Photo lifted from Boston.comI’ve never hidden the fact that what drew me to being a baseball fan was cute guys in baseball uniforms. I was a very young girl in the 1970s when I first noticed Fred Lynn while my father and great-grandfather watched a game one Sunday afternoon. One look and I was hooked. The fact that my dad had no sons to pass along his Red Sox loved helped too. He didn’t mind my crushing on Lynn as long as I listened to him when he explained the game. Over the years, I’ve learned to love the game but, as a straight woman, I also appreciate the finer points, like which players are the cutest. Again, I’ve never pretended anything else. I love the game, know the game, and get to appreciate it on different levels.
Through my pre-teen years, I’d study the media guides and yearbooks my parents would bring home from Fenway. My sister and I knew everything about the players. Their middle names, where they were born, even the names of their wives and kids. When you’re 11, you aren’t looking at these guys like regular, married people. They’re famous. So like Shaun Cassidy and Donnie Osmond before them, I used to ‘dream’ of marrying a baseball player. (After Fred Lynn, Dwight Evans and Jim Rice were on that list.) I couldn’t wait to be older so I was closer to their age, and I was positive that I’d be the perfect baseball wife because I knew so much about baseball. Oh I was a funny kid!
I wish I could remember when my attitude changed. Probably in high school when real boys meant more than my pin-up dreams. Then by the time I was out of high school, I had my own live to live and figured the likes of major league baseball players were (you’ll excuse the pun) out of my league. The cute player cropped up now and then (Tim Naehring, I’m talking about you!) but I never thought more about them than "Gee he’s cute. Hope he can hit!".
Fast forward many years and I’ve created a couple of websites dedicated to players (the now-defunct "Number Fifteen" for Kevin Millar and an appreciation page that I still maintain for Mike Timlin) and I keep this blog. I spend a lot of time talking and writing about baseball players, and because of that, a lot of people contact me. Some do it because they think I have ‘connections’ (I don’t). Some do it because they have something they want to tell me. Relatives and friends of both Timlin and Millar contacted me because of the sites I created. Just random contact, thanking me for the sites. Sometimes updates on the players. Any contact I’ve had with friends and relatives of players – and there have been others – has been nothing but positive. They all seemed to realize that I was a pretty harmless fan. Not psychotic or delusional. Just someone who wanted to show my appreciation for these guys doing a good job.
For me, one of the negative aspects of this blog is the contacts made from other folks. The college-aged girls who pretend their the wives of players who are already married. Or those who bad-mouth the girlfriends and wives of players just because they’re jealous. Some of the emails I get from these girls would turn your hair white. Someday the little girls will learn that they’re the joke of the clubhouse and move on.
On the other side of that, I’ve received some genuinely touching emails from people affected by the players (in real life, not just their imaginations). Some positively, some negatively. The negative ones that can be verified are a reminder to my inner child who still wants to marry Fred Lynn, that these guys are human. Just regular guys with a talent not everyone has, who get stupid money thrown at them. The young ones lucky enough to find a spot on the team are still YOUNG men, many who need to mature and learn how to be REAL men. Sometimes that never happens, and sometimes it does. Curt Schilling touts himself as an irresponsible kid for a good portion of his MLB career, until he finally smartened up. Happens to the best of them.
So I still Google "Bronson Arroyo" and see if there are any new pictures around of him, because he’s my version of eye candy. I still follow Kevin Millar’s career to see how he’s doing. I still say a little prayer every time Mike Timlin takes the mound. And I still cross my fingers that Jon Lester doesn’t implode tomorrow night under the pressure thrust upon him. I don’t know any of these guys, even if it feels like I do. For all I know, in ‘real’ life they’re jerks. Not worthy of our fandom. But most of us will never find out whether or not that’s true. It’s sometimes tough, especially as a passionate Red Sox fan, to separate the players from the men, but in some cases, it’s exactly what I need to do. What many people need to do.
Pardon my rambling post. It’s been a fun, yet mentally draining, weekend and I wanted to get this off my chest. Might make sense to some, probably won’t make sense to most. That’s the fun part about having my own blog. I get to confuse folks as long as it all makes sense to me. 🙂
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