Category: Boston MA (Page 12 of 13)

My Great Social Experiment

2 October, 2007 / Kat

Last Tuesday, Chris (aka the boyfriend) and I took in one of the Red Sox’s last games of the regular season. Earlier that morning, I made the call not to wear one of my Red Sox hats to the game. Now, part of this is because out of the three I own, one is a visor, and this wasn’t visor weather; another is pink, which is no longer “acceptable” to “real” Sox fans (whatever); the third is newer, a bit on the large side for me, and lacks the ponytail opening in the back.

So I decided to wear my Buffalo Bills hat to Fenway Park — two days after the Patriots decided to decimate the Bills 38-7 on their quest to become the NFL’s most annoyingly unbeatable team. Continue reading

I May Finally “Get” the Appeal of the Idea of Owning Something Besides a Fantasy Football Team, Like a House

29 August, 2007 / Kat

Dear Upstairs (well, 4 floors upstairs) Neighbor Who Decided to Venture Onto the Roof Last Evening at Approximately 11:25pm:

I am a largely forgiving, relatively shy, and calm person. In other words, besides the rare occasion when someone makes the oh-so-incorrect claim that Joe Montana was a massively better quarterback than Steve Young to my face, I do not get overly angry.

However, Sir or Madam, I am angry at you. For some reason, you decided to venture onto the rooftop of my apartment building last night. Maybe it was to smoke up. Maybe it was to look at the eclipse event that was going to occur later on. Maybe it was because you were so drunk you opened a door you incorrectly thought was your own. For whatever reason, you opened the roof door, and triggered the fire alarm. Continue reading

I Liked, Therefore I Was (A Short Discussion on Sports Fan Philosophy)

20 February, 2007 / Kat

Preteen me started out as a biased, novice, ignorant sports fan. When I became a fan of a team, an event, or an athlete, I became a supposed fan of that sport. In other words, I liked, therefore I was. I was a fan of the in-school pep rallies we got to have every late January because the Bills went to the Super Bowl, thus I was a fan of football. I became a fan of Steve Young’s striking good looks, thus I was even more a fan of football. I was a fan of my dad dragging me to Rochester Amerks games when he was able to score free tickets, thus I was a fan of hockey. I wanted to be Kristi Yamaguchi, therefore I liked figure skating. I liked the hoards of hot guys in indoor track, thus I joined the track team.

Here’s the converse of becoming a fan in that fashion–you absolutely despise other events, teams and athletes, but you can not tangibly explain why. I hated the Dallas Cowboys, because they were the arch enemy of both Steve Young and the Bills. Never mind that the early-mid 90s Cowboys were amazing on both sides of the ball, were crazy dominant, and probably were not the dirty cheaters my father pinned them to be. I hated them with every ounce of hate a twelve year old could muster. They caused the Monday after the Super Bowl to be the saddest day at school–every time you spotted a stray streamer in the #52 School gym from Friday’s “Go Bills” pep rally, you got choked up. I liked the Amerks, but I couldn’t tell you why I was booing the Hershey Bears–I couldn’t tell you if they were actually any good, what college teams the players came from, if they had a good defense. As for indoor track – I liked the hot guys, but my running form was awful and I couldn‘t tell you what half the events were–plus, when my coach tried to get me to practice hurdles, I often tripped over them not for lack of vertical leap (hey, I had been a gymnast, thus I had vertical leap to spare,) but because I was staring at the guys on my team. It’s not just me–think of a Boston University or Boston College student whose first introduction to hockey is in college. They hate the other school’s team, although most of them, at first or ever, can tell anyone else exactly why they should hate them. Continue reading

The Departure Factor, and Why I Like and Don’t Like Dan Shaughnessy

10 February, 2007 / Kat

When I ran indoor track (we’re talking way back in the day–1996 to be exact,) I preferred meets at New York Chiropractic College over those at the University of Rochester (U of R). It wasn’t that U of R had sub-par facilities–they had adequate facilities, if not a little on the older side, but still a whole lot better than running in the hallways of my high school, which is what we had to do for practice–but it was that U of R was right around the corner. From school, it was turn right, go straight for a little bit, another right, straight for a bit again, and bam–you were on campus. In fact, my high school was the original campus for the university–that’s how close by we were.

Those weekends that we had to go out to New York Chiropractic, which is located in Seneca Falls, were quite involved. We would report at school early, pack up in the school bus, and travel for about an hour to get there. We would listen to the radio, eat bagels, do homework together, talk about boys we liked…and when the meet was over, we would trudge from the field house through the freshly fallen lake effect snow to the parking lot, pack in the bus, wait till the bus warmed up enough, and then travel back home, exhausted. Not as talkative on the way back, we would either fall asleep or, my personal choice, look out the frostbitten window.

