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Speaking publicly for the first time since that news broke, Remy announced Monday to a small group of reporters that he'd be returning to call Red Sox games in 2014. It will be his 27th year.
The decision obviously wasn't an easy one, and for a while, Remy admits, it looked like things would go the other way. But he decided in the last week to come back and is now trying to get out all the apologies, uncomfortable conversations and awkward silences before the season starts.
“I felt for a couple of months, for two or three months, that it was over,’’ Remy said. “There’s no way I was coming back. I had two main concerns: What the public would think and whether I could be myself. The answers at that time [in November and December] were no.”
Remy, 61, said he had a circle of three friends and his wife, Phoebe, who urged him to reconsider. But he didn’t change his mind until after the new year.
“[They reminded] me about my career, and where it came from, and where it is,’’ said Remy, a lung cancer survivor who said he made the decision about a week ago after his most recent CAT scan came back clean ...
“I don’t intend to be a quitter. Don’t intend to be one now. It’s what I do. It’s what I know. It’s what my comfort level is. It’s where I feel I belong and I feel I’m going to do so as long as possible. I hope in no way that my decision to come back to do games has a negative impact on the Martel family. I’m quite certain they understand I have to make a living, and unfortunately mine is in the public eye. I’m quite certain they understand that."
At the time of Jared Remy's arrest, a Boston prosecutor explained the chilling circumstances of the crime to the Boston Globe, saying Jared "attacked Jennifer Martel, his girlfriend of seven years and the mother of their four-year-old daughter, in the kitchen of their home, in the living room and on a stairway before pinning her to the ground of the patio where he stabbed her over and over and over again."
Jared Remy has pleaded not guilty. His trial is scheduled to begin in October.
If you're a person in the Boston area, it surely won't be easy to listen to hear Remy explain something happening on a baseball field and not think of the well-publicized case against his son. At best, it will take some time to separate the two.
Remy knows this, and that's why part of him just wanted to just go away. Here's more on that subject from the Boston Globe's Chad Finn:
Remy informed longtime broadcast partner Don Orsillo Monday that he would return. The banter between the broadcasters has long been a part of their appeal. Orsillo asked him a pointed question: How can they can be light and fun again?
“If I didn’t think I couldn’t be myself, I wouldn’t do it,” Remy said. “I hope that doesn't come off as insensitive. It may be to some. But that’s the only way I know how to do my job.
"I’m sure there will be people who are very upset with me. It’s the only way I know how to do a game. I’ve thought of all these things a thousand times, believe me.”
And before opening day gets here and calls his first Red Sox game of the season, he'll probably think about everything a thousand more times.
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