Which will we miss more in 2020: Sox or concerts ?

Jeff Solari and Sterling Pingree debate……
Solari says: It’s going to be weird not going to Fenway Park this summer. I was very much looking forward to seeing some of the biggest names play there. Not Trout or Altuve. You know. Def Leppard. Motley Crue. Joan Jett. Guns N’ Roses.

But now that’s not going to happen. And it bothers me a whole lot more that I’m missing out on all of these acts than missing seeing the Red Sox play in their home ballpark.

Look I love the Sox. I have for more than 40 years. I really am missing seeing them on TV and listening to the games on the radio. But the summer of 2020 for me was going to be filled with great concerts. At multiple locations. But this is the summer that the music has died.

I was certainly hoping to go to a game or two at Fenway the summer. I actually own a partial Sox season ticket package that we share with Sports Chowdah sponsors and readers. I am sorry that most likely none of us will get to see baseball at Fenway in 2020.

But it’s not devastating to me. To be honest I don’t think the Red Sox were going to be very good this year and probably weren’t going to the playoffs.

Rocking out with Axl Rose, Vince Neil, Joan Jett and Gene Simmons would’ve made up for having no Chris Sale, Mookie Betts or even David Price.

But none of that is going to happen. And that’s putting one mega sour note on my summer.

Sterling says…..

2020 was shaping up to be a big concert year for me. Sturgill Simpson (top of my concert bucket list) at the Garden, field tickets to Guns N Roses at Fenway Park and Kiss at the Waterfront, all made up my schedule of summer 2020. But I still miss baseball more.

Baseball is every day. It’s such a part of life in the warmer months, that even with humid 88 degree weather like we have had, it still doesn’t feel like summer yet. It’s like we’re having some unseasonably warm mid-March days, because at 7:10pm I’m not tuning into Red Sox baseball.

Think about this: you have never had a summer in your life without the Red Sox playing baseball games.

(Players didn’t go on strike in 1994 until August 12th.) Think about that: when was the last summer without baseball? (Answer: the mid-1800’s.) Somehow my Dad and I still talk on the phone, but now it’s about menial topics like the weather, the pandemic and my future, instead of the important stuff like “what ails that reliever they brought in last night?”

I miss going to games. The week everything stopped, I was supposed to go to Fort Myers for a highly anticipated vacation and 3 spring training games. I’ve already tossed out four Sea Dog tickets and two Red Sox trips have gone by the wayside as well. And that’s okay, there will be more games, someday, but I feel for those who there are no more games for.

The Little Leaguers, who for them, this was going to be their 12-year old summer. Or the high school seniors who were going to play the last baseball of their lives, either on high school or legion diamonds.

I played golf this weekend with a friend of mine who I played legion ball against and we debated which season would be worse to miss: your last season of Little League or your senior year/last year of legion ball?

I LOVED playing Little League baseball, but for me it was a no-brainer, senior year and legion. Those were the last games that I ever played, aside from a few fall leagues and twilight leagues later in life. Nothing could top taking the field under the lights at Hippach Field in Farmington, Maine on a summer night. Fans packing the grandstand, most of them with Gifford’s cones and to watch the Franklin County Flyers.

To think that this isn’t happening or won’t happen this summer is a damn shame that goes beyond a few postponed concerts.

Those can be made up, but missing out on a summer of baseball is missing out on a summer of life.

Jeff Solari

About Jeff Solari

Jeff Solari is the president and founder of the Sports Chowdah, Maine’s only free, weekly sports e mail newsletter. Recently, the Mount Desert Island native was the co-host of "The Drive" on 92.9 FM in Bangor.