It wasn’t just that the trip out to Seneca Falls was more fun for 14-year-old me, but I ran (or in some cases, walked–one of my events was the racewalk) better at those meets. In all reality, that’s not saying much–it meant I finished third to last instead of last– but I was in an entirely different mindset. I wasn’t thinking of schoolwork, I wasn’t thinking about my family, I wasn’t thinking about Rochester–I was only thinking about my team and running (or walking.)

The reason I reminisce above is that the more I follow sports, especially college sports, the more I think that some athletes and teams are effected by what I’m calling “The Departure Factor.” The team or athlete performs better at an away venue than a home venue. This isn’t limited to teams that compete on fields and arenas, but also individual athletes like figure skaters. The actual traveling to the game, meet or championship is a cathartic experience–that time spent traveling releases the athlete of any outside issues and gets the athlete in the zone. Alternatively, when the team or athlete plays at a home venue, they have no travel time–they step onto the field right from their everyday lives. Every issue that they are dealing with in their non-athletic life comes with them onto the field–no matter how insignificant–because there has been no detachment from the two lives.

“The Departure Factor” is not to be used as an excuse–there exist thousands of sports psychologists to prepare athletes at all levels to “get in the zone”–but I think, especially for younger athletes, it is a legitimate reasoning for poor or unfocused performance. The best athletes and teams will always be those who can focus on the task at hand without letting anything distract them for the amount of time their program, match or game lasts. In fact, I think the absolute best athletes (or even anyone in any given field) are those who can focus as such and never lose their enjoyment for that intensive submersion in the given activity.

*****
Speaking of a person who may have lost that enjoyment for what they do…there is a sportswriter in Boston who elicits intense hatred and a high level of respect concurrently. That writer is Dan Shaughnessy. He is so hated that multiple websites exist whose sole purpose is to loathe him, but so respected that all media types and middle-of-the-road fans defer to his vast knowledge. I knew of him even as a teenager in Lake Effect Snow Land, but did not have a definitive opinion on the guy–I didn’t know enough of his work. However, even now as someone who reads a majority of his columns in the Boston Globe and who has lived in this sports town for nearly three years, I can’t bring myself to despise him. He may be grossly incorrect at times, he may have some very strong biases (which, as a columnist, is permitable,) but I do believe his honors and respect are deserved.

I think the problem with Shaughnessy is that he stopped enjoying being passionate about his profession a while back. Pure speculation, mind you, but I have reasons that I say what I do. For one, I met him last year while taking a class at the College of Communications. He came to visit a sports media course I was taking along with Kevin Paul Dupont, the Globe’s lead hockey writer. While Dupont’s interest, enthusiasm and gratefulness for his profession was glaringly obvious, Shaughnessy seemed to question what he has gotten caught up in. I almost wanted to ask him if he could go back to being a beat reporter, would he? He was courteous and answered everyone’s questions, and a part of his preoccupation may have been because he was about to break the Theo-is-coming-back story later that evening, but he seemed to miss the travel of being a beat reporter and the anonymity that it provided.

Secondly, his columns seem to be mailed in. Take his column regarding the first round of the Beanpot — it was so uninvolved it was almost offensive. He was intentionally using repetition as a means to show that the Beanpot is always the same in that Boston University always makes it to the finals, but he could have used it a lot better than using the example of a number of players coming from St. Sebastian’s. In fact, he was flippant to the importance of the tournament, which is a premier sports event on the Boston sports scene (since it takes place in the dark ages of the sports calendar–after the Super Bowl but before spring training and March Madness.) But Shaughnessy is, at his core, a baseball beat writer. I don’t think, if left completely to his own devices, he would ever write about hockey. He is passionate about baseball, and I think that’s why any football, hockey or basketball articles he writes come across as incomplete, inaccurate, or in the case of the Beanpot article, flippant. When he writes about baseball, his columns are longer, his descriptions more vivid, and he breaks news. It may be that his editor needs not to pressure him to write columns regarding sports he is not interested or qualified to.

