I split a season ticket for 3 of those years, so I probably saw 100 games between 1981 and 1984.
From a baseball fan perspective, it was all about the emergence of Dwight Evans as a hitter (as well as being the greatest RF) and Wade Boggs.
=The last years of Carl Yastrzemski, and when he retired, i thought I would never feel the same way about the Sox again.
= I went to the retirement of Joe Cronin's #4 and Ted Williams came back and still looked pretty good, except he was no longer the Splendid Splinter anymore.
- Remember that the early '80s were still before the building of the .406 club behind home plate, so there still existed the jet-stream that took fly-balls into the net. One of the reasons they wanted Tony Armas in the lineup, and also why soft-toss lefties like Tudor and Ojeda were considered expendable. (Ojeda was maddening, btw. In 1984 he led the league in shutouts with 5, in spite of an ERA+ of just over average.)
- The front office was a mess, and Ralph Houk was just a caretaker who was collecting a paycheck. There were stories about Houk going golfing on ST game days, and having his coaches manage the games. The whole thing came to a head, when in June of 1983, on the same day the Sox were hosting a fund-raiser for Tony C., Buddy LeRoux staged a coup, and replaced Heywood with the return of Dick O'Connell. Eventually, the courts decided against Buddy, and the next year Lou Gorman was brought aboard, and things started to change for the better.
= Edit.. and per chrisfont9's comments about Lansford, I felt he cheated in at 3rd (ala Pablo, btw) and that limited his range, although it made him look good on those slow rollers. I was not sad to see him go.
- Edit #2.. Forgot to mention all the Clemens hype after being drafted in '83, and then his arrival in '84, and then the shoulder injury and thinking his career was over like the one-hit wonder Jim Lonborg.
