Play Ball!

Special thanks to Smoking Hot Roommate, who contributed mightily to this post. It required someone with her Library-of-Congress sized knowledge of sports trivia minutia. That's right boys, she is tall, gorgeous, rich, smart and knows more about sports than you. And she is a better golfer...

If you have never been to Boston at this time of year, you can't really understand the city's most obvious civic oddity: a complete and total obsession with the Red Sox. Now, I know there are a lot of places where people go nuts over sports...heck, I grew up in a place where you are hardwired to love the Bears at birth...

But this is different. This is a little more broad...it really reaches every demographic segment. There seem to be scores of little old ladies who can keep score at games, teenage girls can wear pink Red Sox hats as a key part of their outfit, and people who seem to be non-sports fans don't want a Manny Ramirez or David Ortiz shirt because it is "too obvious". You need to demonstrate you are a great fan by celebrating a player who is a little less obvious...Mike Lowell or Dustin Pedroia are good choices. Shirts with the names of random players from 10 years ago are especially cool (like Rich Garces, a massively overweight Venezuelan relief pitcher affectionately nicknamed "El Guapo"...or "The Handsome One").

During the summer, Fenway Park is very much the social center of the city. It attracts the largest volume of attractive young women, which in turn attracts everyone else;-) The bars behind the stadium are all jammed on game nights, and flip flops and t-shirts are totally acceptable attire. Come back the next night, however, when the team is out of town, and jeans and sneakers are cause for refusal at the door. Baseball hats? Don't even think about it...

Today, the playoffs start. The Red Sox are at home against the Anaheim Angels, the same team they faced in the first round in 2004 during their World Series run. Confidence among the masses is high...most people seem to be expecting a relatively easy win (never mind that the two teams had almost identical records this season.) Meanwhile, the Yankees are preparing to meet the Cleveland Indians, which means that, looming over all of this is the alternately horrifying and thrilling prospect of another Red Sox-Yankees series to decide the American League. They met in both 2003 and 2004, each time involving a catastrophically improbable ending to the series...one in favor of New York, one in favor of Boston.

That, however, is still a ways off. For now, the entire are will simply leave work a little bit early today so as to make sure that it is in front of its collective TV at 6:30 for the first pitch. The game will be a roller coaster of emotions, changing pitch by pitch and batter by batter. And by tomorrow, it will be the greatest team ever, or the sky will have fallen. Until game #2 on Friday, when we do it all over again.

I, however, have another problem. My adorable little baseball fan has not one, but TWO beloved playoff teams. Her recently adopted Boston Red Sox play at 6:30, while her lifelong interest, the Chicago Cubs, play t 10:30. No way am I getting her to fall asleep before that game is over, which means I have to somehow get her to take a nap this afternoon... buckle up, it is gonna be a long couple of weeks...