In the end, I think it may boil down to the following: Boston sports fans, with their incorrect belief that they are more intelligent than any other American sports fans, are overly critical. They tear down, build up, and devour athletes, managers, coaches, front offices, and their journalists like a five-year-old who just traded in Duplos for Legos. When I first moved here, I thought it was over exaggerated how thick-skinned those in Boston sports had to be in order not to lose their minds. Unfortunately, it’s not. And I think Dan Shaughnessy, once he became successful and prolific, began to be consistently torn down by Boston sports fan. Twenty years of criticism later, he has finally become jaded. And, all things considered, who could blame him?

Earning the Fabiola (aka There’s a Reason I Chose the Patron Saint of Travelers as My Confirmation Name)

12 September, 2005 / Kat

When I got confirmed (what I like to call the Catholic Bat Mitzvah) back in the day (and when I say that, I mean 1996), I decided to be different and choose an unusual confirmation name (a name that you are supposed to use as your Catholic name, after the middle name, but no one really does anymore). I remember flipping the pages of the big book o’ saints that St. James had and trying to find something that wasn’t Mary, Maria, Elizabeth or Ann.

Somehow I settled on Fabiola, the patron saint of travelers. I think this was because at the time, I wanted to travel or take a summer vacation like all the other kids. This name was so unusual that when Bishop Clark called me up to confirm me, his exact response was, “Fabiola? I haven’t heard that for a confirmation name.”

Now that I’m 23, and regret the immense geekiness of my teenage years, I rarely use the Fabiola. I’m reluctant to mention it, until a family member inevitably brings it up and I have to explain my 14-year-old thinking. However, now the choice has become highly appropriate, for I have doing more traveling in the past three months than I thought I would.

To ramble about every single trip would be long, boring, and nearly impossible, so I will focus on the most important one of all:

SEEING STEVE YOUNG GET INDUCTED INTO THE PRO FOOTBALL HALL OF FAME!

Yes, the trip I’ve been talking about for years (a decade, to be exact) finally occurred. My parents, my 10-year-old brother and I (my sister had to work Park Avenue Fest in good ol’ Rochester, and could not join us) piled into the family Buick Rendezvous (Buick’s spelling, not mine) and drove five hours to the grand state of Ohio to visit the Pro Football Hall of Fame and watch the induction ceremonies live. We also took a detour to Cleveland to let my father bask in the glory of the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame, and so my brother and I could run around downtown singing, “Cleveland Rocks!”

Okay, my brother and I didn’t do that.

The Cleveland detour took place on Saturday afternoon (and was not extemporaneous in any means, as I had mailed my parents the “Hasenauer Hall of Fame Weekend” itinerary weeks beforehand, in their folder of relevant trip information. And they think I have OCD–where would they get that idea?) My family arrived in Cleveland, parked on the waterfront, and headed over to the museum. As we walked the steps of the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame, we saw our first Dan Marino fan. Remember, this was Saturday afternoon, in Cleveland, 45 minutes away from Canton. And there this guy was, in a white, teal and orange 13 jersey. No biggie, I thought. There was bound to be a few.

A few turned out to be 20, 000.

We saw around 200 at the Rock N’ Roll Hall of Fame alone. Teal jerseys, orange jerseys, official t-shirts, homemade t-shirts, NFL Zubaz pants, orange hats, the number 13 EVERYWHERE.

At one point, in front of the Alan Freed exhibit I believe, I turned to my mother and said, “Mom, I think I’m outnumbered. There’s not a red number 8 in sight.”

My mother looked at me and shrugged. “How do you think I feel? I’m a Bills fan.”

We left Cleveland a few hours later, already disheartened (see photo of Sam, my brother, at right) by the number of Dolph-fans (my dad’s word) we had encountered. Back in our hotel in Akron (the Vestal, NY of eastern Ohio, I am convinced) we thought we were safe from them. Just to be sure, when we headed to Bennigan’s for dinner, I threw on my new Hall of Fame issue Steve Young jersey. To use Hunter 115 lingo, I had to start “reppin’.” I encountered four Marino fans across the dining room, but no confrontation occurred, although I did get quite a few stares from the other diners for wearing an oversized jersey tied up 1992-style. (In another note of weirdness, did anyone else know that Ohio still allowed smoking in their restaurants?)

My parents, brother and I retreated back to our hotel, which my family was rather excited about. My family has never taken a family vacation ever, and this was only the third time my father has ever spent in a hotel, and only the third and fourth state my father has ever been in. Needless to say, our pretty large and cozy hotel room was one of the most exciting parts of the trip for my family. Even for a veteran hotel stayer myself (hello, I’ve even lived in one), I do have to say that our hotel in Akron was one of the nicest I’ve seen. It had a living room, a full kitchen (complete with dishwasher, which totally impressed my mom), a gorgeous bathroom/dressing area, and three beds. (Of course, I forgot to take a picture of it because I’m an idiot like that.)

