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4 Days To Go…

So the countdown is getting down to the nitty gritty here. Last night I decided to watch a favorite (baseball related) movie of mine again, “Fever Pitch”. I see a lot of myself in Ben Wrightman. Of course, I don’t live in a Red Sox museum, but if I was single I probably would 🙂 As I watch him, some of the things he says and does really reminds me of me at times, good or bad, like:

Lindsey: You don’t see us tangled up in the sheets with the Eiffel Tower in the background. You see the Mariners are coming in, and Pedro’s pitching Friday.
Ben: No, on Saturday. Schilling’s Friday.

I could totally see me saying that, probably have at some point… just ask my wife 🙂

Reporter: Where do the Sox rank in terms of importance in your life?
Ben: I say the Red Sox… sex… and breathing.

Sadly, I know my wife would agree with this 🙂

Lindsey: Let’s try to jerk one out of the park.
Ben: That’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever heard.

Agreed! 🙂

Ben: It’s what the players wear, its authentic… I gotta be honest, it’s getting me hot!

Yeah, been there, said that… as my wife was putting on her Red Sox jacket at the Yawkey Way store.

Troy: Why do we inflict this on ourselves?
Ben: Why? I’ll tell you why, ’cause the Red Sox never let you down.
Troy: Huh?
Ben: That’s right. I mean – why? Because they haven’t won a World Series in a century or so? So what? They’re here. Every April, they’re here. At 1:05 or at 7:05, there is a game. And if it gets rained out, guess what? They make it up to you. Does anyone else in your life do that? The Red Sox don’t get divorced. This is a real family. This is the family that’s here for you.

This is so true for all of us baseball fans. That’s just it, they never really ever let us down, they are always there for us (unless you’re an Expos fan).

My 3 favorite quotes are:

Ben: Clearly it’s not just a game, if it was then I wouldn’t care about it this much. 23 years, do you still care about anything you cared about 23 years ago? How About 10? How about 5? Name me a single thing you have cared about for 23 years.

Ben: Ok, I’ve been avoiding this. There’s something you don’t know about me. The thing is, I am a Red Sox fan. I’m like a Big, Big Red Sox fan.
Lindsey: I know, I’ve been to your apartment and seen the Red Sox dish towels, glasses and Yankee toilet paper, it’s like you live in a gift shop.
Ben: It’s worse. See when I was a kid I moved here from New Jersey, I didn’t have any friends, so my Uncle Carl started taking me to Fenway Park. I just… got lost in the game. The ballpark, the people, the colors, sounds, smells… and then he got cancer and died and left me his tickets. That’s passion… it’s a very, very big part of my life and it’s been a problem with me and women.

It’s so true and no 2 trips to the ball park are the same, something is always different!!

Ben: Yeah, like, uh “Why you getting so worked up for, you’re not even doing it, you’re watching it.” It’s like “Hey, sometimes I like to be 11 years old”, I like being a part of something that’s bigger than me, than I, it’s good for your soul to invest in something you can’t control.

I don’t know about it being good for my soul, cause it’s tore me up more than a few times, but I truly feel that until you put your heart out on your sleeve for something bigger than yourself, something out of your control, for the love of a sports team, you will never know heartache and you will never know the feeling of joy that comes with watching your team win!!

On August 19th of this year, it will mark 23 years for me that I have been a Red Sox fan. August 19, 1986 was the day that 2 big things happened in my life. It was the day that my hometown Mariners traded my favorite player to the Boston Red Sox and I followed him. It was also the day that my heart was broken and my father let me know that “Baseball is a business, first and foremost.”

Here is one of my favorite clips from “Fever Pitch”, as I watched this last night and realized that I will be there at Fenway in a week, I started to cry… I was so excited!! WOOHOO!!