A special in-person meeting after 24 years of emails

This story was excerpted from Ian Browne’s Red Sox Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

For 24 years now, the emails have been flying back and forth between myself and a man named Jack. Late into the night. Early in the morning. Mid-afternoon.

The topic? Always the Red Sox. Every single one of them.

After thousands of emails through nearly a quarter century, I finally met Jack Marshall last Thursday.

The chance to meet my favorite pen (email) pal occurred with the Red Sox in Washington playing the Nationals. Jack lives in Alexandria, Va., and emailed that he was going to the game with his sister. I unsuccessfully tried to track him down at a Sox-Nats game in 2009. When I couldn’t find him in his seat that night, I honestly thought maybe it was a sign we should just keep our relationship to email only.

But here we were, 14 years later, and I decided to give it another crack.

And what a thrill it was for both of us. Jack, who is a youthful 72 -- 21 years older than me -- practically jumped out of his seat to greet me. Then we went into the concourse behind his section and spoke for about 15 minutes.

To put the length of our email correspondences in perspective, Jack was 48 (younger than I am now) and I was 27 at the time of our first cyber connection. Social media didn’t exist, and the internet was in its relative infancy. Through all the advances in technology, we just kept emailing. Nothing more, nothing less.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but this is the only person I emailed for 24 years on a near daily basis without meeting.

We both remember the first email he sent me all this time later. Jack was upset that I wrote the Red Sox would regress because the club lost Mo Vaughn via free agency. I specifically agitated Jack when I opined in that piece for CBS SportsLine.com that Nomar Garciaparra might not be as dominant without Vaughn protecting him in the lineup. I also suggested the Sox would have a hard time being a true contender without big Mo.

Jack correctly -- and somewhat nicely -- told me that the lineup protection line in the story wasn’t the smartest take because each batter-pitcher matchup is its own entity. He said there is no such thing as one hitter protecting another one. I replied to him that the lineup protection bit was a bad take by me, and that I actually knew better than that.

But Jack took it a step further, saying the Sox would win more games without Vaughn in ’99 than the 92 they won with him in ’98. I thought he was nuts.

The 1999 Red Sox, sans Vaughn, won 94 games and advanced to the American League Championship Series. This was one round further than their Division Series knockout in ’98.

Nomar? He did OK, I guess, without Mo’s lineup protection. Garciaparra won the batting title with a .357 average.

Someone with my job can get quite a few emails, but I always appreciate the ones from Jack because there’s a thoughtful intelligence to them and he frequently supports his points with analysis.

Jack’s baseball passion runs deep. This is a man who studied for the bar exam in 1975 by listening to every Red Sox game on the radio.

“I remember my father said, ‘You know, if you don’t pass that exam, you’re going to have no one to blame but you and the Red Sox,”’ Jack told me during our meeting last week.

Jack passed the exam on the first try and moved to Washington D.C. after the 1975 World Series and has lived in the Beltway ever since. He is an ethicist who runs his own business.

“But when people ask me where I’m from, I still say Boston,” Jack said with pride.

Due to being roommates with the son of a high-ranking Cincinnati Reds executive, Jack scored choice seats for the 1975 World Series games at Fenway. He was sitting with a bunch of Reds employees when Carlton Fisk hit that iconic homer in Game 6. But then came Game 7.

“Game 7 was a great game,” Jack said of the Big Red Machine’s 4-3 victory. “I remember when [manager Darrell] Johnson took out [Jim] Willoughby, who no one could hit the entire series, and I was like, ‘Noooooo, you idiot.’ And they pinch-hit for him with Cecil Cooper, who hadn’t had a hit the entire series.”

Jack hasn’t lost his fastball through the years when it comes to the art of dissecting baseball. He sent me this email after the Red Sox lost Game 3 of the World Series in 2013 to fall behind, 2-1, to the Cardinals.

“This Series is eerily similar to the 1975 script [I was at #1, 6 and 7]. First game a shocking Sox rout behind the ace; second game the Sox blow it late; third game, a Sox comeback with a fluke 9th-inning walk-off due to a fielder-runner collision. You'll recall the Sox lost Game #5.

“The difference is, the Reds were better than the Red Sox -- a bit deeper, more experienced. I really think the Sox are better than the Cards, and I expect that to surface from here on.”

Result? The Red Sox won the next three games to win that Fall Classic. He was right again.

In 2008, when the Red Sox lost Game 7 of the ALCS to the Tampa Bay Rays, Jack sent a reasoned email with the subject line: “One hit away.”

“I would have bet anything that [Dustin] Pedroia, [David Ortiz], [J.D.] Drew or [Mark] Kotsay would have had one more key hit left among them, but no dice. That was a clean loss, against a pitcher [Matt Garza] having a great game. Can't even blame [Terry Francona] for not pinch-hitting for [Jason Varitek], since a lefty [David Price] was on the mound.

“Rats.”

Rats! Loved that signoff. Jack can live with losses as long as they aren’t self-destructive. He knows the difference between a “good loss” and one that will keep him awake at night.

Jack also has something he calls “the Red Sox principle.” As someone who has followed the team since 1962, he has noticed a pattern of the Red Sox doing their best when nobody expects anything of them and their worst when expectations are through the roof. He applies this to seasons and games.

To Jack, the Red Sox principle was never sweeter than those final four games of the 2004 ALCS, when they historically came back from an 0-3 deficit to beat the Yankees. The principle was in reverse in 2011, which started with the Boston Herald splashing a season preview section with the headline, “Best Team Ever.”

That “best team ever” pulled off the biggest September collapse in history, surrendering a nine-game lead during the season’s final month. To Jack, that was the Red Sox principle at its worst.

As our first face-to-face meeting was coming to a close and we took a photo to commemorate the moment, Jack’s sister suggested I text the photo to him.

I said, “No, I’ll email it to him.”

I hope our email-only relationship (except for that brief encounter last week) can last another quarter century or so.