My latest idea of heaven has to be a snowy Sunday in March with a Red Sox game on NESN and laptop at hand to geek out on baseball stats. With some 30 days until opening day, I went cruising on redsox.com for some April seats but alas, the frigging ticket system is a total boner and not coughing up any pairs, only singles. So, off I go to one of the ticket brokers to get gouged hard for a pair for my son and me.
Soon will come the question of which Sox t-shirt to invest in this year. Last year was Dice-K Matsusaka – a smart choice as it turns out when I walked out of the stands at Wukesong Park in Beijing following the US-Japan bronze medal game in last summer’s Olympics. The Japanese fans were very effusive and back slappy and all thumbs up. This year … I dunno. I’m thinking Ortiz as something tells me this is the Big Papi’s big season – the crescendo after his extra-terrestrial performance in 2004. Shirt selection is everything. I’m talking the official red t-shirt model, the one with the name of one’s favorite player printed on the back. A fan must wear it to the game, and one’s choice is, by extension, a proxy for one’s entire karma and psychological proclivities. Last June, when I took the kids to the bleachers to see the Orioles get thrashed by the Sox, the dominant shirt was Ramirez – a situation that certainly shifted after Manny’s mid-summer meltdown and trade to the Dodgers. A lot of Ortiz and Papelbons, but me, being mister eccentric, had to go with the Japanese ace last summer.
The pride of the closet is the Lowell 2007 World Series away jersey. The real deal with buttons, etc.. After all “Scenic” Lowell was the World Series MVP that year, and is the Churbuck-family God of Doubles according to my son Eliot – for whom the shirt was bestowed as an Xmas present as part of his misalignment in Manhattan as a student at NYU and occasional infiltrator of the Toilet, aka Yankee Stadium. I wore the Lowell shirt last October to the Sox-Rays playoff series (thank you kind people at CNET) but we lost in a nasty game that was over before I even got of the first inning beer line.
Colleague Steve S. – a fellow Masshole transplanted to RTP – and I are discussing wallpapering the wall between our offices with a 8’x12′ poster of the Green Monster
.
I can get you four behind home plate up 1 level.
perefect view of the field.
sorry can’t spell “perfect”
I will pay to see the ‘Green Monster’ in M’ville between my two fave Massholes.
I think the question is, why haven’t you done it already if you’ve got the freedom to! I can’t even squeeze the hand of my dancing Wally to play “Sweet Caroline” because its been deemed “too loud”. And I’m thinking a Pedroia or Youk shirt this year…
I’m thinking a Pedroia shirt as well. On an unrelated note, if it’s ever revealed that he’s on “bol-ay or bol-ee” I will never watch baseball again.