First published in the Beacon Hill Paper, March 17, 1998

Fran Dunn was 18 years old when the Red Sox last won the World Series.

She lived her entire life in the house her father built when she was but three months old. Summer evenings she would sit on the front porch, her eyes staring at the horizon, rocking gently with the radio on, the play-by-play trying to keep pace with the muted roar of the crowd.

She almost never missed a game. She knew each player by name, number and statistics. She knew the Sox and knew each competitor and could talk about them for hours, observing, analyzing, praising, and cajoling. She marveled at the skills of Tris Speaker and Ted Williams. She never missed an opportunity to berate the team for foolishly trading away Babe Ruth.

Born in 1900, she lived for nearly a century. When she was born people rode horses and communicated by mail. She lived through the automobile age, the jet age, computers, a great depression, two world wars and far too many smaller ones. She lived through Stalin's purges, the Holocaust, the world hovering on the edge of nuclear annihilation. She saw the rise and fall of communism. She saw diseases conquered. She saw new ones invented.

As a young woman she played piano for silent movies. Towards the end of her life she watched one of the world's most expensive movies pretend to sink a boat that really sank when she was a teenager.

It was a century of stunning and bewildering change. Yet through it all was one constant.

The Red Sox never won the Series again.

Most years the season was easily over in September, the only issue being whether the Sox were last or second to last. Other years the team would be particularly cruel, prolonging the agony into October, making Fran think that perhaps, just perhaps, this was the year. 1967, the year of the cardiac kids. 1986, the year Bill Buckner bobbled the ball.

It never was to be, of course.

Winter was perhaps the hardest time for Fran. A few trades, new talent from the farm teams — there was hope. As the team assembled there came that long period of agonizing over the Sox' prospects. Could they do it this year? Was the pitching strong enough? Could this guy really hit?

And because she was at heart an optimist, the inevitable conclusion would be yes. Yes, this just may be the year.

So the Sox sustained her, through the deaths of her parents, nine siblings and vast numbers of relatives and friends. And as the Sox sustained her, she never lost her faith in them, never lost her sense that a new season brings renewal and hope.

For many years we believed my great aunt stayed alive simply because she was determined to see the Sox win another World Series. But the frailties of flesh being what they are, Fran's body gave out before her spirit. She died in the winter of 1998, leaving the Red Sox to soldier on without her.

Perhaps Fran knew that this year would hold the same disappointments as before. A weak outfield, dissension on the team, controversies about individual players — maybe all of these doom the 1998 season even before it starts.

Perhaps not. Fran was a woman of determination and persistence. She would have insisted the team could rise above it, she would have insisted the players pull themselves together and take a stab at victory.

It was her philosophy of baseball. It was her philosophy of life.