TheBanyanTree: The Yankees and the Red Sox

[LLDeMerle]

Baseball fans,


I'm so excited.  My team won last night, another 5-hour game, 14 innings,
tied for 5, a real white-knuckler.  The poor people at the stadium were cold
and tired, yawning between cheers, covering their cold faces and red noses
with scarves and mittened hands.

The reverse of the baseball caps is a little goofy, but when folks are
desperate, it appears anything is fair game.

We are a mixed marriage.  In addition to being Catholic and non-Catholic, we
are Yankee and Boston supporters.  Except my husband lost *his* hat, which
he wears every day of his life that it's warm enough not to wear the
rabbit-lined one that protects his sweet little shiny head and ears.

My hat is new.  I panicked and bought it while in New Hampshire since I was
being harassed for being a New Yorker, now, and, assumptively, like being
bad drivers and living in a concrete maze, people not from New York also
assume that New Yorkers are Yankees fans.  

The pressure was mounting with each shindig we attended, whether it was out
to dinner, a ladies' church breakfast, Old Home Days or a housewarming.  My
nerves were shot.

I pulled into one of those little general stores one imagines New England to
be rife with, and there, at eye level on the shelf was a cap.  Not an
obnoxious red or navy cap with a giant, embellished B for Boston on it, but
a pink cap with an indiscriminate symbol on the front that I studied and
puzzled over 'til the proprietor said, "Look at the side."  Seems the Y and
the now-determined H stood for Yankee Hater.  Seems the sooner I buy a cap
to designate my team of choice, the better.

"Yikes!" I said, "This is harsh!"

He laughed.  "I'm sorry."

"I mean, really.  This is a little scary.  I'll take this other one."

No Y,. no H, just an unassuming B on the front and "Boston" on the back, but
enough to *clarify* where my loyalties lie and save me from getting pinched
everywhere I go.  Never mind about hat hair, this is *survival.*

While in New England, I felt safe with my pink B cap, but once I crossed the
border into NY, I began to feel uneasy again.  Still,  I made it home
without further ado, and when my husband saw my hat, he doubled over with
laughter.  He's never seen me wear a baseball cap, before, and....he has
lost his.

This could be a good sign.


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"...just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another."   - John
13: 34
"...regardless of which team is yours."  -LL 6:17