E-Mail This Article to a Friend Game faces (continued)

Q: Given what you’ve learned in the course of researching this book, what job would you most like to have at Fenway?

A: To be team historian. I think they need some extra help in that area, and I think they need somebody to really put together a true archive, somebody that has skills in library science, or can learn them, and apply cataloguing techniques to the material. And collect materials; I think none of these teams collect as much material as they should, just to tuck away someplace, even. And I enjoy nothing more than going and reading old microfilm about old baseball games, and finding the hidden stories in there.

Q: Which job would you least like to have?

A: I wouldn’t like to have a job that kept me from watching the play on the field, because it would be too frustrating to be so close to the action and then not be able to see it. I’ve been there enough in recent years that I can miss an inning or two talking to someone in a back room without getting too antsy.

[Or] a job that was physically tiring and you didn’t get to see much of anything that went on. I don’t think it would be especially a lot of fun to be in charge of the after-game clean-up crew. I did stay all night one night and watch them, but I didn’t have to do it. Especially on a wet, rainy night, with all the leftover peanuts and papers all soggy and heavy, and you’re working with all this noise of the blowers that they use to try and move the stuff around. It’s pretty thankless.

Q: Do you know if any of the current Red Sox players have read the book?

A: I don’t know if any of the players even know about the book.

Q: It would be interesting to know how surprising some of these jobs are to the players. Maybe even they’re not aware of how much goes on behind the scenes.

A: Yeah, because they’re in their own world. They keep busy. A lot of the players are so sheltered that they don’t even notice some of these other people. [Then] there are people like Johnny Pesky who [would] talk to anybody working there. He just stopped and had a word for everybody. He’s pretty amazing that way. A lot of these guys come from humble backgrounds and learned the right kind of family values growing up, or whatever, that they’re friendly and respectful of other people.

You see these guys bat and then they strike out or pop up, and they take their bat and their helmet and their batting glove, and the bat boy is standing four feet away from him, and they throw it on the ground and make the guy go over and pick it up. What’s going through their mind? Are they thinking about their at-bat, and they’re just so disgusted that they do that? It used to irritate me so much. It’s as though "You’re a slave, you pick up my stuff. I’m not going to go to the trouble of handing it to you." How rude can you get? But I don’t think anybody necessarily thinks of it that way except me.

Q: You did all these interviews before the Red Sox were in the World Series. Do you feel as though that was bad timing? Do you wish you could go back and talk to everyone again, now that they’ve won the World Series?

A: No, not really. I think it’s better. I wanted the book to be "This is a typical day. This is what we do each and every day. This is our routine." Not, "This is some amazing, special thing." I wanted to focus on the ordinary, not the extraordinary.

Q: How many games a year do you typically attend?

A: Thirty or so. It was up to 40 this year, I think. But 30 or so has probably been the average. It’s not like 81, which is the number of home games, and it’s not like the players, who are supposed to get to 162 of them, if they’re lucky, if they’re in the major leagues the whole time. But if you take 30 games and multiply times 30 years or so, it’s about 900 games. I don’t know if I’ve hit 1000 yet. Of course, when I’m not at the game, I’m usually watching it on television. My involvement is pretty total.

Q: Do you work harder at Rounder when it’s not baseball season?

A: Well, now we started Rounder Books this year, so I’m actually working on those around the clock, year-round. So for me now it’s kind of a treat because baseball doesn’t stop.

Q: Do you know how many Rounder artists have sung the National Anthem at Fenway?

A: I know I’ve set up a few. Ellis Paul has been there three or four or five years in a row now. The Nields have been back, one or more Nields, a few times. Mason Daring is somebody that we work pretty closely with; he says [singing at Fenway] is still one of the greatest thrills of his life.

Q: It must be a special thrill for you, too, combining two of your loves.

A: Yeah. Of course, I haven’t sung it myself because I don’t know how to sing.

Bill Nowlin appears with Johnny Pesky at Borders Books in Braintree, on December 11, at 2 p.m. Tamara Wieder can be reached at twieder[a]phx.com.