Red Sox fans who are ready to jump ship after the Nomar Garciaparra debacle or those who are frustrated with close losses, uninspired play, or the general malaise we’ve witnessed from this year’s team, might like the story about my friend Lou Stevens.

Lou is a retired teacher and sportswriter whose words graced the pages of the Piscataquis Observer in Dover-Foxcroft for a number of years. He has also written several books. Lou has two passions in his life: English history and horse racing.

Lou always said he liked following the ponies because they were the best athletes in the world. They never complained. They always showed up on time. And you have never heard of a thoroughbred who refused to run until his contract was renegotiated.

I had the privilege of teaching English across the hall from Lou at Penquis Valley High School in Milo for a number of years. What a teacher he was, and when it came time to study English literature, Mr. Stevens brought the house down in his classroom.

Back in those days – the late 1970’s – we ran our own version of Fantasy League Baseball by playing a game called Strat-o-matic baseball.

Strat-o-matic was a great board game, played with dice and statistical cards, listing a player’s results from the previous year. I served as Commissioner of the league. We had two, eight-team divisions, and we played 162 games each year until school got out in June. The playoffs and World Series followed in the early summer. How the kids loved it.

We had a draft in the early spring, which usually turned into an overnight, sleeping bag affair, and we followed Major League Baseball rules for trading, with appropriate procedures adhered to the letter.

One year, we asked Mr. Stevens to throw out the ceremonial “first dice,” which he gladly agreed to do. Picture actor David Niven – a Lou Stevens’ look-a-like – winding up and rolling the dice from the hallway to the center of my classroom. All eyes were on Lou, and when the applause died down, we played a recording of the national anthem (Where’s ESPN when you need it?), and, of course, we stood silently, hands over hearts. We were all business.

Lou asked the managers of the teams and the Commissioner, of course, if he could add to the Opening Day festivities by telling us a story. We knew Lou was a great storyteller, so we gathered around him like campers around a campfire.

It was a tale I would never forget.

Lou was a student at Boston University in school year 1948-1949. He was also a die-hard Boston Red Sox fan. One of the joys of his young life was rounding up a bunch of his friends and heading into Fenway Park to see the Sox play.

It had always been a dream of Lou’s to attend every Red Sox home game, and that’s just what he did in the summer of 1949.

Lou even went so far as to coax his cronies to take the train ride to Yankee Stadium with him for October 1 and 2, to witness what would soon become an historic series for the pennant, one so notable that world-renowned, Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Halberstam captured all the action and intrigue of the thing in his famous book, “The Summer of ’49.”

The Red Sox entered the season-ending series needing to win only one of the two remaining games to clinch the pennant.

What a series it was.

October 1, 1949, was Yankee Clipper Joe DiMaggio Day. No matter to Sox faithful. After all, the Old Towne team had won 59 of its last 78 games, hadn’t it?

The Sox led early 4-0 – boy, does that sound familiar – but they’d eventually fall 5-4, victims of an eighth-inning home run by Johnny Lindell.

That, of course, set the stage for the dramatic, Sunday, Oct. 2, final day of the season clash.

Lou continued his tale by telling us that the line for bleacher seats was more than a block long, but he was young, and it would certainly be great when his Sox beat the dreaded Pinstripes for the pennant in their own stadium.

Ellis Kinder was on the mound for Boston in the final game. He had 23 wins that year up to that point. Mel Parnell pitched bravely the day before in a losing effort.

Kinder trailed 1-0 in the eighth when he was lifted for a pinch hitter.

Controversial manager decisions have haunted the Sox and their fans for decades.

Manager Joe McCarthy, who used to manage the Yankees, brought in Mel Parnell to pitch in the bottom of the eighth inning. The Yanks scored four times, and although the Red Sox did manage a rally of three runs – boy, does that sound familiar, too – they fell short again. Their archrivals had won another pennant, Yankees 5, Red Sox 3, and Lou Stevens, future teacher, author, and horse racing fan, lost all faith in his beloved team.

“I’ve never listened to, watched, or read about that team since that October day,” he told the crowd of boys. “And nothing you could do or say could change my mind.” The boys fell silent.

“Think of the aggravation I’ve saved myself from enduring,” he told me later. To this day, Lou Stevens couldn’t tell you about Nomar, Grady Little, Yaz, or Bucky Dent, for that matter. He couldn’t pick Johnny Damon out of a lineup, or even guess what number Dwight Evans wore. As a matter of fact, he couldn’t care one lick.

My friend divorced that team in 1949. He’s never looked back.

Is there a moral to this story?

You bet: When is post time today?

NEWS columnist Ron Brown, a retired high school basketball coach, can be reached at bdnsports@bangordailynews.net