It has been said–I can’t remember by whom–that you never cease being a Catholic, even if you consciously renounce the dogma of the One True Church, as I have. A source of such lore that has stuck with me, lapsed practitioner that I am, is the Corporal Works of Mercy, derived from the teachings of Jesus as “a model for how we should help our neighbors in their bodily needs.”
One of the items in that list is to visit the sick, who are often forgotten or avoided. As far as I can tell other folks have this one more than adequately covered; if that weren’t the case, why would they limit visiting hours at hospitals?
More in need, it seems to me, are aging mascots that have been cruelly cast aside by billionaire sports team owners for younger, hipper, more fashionable animals and articles of clothing. The one who tugs at my heartstrings the hardest is the “Sock Man” who was the alternate logo of the Boston Red Sox from 1950 to 1959, a period that covers the first decade of my life and the early days of my baseball card collecting.
Sock Man’s heir is “Wally the Green Monster”–a brazen rip off of Sesame Street character Elmo, but in green, not red. The name is meant to invoke the high, green left-field wall at Fenway Park nicknamed “The Green Monster,” an architectural oddity incorporated into the stadium’s original design to hide the field from viewers on Lansdowne Street. When Wally was introduced to Boston fans in 1997 he received a mixed reception, including more than a few boos, but fans have come to accept him. He’s even acquired a mate of sorts–Tessie–who has perhaps helped to domesticate him in the minds of male fans. You wouldn’t want a fuzzy green guy coming on to your date while you’re up getting hot dogs and beers at one of Fenway’s few and far between concession stands, would you?
So where did that leave Sock Man? Out in right field, so to speak. There is a little display on the brick wall behind the stands in that area of Fenway Park, where the oldest part of the structure ends, that memorializes him along with the other logos in the team’s history. You will find him on Sox hats in souvenir stores only with difficulty; the younger sales help won’t know what you’re talking about.
In on-line forums you will see Sock Man derided as “weird” because it “looks like a condom taking batting practice.” I beg to differ with this assessment; no condom has ever played professional baseball, so how the on-line smart-alecks who think this is so funny could ever draw this conclusion is beyond me. Other commenters say it looks like Jay Leno, with its protruding chin, but this is unlikely; Leno was born in 1950, the same year as Sock Man, so the artist who designed Sock Man would not have had Leno around as a model before he became a television host.
So Sock Man is gone and for the most part forgotten; he lives out his days at the Home for Aging Mascots in Fall River, Mass., where I try to visit him a couple of times each month.
“Hey Sock,” I call out cheerfully as I poke my head in his ward. He can’t afford a private room, so he’s next to Chief Sockalexis, retired mascot for the Cleveland Indi . . . I mean “Guardians.” The Chief is asleep, but Sock Man turns and looks at me slowly, as if through fog, and recognizes me. “Well, hello,” he says finally. He’d been sitting on his bed, staring out the window.
“How they treating you?” I ask, and immediately want to bite my tongue, as I recall that this can set Sock Man off on a tirade.
“Couldn’t be worse,” he says, waving his hand over his breakfast tray. “Corn flakes, prunes, bad coffee–what’s not to hate?”
“On the other hand, it’s free,” I say, trying to calm him down. Once a mascot hits 65 his sub-standard medical care is paid for by MediMascot, a federal assistance program passed during the Great Society era to enable fuzzy folks like Sock Man to live out their golden years with dignity.
“So how’s my distinguished successor doing?” Sock Man asks.
“He’s pretty much an institution now,” I say, searching on my phone for photos of Wally to show him.
“That jerk couldn’t carry my jock strap to the ball park,” Sock Man grouses. “They had no business ‘retiring’ me–I was in the prime of my career.”
“Sure you were,” I say, trying to calm him down. “I brought you something,” I add, reaching into a plastic bag.
“What is it?”
“Some Dr. Scholl’s Men’s Comfort and Energy Massaging Gel Insoles. They’ll help keep you cool.”
“Thanks,” he says. “It does get awfully hot here in the summer. So . . . how’s my reputation holding up?”
I inhale, as I don’t know how to sugarcoat the news. “Well, okay I guess. Some say you’re ugly, some say you’re creepy. Some say you remind them of the Crimson Chin.”
“Who’s the Crimson Chin?”
“I had to look it up myself–apparently it’s a cartoon character from a show called Fairly Odd Parents.”
“Like water over a dam under the bridge off a duck’s back–I am a cartoon character. Anything else?”
I gulp, as I’m heading into choppy waters. “Well, one guy in a not very-well reasoned or articulated answer on reddit said you were . . .”
“Yes?”
“He said you always make him do a double take because you “look every bit like a racist caricature but he isn’t.”
Mr. Sock gives me a look of wild surmise, like Cortez’s men in Keats’ “On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer.” “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“You have to understand,” I say. “It’s not like your decade anymore–everythingis considered racist today. Or at least people think they get virtue points for interpreting things as racist that nobody in their right mind would have considered racist five minutes before. It’s like taking credit for discovering something.”
“Aren’t you going to make another allusion to the Keats’ poem?”
“I figure one in a blog post is probably enough.”
“Hmph,” he hmphed. “So they’re trying to lump me with my roommate.”
The Chief stirs from his nap just in time to hear his name, image and likeness–to use the current sports biz phrase–taken in vain.
“I’m no racist,” he says. “I look like a real person–Louis Francis Sockalexis, the ‘Deerfoot of the Diamond,’ who played for the Cleveland Spiders. And the Cleveland Naps changed their name to Indians to honor me, not abuse me.”
“I know,” I say to him, “but nobody cares about the truth anymore. They just want to claim the moral high ground by accusing other people of wrong-think.”
The Chief feels strongly about this subject, so I’ve brought him a present too. “Here,” I say as I reach in my bag. “Here’s a little something for you.”
I hand him a fuchsia and yellow stuffed animal.
“What the hell is this?” he asks.
“It’s Slider, the new Cleveland mascot!”
It’s not often you see a grown mascot weep, but the Chief breaks down in tears when he sees who . . . or rather what . . . has replaced him.
“Is assisted suicide legal in Massachusetts?” he asks over a lump in his throat.
I check my phone again. “Nope, it’s still a crime,” I say, reading about a 2022 Supreme Judicial Court decision. “There’s a bill pending that would allow it if a patient is expected to die within six months.”
“Better take this thing with you then,” the Chief says as he hands the doll back to me. “Just looking at it is going to be the death of me.”