Even though today’s game is in our opponent’s park in Philly, Opening Day for the Red Sox always takes me back to that Impossible Dream Year of ’67 when I was a freshman at Simmons College on the Fenway, just a couple of blocks away from Fenway Park.  It’s where my passion for baseball was inspired by the hordes of incredulous fans walking past my alma mater on their way to September baseball and the eventual World Series, following so many years of indifference to a lackluster team.

Simmons is also where I learned to love a light-meat tuna sandwich with an iced coffee for lunch.  Something so uniquely different and tastier than the white albacore tuna sandwiches I’d grown up with.  As a commuter student, I ate most of my lunches in the basement cafeteria where the best deal on the menu was tuna on an onion roll with chips and an iced coffee.  I do not remember eating anything else there during my four years – that is what stands out as the lasting food memory of my college years.  And so today, in honor of Opening Day, I made myself a tuna sandwich using one 5-ounce can of Genova Tonno, with chips and an iced coffee.  No onion roll available, multigrain bread made an excellent substitute.

It was deliciously redolent of fond memories, and so much more healthful than a Fenway Frank.  Play ball!