The Boston Red Sox wrapped up their 2024 season with a win over the Tampa Bay Rays on Sunday. But the true star of the show was retiring radio broadcaster Joe Castiglione.
Castiglione, 74, was the summertime voice of the Red Sox for the last 42 years. He was given the prestigious Ford C. Frick Award and inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame earlier this summer. But Sunday was the most special day of all for the retiring legend.
Before the game, Castiglione was honored on the field by members of the 1986, 2004, 2007, 2013, and 2018 Red Sox teams, five memorable years in franchise history, while the scoreboard flashed a montage of the broadcaster's calls of those playoff runs. Castiglione threw out the first pitch as well.
Nothing could compare, though, to Castiglione's masterful conclusion to his storied career. He took over the broadcast on both TV and radio for the final inning of the 3-1 Red Sox win, and when the final out was recorded, it was Castiglione's moment to shine.
First, the legend quoted former Major League Baseball commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti, a Boston native and former Yale president, in his seminal book, A Great and Glorious Game.
It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops... and summer is gone.
But Castiglione, as only he could, had one final stanza to add of his own.
"Another season has gone. My 42 years here have gone so quickly, but now it's time to say goodbye to Red Sox Nation... at least on a regular basis. And to pass the baton to my good friend, Will Fleming."
It was quintessential Castiglione. In a moment all about himself, he still managed to spread light on everyone else. And Fleming was so touched by the hand-off, which Castiglione was under no pressure to do, that he was barely able to speak through his tears.
As Castiglione foreshadowed, this isn't likely to be the last time he sits behind a microphone to call a Red Sox game. But it was the end of a remarkable, Hall of Fame run. And for that, we all salute him.
