The three little words...
So I haven't been thinking for a while. Thankfully, I've managed to get over that hump and I'm back on the thinking track.
(pause for sigh of relief from both of you who are reading this...)
As my friend Chris reminds me every spring, the three little words that put a hop in my step this time of year are "pitchers and catchers". Yes, that's right fans, it's the beginning of a new baseball season, where hope literally springs eternal. Everyone's back, everyone's in the best shape of their lives, and it's Camp Harmony everywhere. It is indeed, the best of times.
My wife will attest to the fact that I'm a huge baseball fan. In fact, the last couple of years, I've even done a little celebratory dance to commemorate the first showing of baseball on TV. So even if it's a lineup of Lou Merloni, Damian Jackson and Cesar Crespo...
This is RED SOX BASEBALL!
And I don't even dance, otherwise.
The other day we were flipping around the stations in the car; our radio dial has an FM1, an FM2 and an AM setting. We're now so conditioned that we skip right from FM2, over AM, and directly to FM1, with only a split-second blip of AM radio inserted in there. Don't ask me how I did it, but my mental antennae were so tuned in to the fact that baseball is in the air that I managed to recognize that snippet of Jerry Trupiano's voice and say "Wait, wait! GO BACK!" Sure enough...
This is RED SOX BASEBALL!
I've pretty much always been this nutty about the game. For some reason, since I was born in Boston in 1975, I sort of see it as my birth right. I mean, I was only four months old when the Sixth Game took place (as in Peter Gammons' "Beyond the Sixth Game"...great book, by the way) but even to this day I can vehemently argue that Ed Armbrister interfered with Carlton Fisk on his chopper in front of the plate in game 3, or that Dwight Evans' catch or Bernie Carbo's homer in game 6 were what made Fisk's homer possible. I was 11 when the heartbreak of '86 happened - old enough to realize what being a Boston fan was all about.
My wife, of course, grew up on the proverbial other side of the tracks, baseball-speaking. I suppose she can be forgiven, being the youngest of three children and having two older brothers who were Yankee fans. As we like to say, some people convert to a certain religion prior to getting married...so did Viv. All hail the Church of Fenway. The best part is that she means it - we've got a full schedule of games every season thanks to very generous friends who let us buy some season ticket games off them (including TWO Yankees-Sox games this year!) and by the time May rolls around, could probably recite the infield fly rule if asked. What else can a man ask for? (Well, this man, anyway. Sorry guys, she's taken.)
So while the forecast has been alternately cold, chilly, damn cold, snowy, icy and oh-dear-God-my-nosehairs-are-freezing cold, we're both looking forward to the end of the month when we make our first pilgrimage to sunny City of Palms Park in Fort Myers. Spring training, here we come...
