(For the record, South Jersey might as well be a different country than North Jersey. I have never, in my life, just so you know, heard anyone say "Joisey" except for people in other states who hear I am from Jersey and then declare, "Ah! Joisey!" I'm not sure they even do that up north, to be honest with you.)
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| Me, outside Fenway last weekend. Ted, over my shoulder. |
Why a Red Sox cap? Bacause they are my favorite American League team, probably because Ted Williams, the greatest hitter the game ever knew, in my not-so-humble, played for them. And he is probably my favorite because I used to listen to my dad's stories about having seen him play... And, to be honest with you, I really like the "B" on the Sox cap. And I like blue. There are probably other reasons, but this is a blog and I weant to get to the point before you drop in to F-reading...
Before I do, though, I want to point out that I also like the caps of Detroit, the Mets, the Yankees, the Cardinals and even the Nationals and I would not mind having one of each of theirs, too. And some others. Because I like baseball and caps.
When I was in the great city of Boston last week, a guy form New York saw my Sox cap and started ribbing me because the Yanks had beaten them the day before. When I laughed and then told him I was actually a Phillies fan, for real, the smile melted off of his face like cake icing under a blowtorch and he herded his kids up and shuffled them away from me. You'd have thought I was a Nazi wearing a Jewish star... The man could not comprehend that I would wear a cap of a team I didn't follow exclusively...
I also have a Virginia Tech sweatshirt. I think someone left it in my dorm room in 1987 after a party -- my dorm room at Penn State. I never went to Virginia Tech and never really cared one way or another about it, but the sweatshirt is thick and cozy and has a great hood for cold weather and it is so well made that I wear it to this day. The thing's like thirty years old and good as new...
One day I was wearing that sweatshirt and a guy, with the most sincere smile, high-fived me and said, "Go Hokies!" I thought he was insane. I couldn't, for the life of me, figure out what a Hokie was. "Virginia Tech!" he said. "Go Hokies!" (I had had no idea the Hokie was their mascot and I had to look it up again, just now.) When I explained to him that I went to Penn State, he nearly wept. I suppose he deeply regretted our all-too-brief bond...
I feel like it never used to be like this. When I was a kid, kids who loved sports would get T-shirts of various teams; you'd have an NFL blanket with all the teams on it... Better still, you would go to a Phillies game in your regular clothes. It wasn't a sea of red caps and Phillies togs. Being at the game seemed to been enough to show you supported your team; the need to be seen seeing your team and to be eye-checked by the rest of the gang seemed not to exist...
It occurs to me that this shift might be a symptom of our collective mental state as a society when it comes to our complete inability have real discourse or to see things from various perspetives. This nearly obsessive compulsion to "pick a side" in sports is kind of a microcosm of our penchant for compartmentalized thinking; our love of labels (liberal or conservative); our intolerance for those who stray from the prescribed patterns of thought.
Anyway, my wife got me a new Red Sox cap this weekend and I might just wear it to the next Phillies game. I am only exaggerating a little when I say that I might be risking my own life by doing this. And it would be no exaggeration at all to say I am risking my life if I wore the cap of the opposing team. Which, of course, is not okay.
