The basketball March Madness is in full swing and like everyone else, my bracket is a mess. To own the truth, my bracket was based on geographic preferences and good old American ignorance of the facts. I have Duke and Kansas in the final game, but haven’t picked a winner. I, however, am more excited about the advent of baseball and have decided to try and follow the season this year since I am not teaching. I might as well.
This year my mother has announced her intention that we’ll all go to a Yankees game this year. In the dark recesses of our souls, our minds, we’re New Yorkers. She and Chaos Bean are actually from New York and my father is from New Jersey. I was born outside of what I call the “Literate Belt” and inside what other people like to call “the Bible Belt,” for no apparent reason. The unfortunate part of being the son of a soldier is that sometimes you have no definite home but Yankee baseball is transnational and all you Boston fans from outside of New England are what we call a, “bandwagon.” There are few things more American than baseball and Yankee Baseball is America. I know this, of course, because I was on the outside looking in for many, many years.
Unfortunately, we live in the American city furthest from a city with a baseball team that plays the Yankees as is humanly possible without going to Hawaii (which is too luxurious to be America, really) or Alaska (which is too scary to be America). We would have to travel to Kansas City, Cleveland, or Chicago to see the Yankees play and as much as I would prefer the former or latter, we are for some reason pointed towards Cleveland because only I have been to Cleveland. Cleveland is a terrible, terrible city and only one good thing came from it and she has since moved to Phoenix. Chicago is a poor man’s New York (note, irony) and Kansas City is the home to Harry Truman, Mary Tyler Moore, and I can’t think of a third thing because I am predicating this family vacation on possibly seeming my friend Mary Tyler Moore. I cannot believe that we might go to Cleveland; I’m just not sure I have the proper vaccinations.
While discussing this trip my mother was very, and unusually animated. When Chaos Bean announced that she would never consume a hot dog in public under normal circumstances she would most definitely do this in a scenario that placed her at a Yankees game. My mother then announced she would eat a hot dog as well and perhaps even have a beer. This is newsworthy in and of itself but the fact that she’d follow that up with, “I might even fart,” caused me to renew my wish that I were adopted. Here is my mother, who decries the idea of eating and behaving in a low manner deciding that at a Yankee baseball game she is going to, “toot, toot, toot, for the home team.” Disgraceful.
This does however bring up the important fact that I need to
move somewhere bigger, Emily is right: I’m a city boy. Cities have major league baseball and
while that doesn’t always include the Yankees it can at times include the Mets,
who are a poor substitute but a substitute nonetheless. I just discovered this week while
bringing my sister lunch at work (and she works in HELL) that Louisville has a Wolfgang Puck Express denoting that this is a connection you’re making on
your way somewhere else because it was found on the street and not in an
airport like it’s brothers and sisters.
I noted to my father that it made the town suck a little less and that
it was like a beachhead in the battle to make this town civilized. He noted that it was just an express
and we didn’t have a real restaurant yet.
Indeed, I must go then to a larger city where I can teach, see baseball
games, and eat well. I am
accepting applications.
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