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The meaning of hats

It's been a little while since I've posted, and that's because I recently completed a 400+ mile move that took me from south central Pennsylvania to the Bay State's North Shore.

In the process, I've discovered that the meaning of my Red Sox hat has changed. Again.

When I bought the hat  in college a few years ago, I bought it because of the ubiquity of Red Sox hats in Massachusetts. I sometimes woke up in places other than my dorm room, and would have to trek back across public venues while my hair stuck up lop-sided on my head.

I wanted something to hide my bed-head on the sometimes-mile long walk back from one friend's place or another, and so many people had Red Sox hats that you almost didn't notice them.

This is not to say that I wasn't a Sox fan. I was, and have been since the first time my father took a seven-year-old me to a rainy game at Fenway Park - but I never really liked wearing hats. I liked combing (and at one point spiking) my hair. Hats get in the way of that.

But when I moved to Pennsylvania, my navy cap with the red and white B on the front became a badge of honor. I rooted for the storied team that boasted such heroes as Ted Williams and Curt Schilling. I rooted for the baseball team that hails from the city with more educational institutions than any other place in America, and the country's oldest operating subway line. A city with a rich history, pegged firmly to the birth of the country.

I wore it as a mark of home and an object of comfort.

Now I'm back.

I work in Cambridge. I take the green line to work, and pass the nation's oldest college daily.

But I still wear my hat. it doesn't feel like an object of anonymous ubiquity any longer. Now it feels like solidarity, not just to Red Sox nation, but to the city of Boston, the state of Massachusetts and the region of New England.

Champions Again - buy it!

Buy the NESN DVD "Champions Again." I have never watched a sports documentary before, and would have scoffed at the idea of sitting through a 90 minute recap of a season before I opened this DVD.

My cousin gave it to me as a Christmas present, and just looking at the cover gave me a happy, tingly feeling in my stomach.

I ripped of the cellophane the next night and popped in the DVD. In 90 minutes I relived the Sox' incredible 2007 series, and got a few glimpses into things I didn't see during the regular season coverage.

I laughed. My girlfriend cried, and we both got goosebumps.

The only part of the presentation that failed to excite was the World Series, but you can only do so much to make that four-game steam-roll interesting.

I know this review is too late for the Christmas season, but if you see it on a deep-discount post-holiday rack, buy it. Buy a few even, and share the wealth.

My Vacation from Baseball

So I followed my own advice. I went on vacation. In fact I went on what many would call the ultimate vacation. A spa trip, I kid you not. In fact I am writing this in yoga pants. Have I done any yoga, well, that’s not really the point.

With all the trade speculations it seemed I didn’t have much choice but to pack up and go. Ellsbury traded? Pitching smitching. I like my free tacos.

One problem I’m having is where I’m staying I still get the Globe, the internet, and even a few posh fans. So the Sox remain constantly on my mind (when I was in Moscow they were still in my mind), but here I can’t have a whiskey as I ponder on them. Instead I have a cranberry zipper, calorie count 70.

Instead of watching the Pats game at a bar with dark beer, I watched it in a bathrobe with my zipper. The people here are trying to tell me I am allergic to barley (a.k.a. Powers and Guinness).

Am I complaining? No, there’s something to the zippers and a bathrobes dress code.

Am I ready to go to a Celtics game? Hell yeah!

It's better to be a Sox fan

My default clothing when not working tends to involve a pair of jeans, a T-shirt and my Red Sox hat.

These days, I'm happy it's not a Patriots hat.

People hate the Patriots right now - particularly Bill Belichick. Co-workers and message board posters spot an ire for Belichick that I've never seen for any team aside from the Yankees - and that only from Sox fans.

And why shouldn't they?

I'll preface this by saying that I am a Pats fan, but Belichick is a jerk.

He's won three Super Bowls in the past five years, his team is undefeated and holds the record for longest NFL winning streak, and the man doesn't smile.

