Chile's Corner
Quick thought before I get into things here, as I watch David Ortiz leg out a triple -- it can be pretty entertaining watching National League fielders who haven't previously been at Fenway misplay the angles off the wall. Always fun to watch. It is a reasonable trade-off for having to watch Sox batters pitch in NL parks. (And oh yeah, I have to delay the Tim Lollar Award presentation yet again, since the Sox are in Philadelphia next weekend).
And a second thought -- memo to NESN: We know Matt Damon is a Red Sox fan. You don't have to pan to him 10 times per game just because he's at Fenway.
Anyway, today marks the debut of a new Dave's World feature, a twice-monthly column called Chile's Corner.
I'll start off with one of my favorite Chile Hidalgo stories. Chile was sitting in one of his college classes listening to a guest lecturer. Said lecturer was working himself into a froth about how the government has increasing access to our personal information, and went on to compare this to life under Stalin in the Soviet Union.
Chile raises his hand. "Umm, yeah. I grew up under in Chile under Pinochet, I'm living in the United States now, and I have to say, I don't feel like I'm living in a Stalinist dictatorship right now."
End of rant about Stalin.
Anyway, Chile's been a friend since we both co-op'd at the Boston Globe Sports department in 1997-98. I went on to become a sportswriter, Chile decided to do something sensible with his life instead.
Chile's the sort of road-dog type friend every guy makes in their early-to-mid-20s. I lived with him for two years with three other guys in a five-bedroom house in Allston, which was basically a big frat house. We've been on the road to see the Sox at Yankee Stadium, been to Montreal with our other roommates to watch the Expos play the Giants, and watched Game 3 of the ALDS, Game 7 of the ALCS, Game 4 of the World Series and the past two Super Bowls together. You get the picture.
So without further ado, here's the debut of Chile's Corner ...
CONFESSIONS OF A BREWERS FAN
I'm a Red Sox fan because I went to Fenway to see my first baseball
game and my mom's family is from Cape Cod. Plus, as a southern Connecticut
resident who took an interest in baseball in 1991, my other choices
were the Yankees of Alvaro Espinoza, Matt Nokes, and Kevin Maas, or the
Mets, who make a battered apple pop out of an upside down top hat every
time a Met hits a home run. Explaining why I'm a Red Sox fan is pretty
easy.
On the other hand, I also like the Brewers. This makes about as much
sense as Dave liking the Expos or my cousin Paul picking the Braves back
when they sucked and he lived in Delaware. Despite humoring me over the
years (like the time he got me a replica 1980s Brewers hat for my
birthday), I'm not sure Dave gets my whole fixation with the Brewers, so
here's my attempt to explain it.
It started with a box of Rice Krispies back in the summer of 1991. I'd
just moved back to Connecticut from Chile, where I'd lived for 9 years, and thus
things like promotions where you could collect UPCs and send away for (in
this case) miniature batting helmets (the kind you can get filled with
ice cream at ballparks for around $7.85) still interested me. So I was
reading the back of the cereal box and looking at the batting helmets for
which you could send away.
Now, I'd always liked the Brewers' logo (this is the 1992 version, not
the abomination with the bats, a diamond, and the "M" and "B" in Notre
Dame colors that replaced it in 1994 or the current less offensive but
uninspired M with some sort of grain underneath it. Wheat, maybe?).
Something about the simplicity of a baseball glove with a ball in it as
the logo for a baseball team always appealed to me. But as I was thinking
about how much better that logo was than the stupid A with a halo
around it (the Angels' logo at the time and a sign of future developments
with that organization), something else struck me about it: the fingers
of the glove formed an "M," and the thumb and pocket of the glove were a
"B." I sat there dumbfounded by this realization (it's really
dumbfounding if you've never noticed it before -- you can check it out here). This discovery
quickly elevated the logo in my mind to the greatest logo in all of
sports, not only baseball. (The Hartford Whalers attempted something similar
with their logo, but with far less satisfactory results, so I consider myself something of a connoisseur). I'm the first to admit that this sounds like a reason one's girlfriend might choose to root for a team ("but I like the guy dressed
in a baseball uniform with an enormous baseball as a head!"), but the
logo sparked an interest in all things Brewers. I figured that a
franchise with a logo like that must be pretty much the coolest franchise in
sports.
And as I started to look into it, I found that the Brewers were in fact
the coolest franchise in sports. Their lineup, which included Paul
Molitor, Jim Gantner, Kevin Seitzer, Robin Yount, and B. J. Surhoff, was
amazing. Their mascot threw himself down a slide into a stein of beer (is
there any comparison between that and a ludicrously oversized apple
coming out of an upturned hat?). Plus, he wore overalls and had a
moustache that implied that he was a Latin American dictator in his spare time.
(unfortunately, the new chute in Miller Park does not end up in a
stein. It did, however, result one of the funniest All-Star game moments of
all time when all the baseball mascots were hanging out around the
entrance to the chute taking turns on the slide. You generally don't see
the Philly Phanatic hanging out with Mr. Met, Wally the Green Monster, Youppi,
and that horrible purplish thing the Devil Rays have as their mascot).
Bob Uecker, their radio announcer, not only starred in Mr. Belvedere
(incidentally, a favorite of Chilean television), but he also called (by
himself -- no Don Orsillos included) the greatest game this side of Sean
McDonough. What was not to like?
My Brewer obsession might have died when I moved to Boston, because the
Red Sox tend to drown out everything else besides the Yankees. But
during my freshman year, I had the good fortune of meeting my friend Henry,
a Wisconsin native and the biggest Brewer and Packer fan I've ever met.
My friendship with Henry gave me a reason to follow the Brewers again,
and (through a series of events involving a touch football game and
some ill-advised trash talking, if I remember correctly) led to me wearing
a Brewers' hat (with the old logo) to Fenway to watch the Sox play the
Brewers in 1996. And I felt OK about it afterwards.
I was pretty excited when the Brewers moved to the National League and
I could embrace them as my NL team. I took to wearing my Brewers' hat
around town every so often, and man, wearing a Red Sox hat in another
city has never had the same kind of effect. Every time I wear it, someone
from Wisconsin stops me and asks about the connection. Even though
they've been awful for the last 10 years or so, they're always excited to
talk about the Brewers. Good people, the folks from Wisconsin.
One of my favorite things about wearing the hat gets back to the thing
that started my fascination with the Brewers. People who probably had
the same epiphany that I did like to discreetly let me know that they're
in on the secret about the "M" and the "B." They might slip in a "it's
more than a baseball glove, you know" into conversation just to make
sure that I'm aware of it. They're always briefly disappointed that I am
very much aware of that, but after reconciling themselves to that fact,
we exchange those "yeah, we're awesome" looks/head nods with each
other. Which all of those of you who were unaware of the embedded "M" and "B"
can now do.
Chile can be reached at chile.hidalgo@gmail.com.
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