I just stumbled upon a great article about married couples and their love of sports. It got me to thinking about the situation Beth and I have.
Check it out here, if you want to read the original article, it is quite good. It is about a family that has a mutual love of USC football, and how whenever they watch together, the Trojans never lose. (Although I think that is more due to the worst NFL head coach ever, Pete Carroll, but I digress.)
Back to my situation though. It is all about me, right? :) I am a Red Sox fan. Parents grew up outside of Boston, aunts and uncles are Red Sox fans, every Seppala on the East Coast are Sox fans, that's just the way it is.
Technically, where I grew up, I was closer to Montreal, so shouldn't I be an Expos fan? Geography plays a role in it, sure, but it is really more than that. It is who you watch on Saturday afternoons with your old man. It is the team the conversation is always about. It is the place you would go to for a special treat in the middle of the summer. It is a family thing, it is passed down from one generation to the next, it is unchangeable, and you are stuck with it. You try to root for other teams, but it simply is not possible, so you always will be a Red Sox fan.
Very similar situation with my wife. Geography plays a role, family ties play a part, but there is one major difference. Growing up on the west side of Connecticut, with New York parents, has bestowed upon her the title of... Yankees Fan!
Yep, I married a Yankees fan. Or, she married a Red Sox fan. Either way, it is a melding of two opposing viewpoints. Remember that old ESPN ad, with the guy wearing an Ohio St. shirt and the girl wearing a Michigan shirt making out on the couch, seemingly ignoring their allegiances? Well, that's not us. That's Hollywood. I am proud to say that Beth and I handle our differences a little more decently.
We openly root against each others teams all summer long. We put down each other teams, we mock each others teams. When the Yankees suck, I let her know it. When the Red Sox choke, she makes sure I can hear her. After Aaron Boone's famous home run off of Timmy W. in the '03 play-offs, I hid under my covers for 2 days straight. It was miserable. Did Beth console me? I don't know, we were just dating at the time and I didn't turn my phone on.
Yankees-Marlins WS? I refused to watch. Beth watched every game, I abstained from TV and Sports for two weeks. Painful yes, but I needed to purge, the taste was still so bitter. Didn't the Marlins win that series? I really can't remember.
In essence, I hate the Yankees, she hates the Red Sox, and we let each other hear about it. It is part of the honer of being one of those teams fans, is that you can rip on the opposing team as much as you like.
But, there is a happy ending. Beth and I got married about two years ago, we did the whole write-your-own-vows deal, because we couldn't find anything that truly described us. I won't describe everything that was said, but I will say that Beth vowed "to be more understanding of the Red Sox in October."
Wow! What a catch for me! :) :)
1 comment:
I just need to throw my two-cents in here, because this article is further enhanced if you understand just how big a fan he is. And I need an excuse to contribute to this blog since I know nothing about baseball and am too lazy to 'race'.
I can verify that Seppie goes beyond mere 'Red Sox fan'. When we were young lads, his bedroom was completely decked out with Red Sox crap. I mean, how many other second graders have 8x11 black and white photos of each member of the 1918 Red Sox team hanging from the ceiling?
And it realy wasn't just the Red Sox; it was all of baseball. He had this bizarre photographic knowledge of just about any statistic you could think of from this enormous Baseball Almanac. I don't just mean reciting the last time a ground-rule double won a World Series (if ever), I'm talking telling you the friggen page number that the stat was on. Scary, scary stuff.
Nowadays, my brother gets the title of "most-like-Jimmy-Fallon-in-Fever-Pitch" only because he dresses the part and goes to more Sox games (I think). But he used to be a Braves fan and converted later, so he loses some street cred with the old school fans. When it comes to depth of knowledge and demonstration of Sox bravado, no one that I know holds a candle to Brian Seppala.
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