Seriously. Watch a Pats game. Belichick scowls after every play, even the ones that benefit his team.

And he scorns the press. ESPN magazine tried to write a "human side of Belichick" article. He snubbed them.

The Red Sox aren't like that. When they win - when they do anything right - they celebrate. They dance on the field. They strip down to their jock straps and spray champaign on one another.

Okay. That was all Jonathan Papelbon, but the rest of the team celebrates too. They all wore goggles during the post victory celebrations.

That humanity makes them tolerable for those that don't like the Red Sox, and superheroes to Bostonians.

So maybe it's time for the Patriots to work on their image, just a bit. If they're interested, I have a feeling a certain pitcher would be willing to teach them some dance steps.

The New Empire

It's time for the Red Sox fans to reevaluate why they root for the boys from Boston.

Carolyn touched on this in "Francona, Can we Keep Them?" but the Red Sox are not the underdogs anymore. I'd say the Sox are the odds-on favorite to win the world series next year.

The Sox have a raft of young talent, some of the smartest management in sports, and the second highest payroll in Major League Baseball.

The Sox should be a playoff force for the next five to ten years. You know, like the Yankees had been before 2004.

That raises a difficult question for Red Sox fans: Why do you follow the team?

If it's because you grew up in any part of New England other than Western Connecticut, you don't have much to ponder about.

If you've been a long suffering fan that remembers rooting for John Valentine, Mike Greenwell or even - gasp - Roger Clemens, then you probably don't have any personal reflection to do either.

But if you bought your first Boston hat after the new management took over you do have some things to think about.

Why do you follow the Red Sox?

Is it because they're a good team?

Is it because they hoist up colorful personalities like Jonathan Papelbon or the pre-corporate Johnny Damon?

Is it because you like Boston as a city?

Is it because Fenway Park is the most historic and alluring structure in Major League Baseball?

Or is it because the Sox have been considered the perennial underdogs since  Bill Buckner let a ground ball roll between his legs, leading to the Sox' historic collapse in the 1986 world series?

If you follow the team for that last reason, it may be time for you to pledge your allegiance to another team.

I'm not trying to be mean here, but if that was the fun part for you, the fun's over.

If you're looking for another underdog team, get yourself an Indians or a Cubs hat.

The Red Sox are the new baseball empire. I hope the team and its fans will be better about it than the Yankees and their fans were, but that's the truth.

Not being the underdogs...

I know how crazy I am about to sound. I can’t escape the underdog mentality.

Living in Boston now we are like the king of sports. So the question becomes why are my nails bitten off? Why do I still have more faith in my lucky hat than any set of statistics?

Tonight was a blow out. Still, I played it safe. Keeping my phone on silent, only sending the occasional modest texts. In my mind a rocky comeback was coming. I looked at the kids in their thousand dollar seats and wondered are like me? Or are they more used to winning, are they more sane? Only anxious to win a taco, feeling the win already secured by the fourth?

Everyone got an RBI, I think even that little kid breaking dancing got one in somewhere. Your Grandmother got one in the fifth. The pitching was flawless. Nine strike outs by Beckett, and it probably would have been more if we didn’t do the right thing and rest him. My team looked as the network said ‘unbeatable’.

It was the quietest I have ever been watching a game. This couldn’t be happening, not my Sox. Could it be this easy? Maybe I was dreaming. But I know it happened, I checked ever sports website out there just to make sure. And we aren’t the underdogs…

Then a certain network announcer said the three other teams to win like this in a first game all ended up losing the World Series.

Thanks for that one buddy, tonight I was supposed to sleep soundly.

Forget 2004, let's talk 2007!

So, it’s the eve of the World Series, or I guess really now into the wee morning, before the series starts. I stole the sports page from my father this morning on my way out to work. All day I waited anxiously for my break, thinking about the half hour where I would get to sit with my paper and a cup of tea and prepare for it all.

