“The whole congregation went ‘boooo.’ So I’m sitting next to Sam in the pew. They rescinded the clergy pass,” says Thomas. “Jim said everything is great except for one thing. In 2002, father and son were in the congregation at a packed Old South Church when their friend, senior minister Jim Crawford, gave his final sermon. Sam was no longer on his dad’s shoulders between home and third, but Thomas Kennedy still was giving life lessons to his son. In 2001, they came to Boston to help end a curse. He joined the San Diego Padres’ operations staff full time in late 1996 under Larry Lucchino and was reunited with his Brookline High baseball teammate and pal Theo Epstein. He also sold radio advertising at WFAN and WABC. Kennedy spent three summers with the Yankees, once rescuing an overserved Mantle from an event and also aggravating Joe DiMaggio when he had the Yankee Clipper introduced before the Mick at Old-Timer’s Day. “You’re going to have to learn, no one works for George Steinbrenner for nothing.” Sam refused.īut Jack Lawn, George Steinbrenner’s executive vice president, set him straight. When the Yankees hired Sam, Thomas Kennedy worried about the high cost of living in New York, urged him to ask first about salary. He only got interview requests from the Yankees and the Brewers, although Dave Dombrowski, currently the Red Sox president of baseball operations, crafted a “very nice” rejection letter from the Florida Marlins. In 1992, at the end of his sophomore year at Trinity College, he composed 75 letters to executives of every team in Major League Baseball. Photo courtesy of Kennedy family/Boston Globe Sam is wearing a Dexter School Hockey camp T shirt. Sam Kennedy (age 9) at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., in 1982. Sam starts to say Carney Lansford was his favorite player, but he’s interrupted by the pop of Shin-Soo Choo’s bat crushing Price’s first-pitch fastball into the center-field bleachers. Although Elston Howard broke up the no-no with a two-out single, a Red Sox fan was born. He went to the team’s home opener in 1967 - the Red Sox’ Impossible Dream year - when the great Carl Yastrzemski made a leaping, one-handed circus catch to preserve Billy Rohr’s no-hit bid in the ninth inning. Thomas grew up in Yankee territory in Sherman, Conn., just 65 miles north of Yankee Stadium. “They’re just trying to get a little extra, but it doesn’t work. “That’s always a good question,” says Thomas, who is retired but recently gave the homily at the Bud Collins memorial service at Trinity Church and is chairman of the board of Sherrill House, a nonprofit nursing and rehabilitation center in Jamaica Plain. If a pitcher crosses himself and the hitter does the same thing, whom does the Lord reward? Thomas Kennedy (left, standing with son Sam at Fenway Park) said baseball is “a religion around here.” Stan Grossfeld/Globe staff This season, the entire Red Sox staff has pitched like the first inning is still batting practice. It is now moments before the Sox play Texas, and father and son are in the Red Sox executive suite overlooking home plate. “If people get up and leave early we try to tell the ushers, listen it may be their first time at Fenway, if you think there’s a chance, give them an opportunity.” Kennedy loved to sit near the dugout in the late innings. “I had Chet Lemon like 17 times,” says Sam. They’d go early to get autographs from players on the visiting team. When he wasn’t with his father, Sam went to Sox games with the son of a Presbyterian minister. “You could not have lived next door to better human beings,” says Gammons. He says that sometimes after a snowstorm the reverend had already cleared his driveway. Hall of Fame writer Peter Gammons was a neighbor in Brookline. Even today, he’ll sometimes forgo the luxury box and find a seat next to a random fan. He sometimes skipped out of church, telling the phone operators that he was going to a funeral for a great aunt at the Cathedral in the Fenway. He used to write sermons in the grandstand while keeping a scorecard.
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