More Will Be Revealed

And second, in a Red Sox sleeper (courtesy of our friends Jessica Mozeico and Scott Jordan [no relation!]), complete with little non-skid baseballs on the feet:

Lindsay must be good luck: the Tar Heel football team beat Utah (who scored about 63 points on the Heels last year) and the Red Sox took two of three from the Yankees and made the playoffs as the defending World Series champions (still nice to say that!).

I don't know if Lindsay will end up being a fan of either of these teams; progeny don't always follow their parents' lead when it comes to this kind of thing. My dad is a staunch fan of the franchise I detest now (the Yankees)...but when I was a kid, I was not so anti-Yankee and pro-Sox. I think I even had a Willie Randolph poster in my room. But anyway, I didn't get my allegiances from family mandate (my stepfather professes very little in the way of sports fan-dom, except to Lafayette in the epic Lafayette vs. Lehigh battles).

My history as a fan is primarily geographically based, which is I think how most arrive at their favorites. (See this article on ESPN for a lengthy discussion of this between Bill Simmons and pop-guru dude Chuck Klosterman.) I lived in Massachusetts from the time I was 8 months old until I was 7 -- the formative years, in my case, of developing sports loyalty.

Does anybody care? Or is just an excuse to namedrop former favorites of mine like Dwight Evans, Russ Francis, Gord Kluzak and Andre Tippett? When the family moved to Denver during the late 1970s "Orange Crush" era, I went for Randy Gradishar and Haven Moses (I waited in line at a department store with my friend Matt Schulte to get an autograph and photo with this handsomely afro'ed wide receiver).

I suppose some would say that sports, sports franchises and athletes are not worthy of such attention or devotion. I would disagree -- sports discussions are an integral part of our social fabric, just like politics or (recently) pop culture. It is safe conversational ground between men...even men like my father and I, who still talk about baseball or some other sport during almost all our phone conversations. I would venture a guess that one of his favorite memories involving me is the wager he won when his Yankees finished ahead of my Red Sox. I decorated an old mayonnaise jar and sent him the winnings in pennies. I put a lot of thought and effort into that payoff...but I was younger then, and less jaded about our relationship. Or something.

It's so cliche, but it's still true that sports in general -- and baseball in particular? -- can be the strongest bond between generations. I still cry at the last scene in Field of Dreams as Kevin Costner's character expresses the simple boyhood wish of most/all boys: "Dad, you wanna have a catch?"

I hope I will always say yes, when my kids ask me this question. It's not baseball now...it's Hello Kitty Uno or Go Fish or Balloon Lagoon...but it's still the same fundamental choice.

// posted by Bill @ 9:52 PM