When I was born in October 2004, the recovery room at Cape Cod Hospital was not decorated with the usual balloons and teddy bears. Instead, it was festooned with Red Sox pennants and a poster of Johnny Damon.
As it happened, I arrived just hours before the Sox faced the St. Louis Cardinals in Game 1 of the World Series, with Boston on the brink of ending an 86-year-long championship drought. I wasn’t just my family’s third and final daughter — I was their lucky charm. After the Sox swept the series, it became lore that my birth had “transversed the Curse” — a reference to my position in the womb.
I’d eventually discover the kind of fanaticism I’d been born into. My parents are the kind of fans who have shown up at baseball card signings and Fenway Fests, and travel to Fort Myers for the chance to mingle with players at spring training. Who flew to Colorado to celebrate their 10th anniversary — my mother five months pregnant with me — because they simply had to be with their beloved team on the occasion.
And so, I was a Red Sox fan from the day I was born. (Earlier, if you count the Rockies game.) I have never had a choice in the matter — or so I thought.
The love for all things Sox was passed down from my maternal grandmother, Fay, the kind of fan who, in college, skipped classes to see Ted Williams play with tickets that cost 50 cents.
She frequented the box seats along the third-base line reserved for the Maltz Sales Company, where she was a saleswoman for more than 20 years. She sat there dutifully during rain games, or when extra innings lasted deep into the night.
That fervor was passed down to my mother, who like me, was born in a year of Red Sox glory — the 1967 season when the Sox won the AL pennant with the “Impossible Dream Team.”
My father’s upbringing in New York as a Yankees fan necessitated a “conversion” when he moved to Massachusetts as a pre-teen. Even though he has attended every Boston home opener for over 25 seasons, he still gets ribbed about his dubious past.
In the years since my birth helped deliver a championship, my life has been punctuated by Sox-related milestones.
When I met former Sox pitcher Jonathan Papelbon at the age of 5, I confessed my love for him, too young to be embarrassed or even remember. My family recalls his reply, delivered with a Southern twang: “I love you too, darlin’.”
At 11, I scored two tickets to a game by correctly answering a radio host’s trivia question about the retired numbers above Fenway’s right field grandstand: Who, among the retired numbers at Fenway Park, never played for the Red Sox?
It was a cheap question for any baseball fan, but I was underestimated for my age. Little did the radio host know that I had just finished reading Who Was Jackie Robinson?, about the barrier shattering legend whose number is retired across Major League Baseball, or that we had magnets of all Fenway’s retired numbers stuck to our fridge.
After the Sox won the 2018 World Series, my mom encouraged my sisters and me to skip school the next morning so we could celebrate. “This is the Red Sox in the World Series. It takes priority,” I remember her saying.
My family has always cheered on the Red Sox, but they’ve shown up for us, too.
When my sister was hospitalized after being diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, she was greeted at the hospital by Red Sox players including Brian Johnson, Bobby Poyner, Mike Shawaryn, and Josh Taylor, who were visiting children there.
During my mother’s breast cancer treatment, just a handful of years later, she leaned on the joy the team brought her, often wearing her “Strike Out Cancer” T-shirt.
At various events, my parents have managed to meet former players such as Jim Rice, Bobby Doerr, Jon Lester, Derek Lowe, and Luis Tiant. Carl Yastrzemski and Fred Lynn even held both my sisters when they were babies.
In 2006, my parents treated my grandmother to a game in the coveted pavilion seats, something my father insisted on despite money being tight. It was my grandmother’s last game at Fenway, before she passed away that winter.
These days, I live just a few minutes’ walk from Lansdowne Street and attend games whenever I can. Anytime I’m in the stands, I look at the retired numbers, making a point to pause on the number 8 worn by Yastrzemski — my grandmother’s favorite player.
Some people fall in love with baseball on their own; I always figured I was born into my fandom, with little free will involved. Since my grandmother’s passing, however, something has changed. Gazing at Yaz’s number, I know I’m there for more than the wins and losses of my favorite team. I’m there to honor history — my family’s history.
And the choice to embrace the love that’s been handed down to me — that’s entirely mine.
Kelly Broder can be reached at kelly.broder@globe.com.