Paddy Boom Loves the Red Sox

Long before Paddy Boom (@pboomnyc) drummed for the Scissor Sisters, he was a diehard Red Sox fan. Paddy took a few minutes away from his record emporium in the Catskills (@boomandbloomrecords) to talk about his favorite baseball team.

STADIUM JOURNEY: You were a Westchester, New York kid in the heart of Yankees territory. How'd you start rooting for the Sox? Did other kids give you a hard time? 

PADDY BOOM:I was born in Boston, so by default, I was rooting for the Red Sox. We moved to Chappaqua, New York, when I was a toddler. At the time, I didn't get much flack. It was playful ribbing. I was extremely passionate about baseball for a period of about five years.

STADIUM JOURNEY: What do you recall about those 70s Sox teams? What memories stand out?

PADDY BOOM: When I was deep into the game, I knew what time games were on TV, and I often rushed home to get sucked into the adrenaline buzz of live action. I was a big fan during the mid to late 70s.  Don Zimmer was coaching the Bosox. As a kid I was fascinated how Zim had a metal plate in his head. I recall the stoic-poker-faced Zimmer was a stark contrast to the bratty ways of Yankees coach Billy Martin, who seemed to always be bouncing out of the dugout to scream at an umpire at the drop of a hat. At the time, Boston had Jim Rice, Dave Evans, Carlton Fisk, Carl Yastremski, Louis Tiant, Dennis Eckersley, to name a few. I was a pitcher and tried to copy pitcher Tiant’s classic, unorthodox, swivel-pivot windup. As per the Yankees, Reggie. Jackson was huge, Roy White, Dave Winfield, Craig Nettles, Willie Randolph. I recall Dent hitting a crucial home run over the Green Monster in 1978 to put Boston out in an afternoon playoff game. I vividly recall the game when Reggie Jackson’s new Reggie Bar was given out free at entry and thousands of the candy bars were thrown on the field, delaying the game when Reggie hit a homer. I was super bummed when Yankees catcher Thurman Munson died in that plane crash in August 1979. Oddly enough, my swim team coach at the time at the Boys Club in Mount Kisco, New York, was Dennis Munson, Thurman’s cousin. So when Thurman died, it really hit home as the swim team was connected to the incident. My stepfather had season tickets to Yankees games for a few years, so we checked out as much as we could. On one occasion, the well-dressed guys in front of us at the stadium were firing up a bowl of ganja and offered it to my dad to pass around. He declined, but I was curious.

STADIUM JOURNEY: What do you recall about the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry? How intense was it?

PADDY BOOM: The classic Boston, New York rivalry was going strong in the late 70s. I saw a Red Sox-Yankees matchup in which Boston upset the Yanks in extra innings. That night my dad had bought me a Boston pennant, and I was waving it around in the back window of the car as we were slowly making our way out of the packed parking lot. My father flipped out and said, “stop waving the pennant and put it away. Someone’s gonna smash the window”. It was that fierce.

STADIUM JOURNEY: Did you make any treks to Fenway?  How about the House that Ruth Built?

PADDY BOOM: Sadly to this day, I have yet to go to Fenway. It's a real travesty. The closest I’ve been to the Green Monster is just outside Fenway on Lansdowne Street. That’s where the music venues line the street on the backside of the Green Monster. I played Mama Kin, owned by Aerosmith, and Bill's Bar back in the 90’s. My stepfather had Yankee season tickets for a few seasons, and it was a pretty quick 45-minute drive to Yankee Stadium. I went to the original stadium a whole slew of times before it was torn down. The area around Yankee Stadium, in the late 70’s Bronx was super seedy. It felt like another world compared to suburban Westchester. All sorts of sketchy bootleg vendors were hawking game merchandise. I had a thing for the fake autographed balls. The awe-inspiring feeling of walking into the stadium and finding my seat amidst all these strange faces was an education in the power of the spectacle of the game. Seeing the trajectory and arcs created by the balls flying through air in person is no comparison to TV. The glow of the field during night games, and the 3D action on the field was mesmerizing. Getting autographs during the pre-game warm was thrilling too. It didn't matter who the player was but just getting their attention to get an autograph felt like magic.

STADIUM JOURNEY: Did you play a lot of baseball growing up or were you strictly an enthusiastic spectator?PADDY BOOM: I loved playing baseball and did it for a whole bunch of years, starting in little league. My stepfather was a coach for one of my teams in middle school. I was a decent pitcher and played second base but never star material. I was a late bloomer and was quite small for my age for years. I'm lefty, but bat righty and throw righty too, which is weird. In seventh grade, I had a really bad accident while pitching a game. I had a head-on collision with the catcher going for a pop-up foul ball in which I lost a few teeth and had 17 stitches in the roof of my mouth. He was wearing the mask, so when our faces collided, the bar protecting his mouth went right through mine. The ball goes up and next thing you know, lights out. I see one of my teeth fall on the ground and my mother screaming, blood everywhere. I get whisked into the back of my mom's friend's suburban wagon, and I can just remember looking out the window, staring at the trees going by and wondering what the hell just happened to my face. I was in tons of pain. I had to wait in an emergency room for hours. I looked like the villain "Jaws" from the James Bond Moonraker movie. My face swelled up really bad. Sophomore year I tried out for the baseball team but didn't make the cut. That was the end of my interest.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of Paddy Boom Loves The 70s Red Sox.