Fenway Park was a special place for Sidney Crosby even before the Penguins star takes on the Bruins in Monday’s Winter Classic. It’s where the Nova Scotia native attended his first-ever professional sporting event.
We think.
After Sunday’s practice at Fenway, Crosby shared the story with reporters.
“My first ever sporting event I went to was a baseball game here,” he said. “I want to say I was like nine or 10 maybe. It was Red Sox against the Giants, so Barry Bonds was playing for the Giants then. Dusty Baker was the manager. Mo Vaughn hit a home run, walk-off. I think it was like a 4-3 game.”
The problem? No such game ever happened.
If Crosby was nine or 10, that puts the game somewhere in the 1996-98 range. But Bonds and the Giants did not visit Boston in interleague play until 2007, by which point Crosby’s NHL career was already underway and Mo Vaughn’s MLB career was over.
Now, that doesn’t mean Crosby is making it all up or lying intentionally or anything. Childhood memories can be weird. It’s certainly possible -- even likely -- that Crosby did in fact attend a Red Sox game at Fenway as a kid, but that he just misremembers some details or has conflated different games or experiences.
If there was a Vaughn walk-off involved, the Sox slugger had a couple around that time. He had a three-run walk-off homer against the Anaheim Angels on July 26, 1997, and then famously hit a home opener walk-off grand slam against the Seattle Mariners on April 10, 1998.
(By the way, how about that Joe Castiglione "Can you believe it?")
The latter led some on Twitter to speculate that perhaps Crosby had mixed up Bonds with Mariners superstar Ken Griffey, Jr. Certainly possible. It wouldn’t explain the Dusty Baker part, but it seems as likely an explanation as any. Or perhaps the Vaughn walk-off is just another detail Crosby misremembered.
Anyways, does any of this really matter? Nope. Crosby certainly has more important things to focus on, and hopefully the rest of us do as well. It is nonetheless interesting and a bit amusing, though.
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