DanMargarita.com

A stretch, you say? Let me explain. Adams is best known for playing the bumbling spy Maxwell Smart on the TV show Get Smart. Fans of the show are aware that Smart was Agent 86, working for the government spy agency, Control. That number was not chosen randomly, but for comic reasons as the term to “86” something, means to cease doing it.

As any Red Sox fan can tell you, the number 86 plays a prominent role in Red Sox history. It took the team 86 years to win a World Series, their last coming in 1918. Since that year when the Sox won the Series and the Allies won World War I, the Sox history has been littered with teams that continued take their fans to the brink of success, only to fail miserably in the end.

Each collapse seemed worse than the last one with the team finding imaginative new ways to disappoint, in manners that would be more astounding every time. One doesn’t even have to be a Sox fan to know that the mother of all El Foldo’s was the Bill Buckner ground ball World Series, naturally, in 1986.

Much is made of the fact that the Red Sox played their first game at Fenway Park just days after the Titanic sank in 1912. Yet few people know that Don Adams was born on April 13, 1923 in New York City, five days before the Yankees played their first game at Yankee Stadium, en route to their first World Series championship that season. A coincidence, you say?

Many newspaper wags, at least the more cynical ones (okay, Dan Shaughnessey), made note when the Red Sox posted their retired numbers on the right field facade. Initially they were positioned in the order 9-4-1-8. Of course, the Boston Globe columnist pointed out that the date 9/4/18 was the day before the first game of the 1918 World Series.

Those numbers were soon rearranged to avoid that look, and later the Red Sox added the number 27 for Hall of Famer Carlton Fisk. In addition, the Sox, along with all of Major League Baseball, included the number 42 for baseball legend Jackie Robinson.

I can out-do Shaughnessey on the numbers, here. If you add 27+9+8+4+1 you get a total of 49. If the Red Sox ever retire the number of the popular left-hander Bill Lee, number 37, the total will equal 86. If you add Jackie Robinson’s number 42 with 27, 9, 8, 4, and 1, you get a total of 91. Okay, that total exceeds the number 86, but if you consider that Nomar Garciaparra wore number 5 and for years was considered a shoo-in to make the Hall of Fame and get his number retired, his parting with the team and his downward career track make that unlikely possibility. Thus, you can subtract the number 5 from 91 and it goes down to number 86.

Let’s also remember that Red Sox exec Larry Lucchino referred to the Yankees as “The Evil Empire.” As noted earlier, Smart worked for the good guys, Control, America’s bumbling but well-intentioned organization. Sound like a baseball team you know? Smart’s nemesis, Siegfried, worked for Kaos; an evil empire, if there ever was one.

Sox fans can at least be glad that their team wasn’t cursed by actress Barbara Feldon, who played Agent 99 on the show. Then the team wouldn’t have won until 2017. Perhaps with the loss of Adams, she will put a new curse on the Sox and they won’t win a World Series for 99 years from their last one.

Would you believe, in 2103?