At the risk of alienating half of my already small audience, I must confess to being a lifelong Boston Red Sox fan. I'm not an obnoxious fan though (as far as I know) and I don't speak with that horrible Boston accent (my apologies to those who do). Truth be told, I always found baseball boring when I was younger. Even though I always signed up to play, I never wanted to go to practice. Of course, the way my baseball “career” started, you can hardly blame me. On my very first day in farm system, the coach decides to see if I would make a good catcher. So he gives me the mitt, but no mask. After a couple of pitches, one nicks off the top of the mitt and hits me square in the face. Being young and therefore somewhat indestructible, I shook it off. But the next year I was called up to Little League, thanks to a mandatory promotion system (since I had an older brother on the team the previous year). So here I am at 9 and the smallest kid on the team. In our first preseason game I had to bat against the biggest, hardest throwing 12-year old in the league. I didn't figure I had much of a chance, but I gamely went up there to give it a swing. The first pitch he throws (a fastball, of course) is coming right at me and instead of turning away and taking the hit on the shoulder or back I open up and tried to avoid it (dodgeball style - did I ever mention that I was the third grade dodgeball champ). Well, it didn't work (so much for my dodgeball prowess) and instead it hit me in the worst possible place (so much for being indestructible). I still played baseball after that, but it was never going to be my favorite pasttime as an athlete. These days, I'm more than happy to watch the Sox on TV (though I have to flip to something or have reading material as well) and am positively thrilled when I have a chance to head to Fenway Park for a game.