We All Have Fathers

The Red Sox of the early 1960s were an irreverent-and often irrelevant-team that routinely played in front of thousands of empty seats at Fenway Park. While the club featured a sprinkling of stars in its lineup year after year, it also found ways to lose that made it an annual laughingstock in the American League. And its championship drought of nearly half a century only added to the inglorious legend. But to author Peter Hartshorn as a boy, there was nothing ridiculous about his beloved Red Sox, and going to games at Fenway with his father was pure joy, even sitting in the midst of all the unfilled seats and knowing the high probability of the team finding yet another way to lose. For every time he watched in awe a Yaz double off The Wall, or a Tony C shot sailing over the net, or a lightning-bolt fastball from The Monster, Dick Radatz, he experienced the thrill of Red Sox baseball at Fenway Park and, like so many boys before him, dreamed of being on that field himself one day. It was all made possible by his father, Lewis Hartshorn, a lifelong baseball fan whose first love had been the Boston Braves of the National League, but who instilled a deep appreciation of the sport in Peter, nurturing it with endless fly balls in the backyard and regular trips to Fenway Park to see the boy's diamond heroes, flawed though many of them were. Then came the Impossible Dream season of 1967 and the birth of Red Sox Nation, a magical transformation that no one saw coming. It seemed almost too good to be true, and it was, sadly, for Peter and his father. As years passed, a debilitating mental illness that had plagued Peter's father for decades divided father and son and pushed baseball aside before long-forgotten memories of the sport brought an unexpected reconciliation in his father's final days. We All Have Fathers: A Red Sox Memoir, is a moving reminder of the power of baseball to be an unconquerable tie that binds fathers and sons. Praise for We All Have Fathers: A Red Sox Memoir "A thoroughly enjoyable, poignant, intimate story of the making of the Red Sox-and a Red Sox fan. For those who like baseball, and love family." - Kevin Baker, co-author with Reggie Jackson, Becoming Mr. October "Take a ride in the Wayback Machine with Peter Hartshorn, back to when a family of four didn't have to get a second mortgage to buy seats along the first base line at Fenway Park, back to when the athletes weren't multi-millionaires, back to when baseball seemed to be a more simple game. Enjoy the scenery. Very nice." - Leigh Montville, author of Ted Williams: The Biography of an American Hero "Baseball in New England draws much of its popularity from a solid core of supporters whose loyalty to the Red Sox can be traced back through generations. After the 2004 Red Sox World Series victory, many visited local cemeteries to decorate in Red Sox regalia the final resting places of loved ones who missed the momentous breaking of the 86-year-old "Curse." In his book, Peter Hartshorn warmly recalls how baseball created a strong father and son bond in his family. In the author's case, however, it took a somewhat atypical path as his dad grew up not as a follower of the Crimson Hose, but of the old Boston Braves. Hartshorn's reminiscences preserve invaluable memories of those days when Boston also was once the 'Home of the Braves.'" - Bob Brady, president of the Boston Braves Historical Association Praise for I Have Seen the Future: A Life of Lincoln Steffens "Absorbing . . . [Hartshorn] has produced a biography that is prodigiously researched, fantastically interesting and extremely well-written. Steffens would have been pleased by how well Hartshorn has turned him inside out." - New York Times "Well-researched and well-written" - Wall Street Journal "A fascinating history...an extraordinary book about a complex man." - American Journalism Review