"Question: If you're in a room with Hitler, Stalin, and Walter O'Malley, and you have gun with two rounds, who do you shoot?
Answer: Walter O'Malley--TWICE!" -- Apocryphal Brooklyn Dodgers fan.
I'm the son of a life-long Brooklyn Dodger fan. I was the first NOT born in Brooklyn and heard many stories about how my dad LOVED to spend an afternoon in Ebbets Field. People said it had its own unique smell that said "Bums Baseball". And they had GREAT nicknames: Nuke, Duke, Pee-wee, Oisk and even their own slugger called "Babe" (Don Newcomb, Duke Snyder, Pew-Wee-Reese, Carl Erskine, and Babe Herman). They even had famous fans--especially a lady named "Hildie".
And they had hilarious stories, like the out-of-the park grounder, and three base runners clunking noggins in a headfirst slide into 3rd, knocking them all senseless. This led to the famous story: A fan leaving early hails a cab and the cabbie asks:
"How da Bums doin'?"
"Great" says the fan "We got 3 men on base!"
"You don't say", says the cabbie. "Which base?"
The year I was born the Brooklyn Dodgers won their only World Championship...2 years later, against the fans, GREAT attendance, Walter O'Malley moved the team to Los Angeles, telling the city fathers a parcel of lies, (MLB had only moved as far West as Milwaukee and Kansas City--across Missouri from St Louis) and conning the owner of the New York Giants to move to San Francisco. He broke the hearts of Brooklyn, among them, Dad's.
When the detested Yankees played the LOS ANGELES Dodgers, my father rooted for the hated Yankees, especially in 1977 and 1978.
Meanwhile, the Red Sox had hated the Yankees and been hated by them in return. And when the Sox faced the Mets, who had risen from an hilariously bad expansion team ("Can't anybody play this game?" lamented Casey Stengel) to their 3rd trip to the World Series in 1986, "The Curse of the Bambino" pitted Sox fans against Mets fans.
I grew up always preferring the Mets to the Yankees, and, in from the mid-60's to the mid-70's the Yankees looked to have put their glory years behind them. Still, in the AL I pull for the Yankees, and in the NL for the Mets -- and when they play each other, always the Mets. (My handle has nothing to do with the Yankees, but that I lived in North Carolina and always pull for the 'Heels).
Now I may hate the Red Sox, but they didn't betray their city and their fans, or, my Dad. I just cannot, CANNOT root for the Dodgers any more than for the Patriots or the Cowboys.
So I gotta go with the Red Sox. As I type this, Game 1 is 8-4 Sox, with 2 outs in the top of the 9th and the 2 super-red beards, Kimbrel and Turner are dueling and .... Turner just struck out.
Sox or Dodgers?
1"Even if the bee could explain to the fly why pollen is better than shit, the fly could never understand."
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