Kazoo Guy is Still at Fenway Park!

I don't sit in the Bleachers that often when I visit Fenway Park, anymore.  Nowadays, I go with the kids who are always looking for foul balls or autographs.  And I need to be able to see the game with my terrible eyesight.  These two ingredients do not lend themselves to an evening in the bleachers.  Back when I was in school, my buddies and I would always scam seats in the bleachers.  Back then, the tickets were cheap and the beer was plentiful.  When the Red Sox came back to play after the 1995 strike, the ownership group even sliced the ticket prices in half for those bleacher seats.  We went every chance that we got back then. 

But then jobs, wives and kids made going to Fenway an annual tradition, instead of a weekly tradition and my time spent near the Williams Red Seat dropped considerably.  The last time I was in the bleachers, in fact was about 5-6 years ago when I went with a couple of friends of mine to see the Sox play...the Angels, I think.

But never mind those details.  One thing that I vaguely remember about those seats in the bleachers was the sight of this guy with a Kazoo always trying to get the Red Sox - and us bleacher bums - to rally.  If the Red Sox got a couple of guys on base, the Kazoo guy would stand up and play his Kazoo proudly.  I thought it was amusing and made a mental note to revisit this guy the next time I was in the Bleachers for a game.

Boston, MA.  6pm.  Lo and behold, that next time was last night.  A couple of friends of mine invited me to the game against the Rangers.  No work, no spouse and no children to be found.  Just a couple of old friends and some ice cold beers (well somewhat cold beers, we're at Fenway after all).  And by luck, our seats were about 14 or 15 rows behind the Visitor's bullpen.  The weather was a little off, so the question became whether we would see the "Kazoo Guy" this time around.  I even made a crack about it to my friends.  My memory of that last game here was not of the score or even the team the Red Sox played, it was of this guy who played a Kazoo with red socks pinned to his hat.

It was a long time ago that I saw this guy at Fenway. And I don't remember exactly where I was sitting that day all those years ago.  So I thought it would be pretty funny if he was still here trying to rally the (often drunk) troops. I told my friends to keep an ear and eye out.  It would make for a good laugh.

As we sat down in our seats, I thought about a lot of things, one of which was that I would have to wait for a rally to start to see if this guy still came to the games.  After about 10 minutes, I found out that I would not have to wait for that rally to start after all.  Unless there was a Red Sox player with the last name of "Kazoo" who had his jersey purchased by this older gentlemen, I think I found the right guy when he sat down.  He was sitting about 2 rows ahead of us. I deftly pointed out to my friends that this guy was still here and we had that good laugh.  I even snapped the picture above (pretending to take a picture of the field, of course).

During the couple of times that the Red Sox were rallying (they were down most of the game), there he was doing his duty, Just like a fife and drum before the scene of a battle, the Kazoo Guy stood up on his seat, played Garry Glitter's "Rock and Roll (Part 1) on his kazoo, rallied the nearby fans with a couple of shouts of "Hey" and then pointed at the security guard near our section, ostensibly to thank him for not making him sit down.  It was perfectly short and left us wanting more.  He went on to do this a couple of more times.  To no avail it turned out as the Red Sox lost 10-7. 

And we had a couple of more laughs.  I'm going to have to take the kids here next time.  Foul balls and eye sight be damned.