I called my pal Leon last night.
Leon Cole is the avuncular former host of CBC Radio's R.S.V.P, a classical music request program where listeners from coast to coast to coast in Canada could call or write in their listening requests. He is the father of Holly Cole, one of Canada's finest singers.
He is also about the biggest Boston Red Sox fan anybody has ever met, and still feels a crushing sense of guilt for his part in dashing the World Series hopes of his beloved Sox back in 1986.
Proper thing, says I. It absolutely was his fault. You can talk about Bill Buckner. You can invoke the Curse of the Babe. You can say what you want: 1986 was Leon's fault.
It was Leon who, with two out in the bottom of the ninth in Game Six and lightly regarded Mookie Wilson coming up to bat, took it upon himself to dash out to the refrigerator in his Palmerston Avenue home in Winnipeg, reach in, and pull out a bottle of champagne in preparation for the celebration to follow. The Gods of Baseball, confronted with such stunning hubris, promptly blinked their eyes or wiggled their noses or did whatever it is that Gods do, and a routine, harmless grounder squirted through Buckner's legs to score the winning run, pushing the series to a seventh game which the Mets won.
Leon has lived with that shame for close to twenty years.
So, last night, with the Bosox leading 3 - 0 in the eighth inning, I called Leon. His son Austin answered the phone. Leon, he said, was not available to take a call. So I left a message:
"You tell Leon that if he so much as sets foot in his kitchen, even to see if the champagne is properly chilled, I will hunt him down like a dog."
Evidently, Leon was able to restrain himself, and the Bosox won.
He is now, after all these years, absolved.
Comments