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remarked, “Bragg’s my favorite because nobody else in Boston plays the way he does.” His first hit as a Red Sox player was a leadoff home run on August 2 against Minnesota. Within a month, on August 24, Darren experienced his greatest thrill in baseball when he hit a grand slam home run off of Seattle’s great pitcher Randy Johnson to lead Boston to a 9-4 victory over his old teammates. Darren had a solid year in 1997, batting .257, hitting 35 doubles, and playing in 153 games in spite of being struck in the face by a pitched ball in August. In June he played against his old American Legion teammate Rico Brogna when Philadelphia competed against the Red Sox in three inter-league games in Boston. Darren enjoys playing in Boston and for his manager Jimy Williams: “Jimy’s a great guy on and off the field. He tells you straight up what’s going on.” At the end of the season Darren and his wife, Kathleen, moved into their new home in Atlanta, and he began plans on completing his degree in economics at Georgia Tech.
One of Darren’s best friends on the Red Sox is massive first baseman and fellow “preppie” Mo Vaughn, whose locker adjoins Darren’s at Fenway Park and who remembers playing against the Taft grad when he was a three-sport star at Trinity Pawling. Asked whether the two talk about Taft/TP baseball games, Darren responded, “Oh, no. We talk about football and the collisions we used to have!” Although he doesn’t discuss his high school baseball days with Vaughn, Darren fondly remembers his Taft teammates and the annual trip to Florida in March. “Even though he was only a year older, I looked up to Eddie Travers because I liked the fact that he played hard. Jeff Waters was a senior when I was a lower mid, and he was the type of guy you could respect and go to for help when you needed it.” Tom Aldrich, a post graduate student who played third base alongside the diminutive lower mid in 1984, also had a positive impact on Darren. (Aldrich went on to play in the Detroit Tigers organization after graduation from Bowdoin, batting .338 in his first
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professional season, and concluded his baseball career after reaching the Class AA level.) The Red Sox have been stockpiling outfielders during the past winter, and where and how much Darren will be playing this year has been a subject for speculation by Boston sportswriters. But while others may be wondering about the Taft grad’s future with the Red Sox, Darren has no doubt that he will successfully face the competition. And Larry Stone also feels that he will: “He has the confidence and tenacity to succeed. Darren has always had the kind of mental toughness that enables him to handle difficult situations.” Boston’s popular outfielder has two goals: to continue playing for the Red Sox and to wear a World Series ring. Nobody who knows Darren Bragg would bet against him doing so. Bill Nicholson is a retired member of the English Department and the author of four books and numerous articles, many of them about baseball. He lives on Cape Cod with his wife, Connie.
“Darren was immediately installed in centerfield where his diving, head-long catches and all-out hustle on the bases soon endeared him to thousands of fans who had not often seen such daring play by one of their Fenway heroes.” John Bohn, The Boston Globe
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