No Shame November -- Sports

I love sports. You'd think I'd talk about them more, since my blog's title is "Music and Baseball."  But, see, when you're setting up a new blog and you are pressured into coming up with a name for it, it's REALLY OVERWHELMING and I was living in Boston at the time and we watched a LOT MORE baseball then because the Red Sox are like a RELIGION and...and...

The point is, I love sports.

I didn't get to watch as much baseball as I usually like to this past summer because I was super busy with musicals AND because the Red Sox completely sucked this past season (and the one before) and it was just a major bummer to watch. 

My teams that I care the most about are the Boston Red Sox and the Philadelphia Eagles. Before you ask, NO I'm not from either of those places. I was born in the same city I live in now, in north Texas.  And it really really pisses me off when people around here (ahem, my family) get all pissy that I don't pick Dallas teams as my favorites.

HERE'S THE THING.  I have two brothers and an uncle who are obsessed with football. (My father could care less, and he gets really visibly irritated when the "sit around and visit" family time at the holidays is interrupted for a football game someone has to see.) It's not that they refused to teach me about the game...I didn't beg and beg only to be met with NO TIME TO EXPLAIN, PUNY FEMALE!

I was really very ambivalent about it all.  I just remember laughing when my Uncle Tim would act all crazy when the Cowboys did something great (or stupid) (but mostly great, because it was in the Dynasty Days).  I wore the Super Bowl Champions t-shirts my dad bought us from a kiosk on the side of the road after Da Boys beat Da Bills.  Also I was a cheerleader for the Chiefs and then the Broncos (twice!) in a local peewee league.  We were awesome, too...we won championships (the cheerleaders, not the football players)! Then, I sorta just stopped caring.

Fast forward to 2003, when I started dating my husband.  He is a die. hard. Eagles fan.  His whole family is.  So, as an excuse to spend as much time with him as possible, I'd go with him on Sundays to watch football games. It quickly became clear that I had no idea what was happening, other than "end zone = touchdown."  So he painstakingly explained the game to me and, with every subsequent Sunday we spent together, I slowly found that I was becoming obsessed with the game and, by proxy, his team. I'm SUPER competitive,and football just feeds into that. 

I think it probably goes without saying that my family is SICK over my adoption of the Eagles.  Heh. Suck it, Cowboys. I know that Eagles fans as a whole have a reputation for being violent assholes, but I will say one thing about myself as a fan: I'm honest.  The Eagles are terrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiiiiibbbbbbbbbbbbllllllllllleeeeeeee this season and some serious change needs to happen and SOON.  My problem with (most. MOST.) Cowboys fans is that they're delusional.  They'll totally cough up a game and play with their helmets in their asses and fans around here are still like SUPER BOWL BABY, COWBOYS ARE GOIN' ALL THE WAY!! Gross. Shut up. Also Jerry Jones is the antichrist.  Seriously LOOK AT HIS FACE.

My love for the Red Sox is much easier to explain: I fully admit to hopping on the 2004 Bandwagon when they completely overtook the Yankees and won the World Series for the first time in 86 years.  But then we moved to Boston for 3 years and seriously fell in love with the team and the history and all that. However, unlike my football relationships, I do NOT hate the Texas Rangers.  I love 'em, actually, and I root for them...until the Red Sox play them. I was devastated with the rest of the area when the Rangers coughed it up to St. Louis in the 2011 World Series.  

Basketball and other sports...I'll root for Dallas teams. Because I'm not invested in them. So, GO MAVS and GO STARS!

I really meant to talk about this article in this post because Tashina posted it the other day on Twitter and it sent me into a blind rage because of how sports are SO IMPORTANT to people that they apparently trump other things like, oh, alcohol-induced car accidents and ASSAULT AND RAPE.  But I would've just gotten ragey and screamed at you all for a whole post.  So this is probably better.

That Other Thing in my Blog Title

BASEBALL!

Just the other day I was thinking to myself, "Self! Your blog is called 'Music and Baseball,' and yet you NEVER talk about baseball!" Self was right. I do LOVE baseball. Love love LOVE it. But I don't really blog/write about it. Why? Because I'm not a sports blogger. There are others out there who would do a MUCH better job writing about games/players, etc. I just love watching it.

Last night, some friends of ours we haven't spent time with in FOREVER scored some pretty sweet seats to the Rangers game and, since the Red Sox (OUR TEAM!!) were in town for a 4-game series, they invited us!

I absolutely love the Ballpark in Arlington (even though now we have to pass by the Death Star aka Cowboys Stadium [gag] to get there), and I just LOVE being at baseball games.

There was a teeeeeeeeny tiny little bit of rain that came through Dallas right before the game (what a tease you are, Rain) that cooled things down to a nice, breezy 85 degrees -- which felt like HEAVEN -- and gave us some lovely clouds.

The Rangers got a pretty good thumping from Josh Beckett and the Red Sox (final score: 13-2), and since we were only about 20-ish rows behind the Red Sox dugout, I was geeking out nonstop at being so close to all my boyfriends and husbands on the Red Sox roster. 

I was gonna talk about how much I hate it when good-natured trash-talking crosses the line into people being jackasses, but I don't wanna talk about the negative.  We had a GREAT time at the game! 

I also ran into LAURA and her boyfriend Matt after the game, but I was STUPID and forgot to snap a quick picture.  BAD Blogger!

I did manage to get video of the beast that is Jonathan Papelbon delivering the final strike for the last out of the game (notice how many Rangers fans are left...NOT MANY) and a picture of the Red Sox on the field after the game.

(ETA: that video quality is CRAP!  Watch it in HD here on Vimeo instead)

Then I had to snap a picture of the Death Star on the walk back to the car...because even though it is the Place Where Evil is Created, it is quite pretty all lit up at night:

All in all it was a VERY fun night of baseball! Thanks again to our friends Aaron and Ashley for the great seats and thank you to the RED SOX for just being amazing. Go Sox!