PINK HATS

Seriously.

This is the dividing issue in the Red Sox Nation.

Frickin' Pink Hats!!!




Let me start this post with a little confession. I own and wear a pink Red Sox cap. I seem to recall purchasing the hat in that color because I look horrid in red and in the Texas sun, a navy blue hat is not your friend on a hot day. (Have I mentioned melanoma runs in my family? I actually wear hats for a utilitarian purpose as well as showing my team loyalty.)

Now these pink hats have become associated with part time, turncoat, johnny come lately, girlfriend only fans.

I take offense.

One blogger referred to them as "bleacher bimbos."

Another said they "couldn't pick Jim Rice out of a line up."

And an actual newspaper suggested they were folks with no New England connection who were trying to defect to Red Sox Nation since 2004.

Did I mention that I take offense?

To all of the above and those who agree with them ~ BITE. ME.

I'm just going to glide over the idea that me being mistaken for a bimbo is laughable. And new to the bandwagon? Not in this life time. I've been a Red Sox fan since birth and possibly before then. And as for Jim Rice? I haven't had the chance to see a game at Fenway since Jim Rice was actually playing there. You can take the girl out of Boston, but you can't take the Boston out of the girl.

I had my first Red Sox cap when I was less than a year old. My uncle, a sports writer for the Cape Cod Times and a Manager and later President of the Cape Cod League, gave it to me. I wore it year round until it no longer fit. (I believe it too was pastel in color, but don't quote me on it.) I had such pale blonde hair that the sun burned my scalp right through it, so the hat was essential for all of my outdoor activities.

I went to college in Baltimore in the late 1980s and had the misfortune to meet a New Yorker who thought it fun to run through the seventh game of the 1986 World Series play-by-play. I don't remember his name, but I do hold the Mets personally accountable for his existence. The great thing about being in Baltimore at that time though was the fact that the Orioles were still playing at Memorial Stadium, just 6 blocks from campus. We could decide to go to a game at 7pm. Walk over and pay $2 for bleacher seats and be in our seats for the National Anthem. Their last season at Memorial Stadium had an added bonus: Dwight Evans, an old friend from my trips to Fenway as a child.

I still find it hard to believe that anyone would actively become a Red Sox fan. It seems to me that it's something you're born into either by geography or genetics or a little bit of both. It's not a happy life.

You're constantly being let down and having your heart broken. You can walk away from a game assured of a positive outcome because of a 7 to 10 run lead, only to find out the next day that it all fell apart in a single inning.

People try to analyze baseball down to statistics and physics ~ the hits, the runs, the speed of the ball. But with the Red Sox, there's always some extra force at work that can't be accounted for, like karma or luck or acts of God, except they can never be explained by positive or negative acts or energy. They just happen. In that way, it's a lot like life.

I like to believe that being a Red Sox fan has prepared me for life in the real world, in a way no Yankees fan could be prepared. Shit happens. Things go wrong. Sometimes everything is a whole lot harder that it ever should have been. And no matter how good a person you are, and how many wonderful and amazing things you do for others, awful things are going to happen. It can't be avoided. Even when you think everything is going right; it can still go completely wrong. It's just part of the game.

As for these so-called "bleacher bimbos" and hangers-on, they won't last. Once the Red Sox are true to their reputation and remind us all why the Irish identify with them so strongly, only the fans from birth will remain.

In the mean time, I hardly think a team from the American League, where the pitchers don't hit, can use any "purity of the game or fandom" argument to put down the pink hats.

Maybe people just want to keep their heads cool in the sun? Ever thought of that?