saints called by broadcaster Bob Neumeier.

Outside of school, I played Little League, on the Yankees. I was (and remain) a huge Red Sox fan, so I wasn't initially too excited to play on the namesake of my team's hated rivals. But all that really mattered was playing my favorite sport with so many of my friends. I also played baseball with my older brother, Steve, and my best friend, Pat, and his brothers. We played on the school's field, and used a tennis ball instead of a hardball, so none of us younger kids would get hurt when the older guys batted. I loved to play shortstop, imagining that I was Rick Burleson, aka Rooster, my favorite Sox player.

At some point during the 1975/76 school year, we were given an assignment to write a letter to somebody famous and request a signature or token of some sort. Although Burleson was my favorite Red Sox, I chose to write to Fred Lynn, who in 1975 became the first player to win the Rookie of the Year and Most Valuable Player awards in the same season, as center fielder for the Sox.

I don't recall how we obtained addresses for the people we wished to contact. These days, of course, it's easy to look up people and organizations online. Through some sort of educational sorcery, the teachers and librarians accessed the information. Wasn't hard to find the Red Sox front office address, I'm sure.

Let's pretend I have a copy of the letter that I mailed to Fred Lynn....

Dear Mr. Fred Lynn:

My name is Dave Brigham. I'm a 5th grader at Latimer Lane School in Simsbury, Connecticut. I have loved the Red Sox since I was born, because my brother and father like them. I play second base in Little League on the Yankees, but it's OK, because we're not very good. I watch your games whenever I can, which isn't often enough, because although cable TV has been around since the late 1940's, I have never heard of it and won't know of its glories and magnificence until the early '80s. In the meantime, I catch the occasional game on Channel 38, a UHF channel out of Boston that, through the miracle of science, arrives on my parents' black-and-white TV set in our rec room. But I digress.

A lot of times I listen to Sox games with my dad and/or brother, either at home or in the car as we travel around town or to such exotic vacation destinations as Cape Cod, New Hampshire's Flume Gorge and some YMCA camp in Torrington, CT, where some of my family got sick. Throw-up sick. Funny side story: once while we were at a swimming hole (do they have swimming holes where you're from?) in my town, my brother asked my dad if he could have the car keys so he could turn on the car radio and get the score of the Sox game. He turned the key to the right spot on the steering column and turned on the game, but somehow managed to bump the shifter into "neutral" and the car started rolling. Here's the funny part: I don't remember how this story ends, but everybody lives.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, can I have an autographed picture? You're awesome, you won the Rookie of the Year and Most Valuable Player awards. Sure, you and your teammates lost in one of the greatest World Series of all time, and taught me my first lesson in professional sports heartbreak, a lesson that I have a feeling I will learn again in 1978, 1986 and 2003, although I suspect at least two of those years won't be your fault.

So whatta ya say, Freddy Boy?

Sincerely,

Dave Brigham

I waited approximately 8,000 years for a reply from the Great Mister Lynn. In the meantime, I played hockey in the classroom, flag football outside (we had a league -- a LEAGUE! -- and I was on the champion Rams, which was QB'd by my buddy Tyler Brown), day-dreamed about Cathy Ruddy and found myself wondering whether the United States Bicentennial celebration in July would live up to the hype. I mean, think about it? How do you honor 200 years of revolution, industry, slavery, repugnant race relations, the likes of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Henry Ford, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Greatest Generation, George Carlin, the guy who invented the beer ball and so many other things?

Finally, the day arrived! The postman strutted into Mr. Cashman's classroom like he owned the place, and started flinging envelopes at kids' heads and yelling, "Mail, suckah!"

I ripped open the delivery, wondering how Mr. Fred Lynn had managed to fit a glossy 8x11, signed photo of his famous face into such a small envelope. I quickly scanned the boilerplate mumbo-jumbo typed neatly on Red Sox letterhead.

Dear [Insert fan name here]:

Thank you for your correspondence.

Sincerely, [Insert name of sports organization].

At least there was a picture...of the whole team. With Fred Lynn's autograph...stamped on the lower right corner.

Despite being let down somewhat, I knew that Mr. Fred Lynn surely hand-picked the team photo -- heck, maybe he even TOOK the picture -- and no doubt would have signed it by hand if he wasn't concerned with injuring his throwing arm, but surely he flipped open the stamp pad, grasped the autograph stamp firmly in his left hand, firmly pressed it into the ink and brought it down with authority on the picture that was destined to travel the Mass. Pike from Boston all the way to my school in little old Simsbury, CT.

So I've got that going for me. Which is nice.