Rockland woman, 94, the dean of Sox fans

Among the far-flung throngs of Red Sox nation, Louise Robbins, 94, could be the dean.

The retired Rockland baker has lost her hearing, but she can still follow her beloved baseball team on her donated color television and read the sports page every morning.

The buzz in baseball is that it is composed of 90 percent pitching. Robbins agrees, and said the Sox problems this year can be traced to a lousy pitching staff. “I think I can throw the damn ball harder than they can.”

It was pitching discussion that dominated her proudest moment as a Red Sox fan, the day a tall man named Ted Williams walked into Dave’s Restaurant, on the Rockland-Thomaston line, where Robbins worked as a baker.

At 5 a.m., the counter section was already jammed as the Red Sox slugger came in with BDN sports columnist Bud Leavitt. Leavitt was on television all the time, both on his sports show and pushing Nissen’s bread. They walked to a quiet corner of the dining room, to avoid the crowd.

The waitress declined to wait on the pair, since the dining room area was closed. But Robbins recognized them right away and hustled in to take their breakfast order.

“Good morning No. 9,” Robbins said to the baseball star. “Oh, you know who I am? How come?” he replied.

She told Williams that she and a group of Rockland friends and her husband drove down to Fenway Park for several games a year. “I’ve seen you play,” she told him. “I’m the one who booed you when you dropped the ball.”

Williams laughed and asked who her favorite pitcher was. “Oil Can Boyd.” she answered.

“Good choice,” Williams answered.

Robbins didn’t explain to Williams why she liked Boyd so much. “He was tall and skinny and homely as a son of a gun. He was so awkward. I always liked Randy Johnson, too, because he is so homely,” Robbins said over coffee in her Pleasant Street apartment.

All Leavitt wanted to know was whether the restaurant bread was Nissen’s, his television sponsor. It was. The pair finished their breakfast and left a nice tip.

As they walked out, customers including Mason Johnson finally recognized the famous slugger and Leavitt. They were furious at Robbins for not telling them. “They asked me not to,” she explained.

Twenty-five years later she said, “They were not real Red Sox fans, anyway.”

Not fans like her husband Edgar, Doc Hodgkins, Randy Ellis and a guy named Todd from Goodnow’s Pharmacy. They used to pile into Edgar’s car for the eight-hour roundtrip to Fenway Park, always stopping at a chicken joint in Medford on the way home. Edgar drove poultry to New York City all week, but still did the driving to Boston.

“Sometimes we would get great seats, sometimes terrible. One time we sat right by a pole. I could see the pitcher, but not the catcher. Edgar could see the catcher, but not the pitcher,” she remembered. Like most Red Sox fans, she was born into it. Her mother was a rabid Sox fan and always listened to the games on the radio.

The tickets were just over $5 in those days. Robbins would never pay the $100 ticket price to sit on top of the Green Monster today, even if she could make the trip. A broken hip a few years ago has slowed her down. She grumbled that she can’t even rake her Pleasant Street lawn any more. But she still bakes cookies, bread and brownies, like she did at Dave’s Restaurant, Willow Street Bakery and other spots around Rockland.

“I watch almost every game on television. But if those [West Coast] games start at 10 p.m., forget it. I turn on NESN at 5 a.m. to find out what happened,” she said. If you get up religiously at 4:30 every morning, you don’t stay up much past 9 p.m.

She was 6 years old when the Red Sox won it all the last time. At 94, she has no idea if she will see another World Series victory. At her age, she won’t buy any “new stuff cause I don’t know if I will get to use it,” she said.

Like any Sox fan, she has strong opinions on the team.

“I like Varitek the most. He looks out for the team. When he came back, they did better. I used to like Pedro [Martinez], now I am mad at him. I always get mad at the pitchers. I used to like Johnny Damon until he went to the Yankees. He will find out that money isn’t everything.”

“Manny [Ramirez] is a pain in the ass … but a lot of people are,” she said.

At 94, Louise Robbins roots for the Red Sox as hard as she can, hoping for one more World Series victory.

You never know.

Wait ’til next year.

Send complaints and compliments to Emmet Meara at emmetmeara@msn.com.