I was thoroughly disappointed. I didn’t steal the sports page to hear about what happened in 2004. I am sick of hearing about 2004. Okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration.

But right now I want to think about 2007. I want to think about out new guys, Ellsbury, Lowell, Pedroia, Papelbon, Beckett. hell, I even want to think about JD Drew.

I want to think about our old guys too, Tek, Schilling, Youk, Manny, Papi, our fierce vets who not only have the physical capability for this series but also can help the team get through the pressure of it all. Even without Wakefield in the lineup he’ll still play a roll, the man is made of heart, after all.

(this paragraph I’ll leave for unmentionables that are still making us all nervous and have personally caused us to use Tylenol PM to prevent restlessness and/or arrhythmia)

Yeah, of course, I miss Millar, I miss Pedro, Arroyo, Dave Roberts, Foulke. But right now that’s not the point.

The only thing that matters now is the Sox beating the Rockies. The only thing that matters now is being able to bask in the team that is made of 2007.

It isn’t about cowboying up, breaking a curse, or being an idiot anymore. It’s about speed. It’s about depth. It’s about the perfect mix of old and new.

And you know, maybe throw in the occasional Irish jig here and there for some luck, I won’t complain, especially if the park gets drenched in champagne.

Time to Put on the Lucky Shirts!

I won’t lie. I’m sitting around still in my pajamas and it feels like Christmas morning. So many expectations, so many questions. Were The Sox good enough this year? Do we deserve all of this? Is this the year? Or will it end more like the Christmas morning when my older brother and sister replaced my full stocking with coal.

Do the Indians really have better pitching?Which of my jerseys could be the one to jinx us? Will Dice-K step it up now? Is Sam Adams still my unlucky beer? Will Lowells amazingness remain unstoppable? Should I just wait to have breakfast at noon and have a Fenway frank?

Too much time off results in too many questions.

So what can I do but prematurely turn on NESN and eat a hot dog, still in pjs of course, and go through the history of my shirts, socks, and hats, to be sure I don’t mess up the game tonight. I suggest you do the same, think wisely, no one wants the guilt of a loss.

Yankees Suck no Matter Where you go

I just read a column by Dan Shaughnessy that listed 33 benefits to the Red Sox playing the Indians instead of the Yankees.

Nestled in the middle of the list was this one:

No T-shirts with vile messages for Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez.

I know Mr. Shaugnessy is smarter than that. I've seen anti-Jeter and A-Rod shirts in Camden Yards, during an unimportant mid-season Red Sox/Orioles game. I heard a chant of "Yankees Suck" late in that same meaningless game, and I've even heard chants of Yankees Suck during Superbowl parties during years that the New England Patriots did not reach the big game.

So I'm sure that - despite who the Red Sox play - Red Sox fans will still rip on the Yankees.

I Wanted the Yankees to Win?

This season something strange happened. My father said last night over dinner, “no baseball tonight. We need some time off before Friday. And there’s no reason to watch a game to root for someone to lose.”

That’s when I realized, for once in my life I wasn’t obsessed with the Yankees losing. I was wearing my anti-Yankee apparel out of habit more than anything else. In my perfect world the Yankees and Indians would have a full five game series, with each game going into extra innings. The Yankees finally winning at the last minute in the thirteenth inning well worn out for Fridays game against us.

The thing is, the Indians are the better team. I know we don’t have nightmares about those guys, but starting now, we should. I was memorizing their faces last night(I couldn’t quite take the night off from baseball, nor could my father.) They have the pitching, they have the hitting, and look how bad they made the Yankees look.

So maybe we should all take a day or two off from baseball. And prepare. This won’t be easy.

Of course if you are too neurotic for that type of thing, you could start reading up as much as you can on the Indians, toss and turn every night, buy Indians Suck apparel (is that allowed?) and start taunting everyone you know from Cleveland. I’m just realizing I actually know a few people from there…maybe I’ll give them a call.