My husband and two sons took me to a Red Sox game for Mother’s Day. Yeah, that game, the amazing comeback game over the Baltimore Orioles. It was only the second Sox game I’ve been to in my life, and I’m 48. If I’m lucky, maybe I’ll get to two more before I die.

My first game was a bust. It was cold (I wore my parka), I spent most of the time in line at a hot dog stand and the Sox lost. At the start of Sunday’s game I was full of hope: It was sunny and the Sox were on a roll.

We had fantastic seats — left field, second row grandstand, within spitball distance of the Green Monster. Manny was so close I could see him bite a nail on his left hand and then curl his fingers inside to inspect his work. I could see Varitek’s tidy goatee, Lugo’s spindly legs.

I was so excited to be there, in seats with a clear view, it really didn’t matter to me that the first 8 1/2 innings of the game were — let’s face it — duller than a bad soccer game. Hit (sometimes), throw to first, out. How many times can that happen before the mind starts to drift?

Bored but still charmed by the park, I kept myself busy people-watching: the redhead who tossed her Dice-K poster onto left field; the 20-something man who concealed his beer in a Coke cup (Can anyone really drink six Cokes in one game?), and the father who tucked his infant son’s rotten banana peel under my seat, a violation of the park’s sixth code of conduct: Respect other fans.

My sons, Henry, 6, and Peder, 7, had a tougher time staying engaged. They made it through three ho-hum innings without a complaint, but by the top of the fourth they were asking for a tour of the Red Sox Team Store, known to most parents as the gift shop. That trip took 20 minutes, as well as $85 from our bank account to pay for a white Matsuzaka jersey and navy blue J.D. Drew T-shirt.

Back in their seats, my sons continued to fidget so we calmed them with Cracker Jacks, cotton candy and ice cream. Henry ate a $4 hot dog. The undulating arms of the wave that swept through the stands kept them intrigued for another 10 minutes or so but the silliness ceased when the Sox blew it, yet again.

“I want to go home, dad,” said Peder.

“I don’t like what I got,” said Henry. “Can we go back to the gift shop?”

The Sox were down, 4-0, in the bottom of the seventh when we stood up and said so long to seats 5, 6, 7 and 8 in sect 32, row 02, CVS Family Section: No Alcohol Permitted. I was dumping our trash (4th code of conduct: Help keep Fenway Park clean.), when my husband heard what he later recalled as “the crack of a bat.” He looked up at a TV monitor under the stands; the score was now 5-0 heading into the bottom of the eighth.

I remember thinking as we walked past the turnstiles that no one else seemed to be doing what we were doing: leaving. Lansdowne Street was eerily quiet, except for a few vendors selling shriveled Polish sausages.

On the way to the car, a young man riding by on his bike noticed my boys’ Sox caps ($44).

“How’d they do?” he shouted.

“They lost,” I said, and he frowned. I thought he might burst into tears.

For the heck of it, my husband turned on the radio just before we got on the Southeast Expressway to head back to Providence. The boys were asleep in the backseat. It was the bottom of the ninth. The play-by-play guy on the radio said something like, “the tying run is in the on-deck circle.” Then he said the “winning run” was there. Where? I couldn’t understand a thing.

“What’s happening?” I asked my husband, frantically.

“Just listen,” he snapped, and turned up the volume.

“Unbelieveable!” the radio guy yelled moments later when the Sox won, 6-5. “Bedlam at Fenway!”

But there were no “yippees” or “yahoos” in our car.

“We didn’t have to leave,” I said, through gritted teeth.

“You wanted to leave,” my husband said.

“No, you wanted to leave,” I said.

I pouted all the way home, like a schoolgirl who didn’t get the iPod she wanted for her birthday. I thought of all the things I wouldn’t be able to do: brag to my sister, a Sox fan who lives in D.C. and has to sit through Nationals’ games; have a once-in-a-lifetime experience; remind my boys in years to come that they were by my side when . . .

“I feel sick about this,” I said, poking my peas at dinner.

My husband on the other hand, seemed nonchalant, projecting a kind of it’s-only-a-game attitude, a strange stand for a lifelong Sox fan, especially one who still has the team’s official yearbooks from ’64 through ’67, all in pristine condition.

I see now that, deep down, he was hurting.

It must have been 1:30 in the morning when I found him standing in front of the TV, tuned to NESN, watching the ninth, the one we missed, the inning when the Orioles’ Chris Ray (bless his heart) drops the ball. My husband was in boxers and a T-shirt, and he was wearing headphones with a long wire hooked into the TV so only he could hear the call. He looked like Street Sense ready to burst through the gate, nose thrust forward, head bobbing with excitement. My 7-year-old was sitting next to him, in silence, on the ottoman.

“I’m tired, dad,” said Peder.

“Hold on,” my husband said. “This is the last play of the game. I just want to watch it.”

Elizabeth Rau is a former Journal staff writer.