In his post-playing career, Gomes has made a point of coming back to Fenway. Friday marked the fourth or fifth time that he’d sat in the Monster Seats. He dreamed about the possibility of catching a homer, even spending time in the seats during batting practice on Friday to prepare.
When Story ripped his liner to left, Gomes stood in an aisle in the front row of the Monster Seats, just to the right of the light tower. He recognized imagination transforming into reality.
“I was hot on it,” beamed Gomes, who claims to have almost caught Story’s third homer in Thursday night’s game. “Hot bat, hot guy, I was ready for it.”
His gloveless attempt was not flawless. Gomes — beverages conveniently placed on the shelf in front of him — reached down in an attempt to make a barehand grab with two hands. The ball hit his hands and bounced off his right bicep.
“Did not touch the ground. Did not touch the ground,” Gomes insisted,
though a video replay cast some doubt on his recollection. “Brief bobble off the right bicep, but it was a full catch.”
Regardless, the ball was in Gomes’s hands. He hoisted it in triumph, and then a man who by his own account is “never at a loss for celebrations” deliriously pulled his shirt over his head.
“As a baseball junkie, as a baseball rat, I’ve literally been begging for that moment since I was 8,” said Gomes, who’d never before caught a ball at a game. “It’s a Red Sox homer, a Red Sox grand slam, but at the end of the day it’s a homer inside a museum. It’s a homer inside of a national monument. It’s legendary baseball history here. It’s like no other.”