Their Friday game was canceled as police tracked down and eventually captured the final surviving suspect. Others walked to a nearby apartment building and shared a pizza on the roof. The team bus was one of the few non-emergency vehicles on the streets, and after it arrived late at night at Fenway Park, some players stayed in the clubhouse to keep watching the coverage on television. They landed in the middle of, essentially, a city-wide lockdown as police engaged in a manhunt and eventually a shootout with the suspects, resulting in the death of bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, not long after the pair had killed MIT police officer Sean Collier. The Red Sox swept their three-game series in Cleveland and returned to Boston on Thursday night. “They took it personally,” assistant general manager Eddie Romero said. Third baseman Will Middlebrooks was among the first - or, at least, among the earliest prominent figures - to Tweet the phrase Boston Strong, which became a rallying cry. Jonny Gomes, one of the roster newcomers, had worn his northern California area code on his cleats as a point of pride, and so the players asked clubhouse manager Tom McLaughlin to put the Boston area code 617 onto a jersey they could hang in the dugout. At a team dinner that night, the players talked of how they could help. When their flight landed in Cleveland, the Red Sox became obsessed with news coverage of the attack. Perpetrators were at the time unknown and at large. Dozens of runners and spectators transported to local hospitals. It didn’t take long for the players to catch up on the basic details. “I remember confusion,” Dustin Pedroia told The Athletic on the five-year anniversary. After a walk-off win against the Rays, the players had showered and hurried onto a bus for an afternoon flight to Cleveland when their police escort abruptly abandoned the bus and sped toward downtown. Those are the marathon colors, and when the bombs detonated at the finish line on Boylston Street in 2013, the blast was a mile away, but “it was almost as if (they) did it at Fenway Park,” Red Sox executive vice president of partnerships Troup Parkinson said. There’s a reason Nike designed its Red Sox City Connect uniforms with a yellow and blue color scheme. ![]() “If you were crafty enough or lucky enough to find your way into Fenway Park, great! And then you’d roll down into Kenmore Square and watch the runners.” “It’s a snow day in April,” said Red Sox president Sam Kennedy, who grew up just down the road from the ballpark. Unofficially, it’s Marathon Monday, and since 1959, the Red Sox have always played a home game that morning, typically at 11 a.m. Officially, it’s Patriots’ Day, an otherwise obscure holiday celebrated almost nowhere else in the country. Schools in Boston are always closed on the third Monday in April. Why, in the wake of such sadness, fear and tragedy did a baseball team play such a vital role in the recovery and resurgence of a city and its people? Because, it turns out, that’s the way it’s supposed to work. Even now, 10 years later, the Red Sox play a prominent role in marathon bombing-related events - the team and its players serving as symbols of a resilient city, something to cheer for amidst difficult memories. They couldn’t heal a wound or track down a terrorist, but when the manhunt was over, David Ortiz became the city’s voice, Fenway Park its place of refuge, the World Series its light at the end of the tunnel. The 2013 Red Sox were in that spirit, underdogs on the field coming off a last-place finish in 2012, but iconic within the community. ![]() Egos were set aside so that individuals could do their jobs, then ask if they could do more. A study by Harvard University labeled the local and national response, “the ingenuity of swarm intelligence.” In Boston, there was no singular leader, but rather a collective sense of responsibility. The bombing aftermath has become a model for other communities dealing with tragedy and trauma. The collective grief of an entire nation. He was at the marathon, and as deputy administrator of FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency), Serino was thrust immediately into action for all that came next. When the bombs exploded on April 15, 2013, Serino was not at the ballpark. Even today, the association is both unusual and inevitable.Īnd Serino sits squarely in the middle of it. Their connection is built on cosmic fate and deliberate hard work in-the-moment decisions and relationships that spanned decades. The tragedy itself had nothing to do with the team, but 10 years later, the Red Sox and the bombing are inextricably linked. Ballplayers from anywhere but Boston came to epitomize the community’s grief and determination. ![]() In the decade since the attack, a baseball team - of all things - has become synonymous with the city’s recovery and resilience. Even on the anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombing.
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