It occurred to me that some of you might have thought the other day, “Why is this Red Sox fan so excited about a Dodgers game?”
I’m sure this has worried you. It’s no doubt keeping you awake at night.
So I’ll explain, as I try to do everything. I don’t like having ambiguities linger on my blog.
I’ll explain it with the hats. My father had a huge collection of hats in his later years — most of them related either to the Navy or golf tournaments he played in. I’ve adopted a similar practice (which you are certainly not to assume is a sign of advanced age). About half or more of my hats have to do with baseball.
My favorites have to do with the Red Sox. I have three I currently wear. That’s my best, special-occasion Red Sox hat above. Unlike my other baseball lids, this is a REAL cap — not one of those cheap, one-size-fits-all jobs. I had to go to Lansdowne Street, in the shadow of Fenway itself, and try them on until one fit perfectly.
Where other hats have a strap at the very back that can be adjusted to various sizes, this one has a tiny Red Sox logo, blown up slightly at right, which my wife and daughters think is cute, and I find to be quite tasteful.
I loved the Red Sox long before I was specifically a fan of the team. I have loved their hats more or less ever since I learned that my name started with a B — so, a while. I felt early on that any hat with a B on it was pretty much meant for me.
Add to that the matter of aesthetics. I think it’s a beautiful hat. Dark blue — whether indigo or Navy or whatever the specific nomenclature — is my favorite color. It goes best with either white or a deep, rich red — both of which are present in the B.
Then there’s the fact that over the years, I’ve been aware of and impressed by various Red Sox stars — Babe Ruth (before the Curse), Ted Williams, Dom DiMaggio, Carl Yastrzemski, Wade Boggs, Roger Clemens, Pudge Fisk, Mookie Betts, Big Papi Ortiz, and our own Jackie Bradley Jr. Oh, wait — I forgot Cy Young.
I was also aware of it as a real baseball team with long-term history, dating back more than half a century before my birth. That matters to me. History confers legitimacy.
Then I went to visit Boston for a few days, and loved it — especially the perfect night when we sat there in the Fenway bleachers, right behind Jackie Bradley Jr., and literally ate peanuts and Cracker Jack while we watched the Sox thump the Yankees. I’m not going to blaspheme and call it a religious experience, but as plain old secular ones go, it was pretty special.
Finally, when I shelled out all that money this year to watch Major League Baseball constantly the whole season, my love grew stronger. I watched other teams, but mainly enjoyed and worried over the Sox — my favorites Ceddane Rafaela, Alex Bregman, Jarren Duran, Trevor Story, Garrett Crochet, Aroldis Chapman — well, and all the rest.
They had a good run this year, but it was not to be, as they lost to… oh, let’s not name them — in the Wild Card series.
You might think I’d stop watching at that point, but I actually love baseball, and not just one team. That means enjoying all MLB (and sometimes less glorious) teams. But I do have a hierarchy of preferences, which usually keeps me watching a team I like, if only a little bit in a bad year, all the way through the World Series.
My second fave club is the Phillies.
It’s not the P or the hats or the uniforms in particular, although the one you see above is my fave among the ones they wear. It’s more about a family connection, combined with the way the post-seasons have broken the last few years.
My wife’s first cousin Tim McCarver played the last few years of his career with the Phils. Sure, you might associate him with the Cardinals, and so did I. I was a fan of his when he played for St. Louis in those early glory years — long before I became a bigger fan of his cousin. But by the time he stopped playing ball and started his new career in broadcasting, he had been with the Phillies long enough for a strong identification to develop, in my mind anyway. Besides, he had Steve Carlton — also a former fellow Card — with him (I met Carlton the first time I even saw Tim play in person, down in St. Pete in 1969). It just seemed natural to cheer for their team.
Also, in these recent dark years when baseball disappeared on free broadcast TV, I only got to see ANY baseball by watching the post-season games, which TV deigned to carry still. And the Phillies made regular appearances on that stage the last few years. Thus, I became a fan of the surly Bryce Harper, plus Kyle Schwarber, Brandon Marsh, Alex Bohm, and J.T. Realmuto.
That continued and deepened this season, when MLB.TV finally gave me generous access to baseball every day and night of the season.
But alas, the Phillies fell to my third-favorite team. And they’re still in it (despite the shock of the playoffs, in which they got mistreated by a team I NEVER follow).
My attachment to the Dodgers is a tad more complicated.
First of all, note the B. I of course have no interest in wearing LA on my hat, when I can wear a B. Besides, it goes to my belief in history conferring legitimacy. I think of them as the Brooklyn team that just recently moved (when I was three years old) to another city. Enriching that history we have Jackie Robinson, not to mention Pee Wee Reese, Sandy Koufax, Roy Campanella, and, if you’ll allow one remembered as an owner more than a player, Branch Rickey. Also, they were my Dad’s favorite team.
Today, in that less-reputable West Coast location, they’re still a great team, with Mookie Betts (who should still be in Boston), Freddy Freeman (the only memorable Brave I still get to see, now that MLB.TV lets me watch anything but the Braves), Kike and Teoscar Hernandez and the gentleman I referred to earlier, who is today’s nearest approximation to Babe Ruth… Shohei Ohtani.
Here’s hoping they do better tonight against those strangers from the Great White North…
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I’m so embarrassed that I left Yoshinobu Yamamoto off that list of favorite Dodgers, after that stunning game he pitched Saturday night. I like the L.A. Times’ headline about it:
Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s complete-game repeat a brilliant oddity ripped from a bygone era
He pitched all nine innings (his second in two outings), which would have been routine way back in the day, but which virtually nobody does today. As the Times put it, it was “the first back-to-back complete game by a Dodgers pitcher in the playoffs in nearly 40 years.”) You know that great game I bragged on Shohei Ohtani pitching last week? They took him out after 6, which still qualifies him for praise for the game he pitched. (And don’t forget, Sho-time also hit three homers, which NO pitcher does these days…)
Sure, the Blue Jays got one home run off him, but that can happen to anybody, anytime. The whole rest of the game, he held them scoreless while his teammates outplayed them offensively, for a 5-1 result.
I’m very proud of this Yamamoto. He almost wipes out the memories of his namesakes — the admiral who launched the Pearl Harbor attack, and my very reclusive high school principal, whom Burl called “The Ghost Who Walks.”
The third game, tonight, is in L.A. Here’s hoping the Dodgers can win it all at home…