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It's been about 35 years since the Cowsills played huge arenas.
But if all goes well, the Newport family band from the 1960s will play - however briefly - before about 36,000 people at Fenway Park. That is the scheduled Game 4 of the American League Championship Series, and that means neither the Boston Red Sox nor the Anaheim Angels can sweep the best-of-five series before the Cowsills get a turn at the microphone.
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Susan and Bob Cowsill sing at the 2002 Sunset Music Festival in Newport. The family band will perform at Fenway Park in Boston if there is a Game 4 in the American League Championship Series between the Red Sox and the Angels. (Daily News file photo)
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"This is unbelievable to me," said singer/guitarist Bob Cowsill. "I've always been a huge Red Sox fan, being from Rhode Island. I'm all Fenwayed up. I've always been Fenwayed up."
The plan is for the Cowsills to sing "The Star-Spangled Banner" and a little bit of their hit "Hair" in tribute to hirsute Sox center fielder Johnny Damon. "We'll sing and pretend everyone's applauding for us," Cowsill joked.
Every band has its story about weird ways of landing gigs, and this is no exception: "It's totally a small-world story."
A few months ago, Cowsill was playing one of his twice-weekly shows at the Fox and Hounds Club in Studio City in Los Angeles, where he lives. A guy named Charles Steinberg came in with a lady friend and Steinberg recognized the name Cowsill.
He requested the Cowsills' biggest hit, "The Rain, the Park and Other Things" from 1967. Cowsill obliged and the two chatted after the show. Steinberg mentioned that he is vice president for public relations for the Red Sox.
"I was just amazed," he said. "My family worships the Red Sox. I told him that we'd bow down to him."
Steinberg said the team had booked its slate of national anthem singers for the rest of the season. But if the team made the playoffs, the Cowsills were on deck.
"I told him I would crawl from here to Boston to do that," Cowsill said.
Bob Cowsill said the team will fly in himself, sister Susan, who lives in New Orleans, and brother Paul, who lives in San Diego. Brothers Richard and Barry both live on Aquidneck Island. Brother Bill, who lives in Vancouver, is unable to attend, as is John, who plays drums with a Beach Boys band.
"I used to take the bus from Middletown with a friend, 12 years old, to go to Fenway Park," Bob Cowsill recalled. "My parents used to let me go up there. To go back there and do this is just incredible."
The Cowsills started as a Beatles-flavored local band of brothers, playing Newport bars and college parties. Mother Barbara and sister Susan were added, and the band became the prototype for "The Partridge Family."
The Cowsills landed four hits in the Top 40, including "Hair" and "The Rain, the Park and Other Things," and played the "Ed Sullivan Show" among other TV appearances. The heyday began in 1967 (a significant year for the Red Sox as well) and fell apart in 1970.
The career rise and fall served as a cautionary tale for other bands, as the Cowsills found their vast earnings squandered. Meanwhile, they've assembled at various times in various forms to play gigs, often the Taste of Rhode Island festival at the Newport Yachting Center.
Richard Cowsill lives in Middletown and is excited about the gig. "I think it will be a trip," he said. "My mother just loved the Boston Red Sox. And the nice thing is, we'll have a family dinner and a family breakfast. It's about family.'
Of course, Red Sox fans have endured ample bad luck since 1918, the last time the won a World Series, but the Cowsills are hoping things go their way, with the team playing Game 4 at Fenway.
"If it doesn't happen, we'll just go out and visit Newport and maybe go up to Fenway and just kind of gawk at it," Bob Cowsill said.
Though, as Sox fans know full well, there's always next year.
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