My parents and Sam were out like a light that evening, and I would of been as well, had there not been the ESPN Classic Hall of Fame Weekend on. I have never been known to turn down a viewing of the 1993 San Fransisco 49ers Yearbook (well, except for the last five minutes–the NFC Championship Game), so I stayed up and watched that. But soon enough I went to bed, knowing full well that we would have to depart early to beat all the Marino-ites to Canton the next morning.

We packed up and reluctantly left our swanky hotel room early Sunday morning. After parking and taking the shuttle, we got to the Hall by the time they opened at 9am. When I was walking onto the Hall grounds, I was dejected already by the fact that I had been the only person clad in 49ers scarlet in the parking lot and shuttle–until two women who had to be in their 60s or 70s with handmade Steve Young shirts bounced up to me. “Hey girl, give me a high five!” they both screamed, and we all smiled and gave each other high fives. “We’re so excited to see another Young fan!” said one, “We’re rather few and far between here!” We were chatty for a few minutes about the crazy Marino-ites, and then went our separate ways, but instead of “Bye,” we left each other with a big, “Go Young!”

While this was going on, my family hung back, pretending that they didn’t know me, as they would end up doing several more times that day.

We then went into the museum (warning: during Hall of Fame weekend, they do raise the admission prices.) The Pro Football Hall of Fame is an absolutely awesome place if you are a football fan. There is just so much memorabilia and information that it is almost overwhelming. It is also in a very cramped space, so if you’re claustrophobic, I recommend going on like a Tuesday morning in the middle of October or something. Lucky for Hasenauers, we’re used to being crammed into spaces tighter than sardines in a can (anyone who has seen the house I grew up in can attest to that), so the throngs of people that were mingling around the hall didn’t bother us. Among the highlights is the Super Bowl section, with the box score and memorabilia from every Super Bowl (including rings, not to mention a Brady jersey at every turn–it’s what you get when you win three in four years!); the “Other Leagues” section, with great information on the AFL and USFL (including a blown up front page of the Rochester Times Union from the 1920s when Rochester had a pro team); and the photography exhibit highlighting the best photos from the 2004 season. There is also the actual Hall of Fame with all of the busts of every inductee (see Jim Kelly at right), which is a great history lesson for those of us who started watching football back in the early 1990s. I must say that some of the busts look absolutely nothing like the actual people (the Kelly one is pretty close, but the Marv Levy one looks like they used a “generic old man” model.) They had the engraved shelves installed for Young and his fellow inductees already, but the busts would be unveiled during the ceremony and placed there afterwards. My absolute favorite part of the Hall of Fame had to be when a young boy and his family who were guests of the Steve Young Foundation sought me out to take a picture of them in front of one of the Steve Young exhibits. “We’ve been looking for a friendly face,” they laughed as they handed me over their camera. I was like totally shaking, and didn’t have the guts to ask where they got their Steve Young straw hats (all of Young’s personal and foundation guests had a special straw hat with a red embroidered scarf tied on it) or if I could hang out with them for the rest of the day. That would be the closest I got to meeting Steve Young, but that was cool enough for me.

Of course, after viewing all of the exhibits, my family and I made our way to the museum store. In the line to get in, I had my first celeb siting–well, not just siting, but bumping. Junior Seau, now a Dolphin, but a former Charger (he played for them in the Super Bowl against the Niners in 1995), was walking the opposite direction out of the press room near the store, and brushed by my shoulder. Nearby was Zach Thomas. Both were very nice and all smiles as all the Dolph-fans they passed oohed and aahed. After spending way too much money in the museum store, my family and I made our way to Fawcett Stadium for the ceremony. While waiting in line, Cris Carter rushed to the VIP entrance, with a fan trailing him. Only seconds later on the other side of the line, Chris Berman (who was to be the emcee of the ceremony), was driven past us to the stage in a golf cart. Everyone was cheering him as he drove by, and he waved. He looks exactly the same as he does on TV–like everyone’s crazy uncle.

Now to the ceremony itself. It was such a good ceremony–except for the burning sun just frying my family and I in the stands. My parents and brother had to keep going downstairs and getting away from the sun to prevent getting sunburned. I usually don’t burn at all (that’s the 10% Italian in me), but even I was beginning to feel it. But what was even more annoying was the sixteen gazillion (okay, I mean 20,000) Dolph-fans, who were only there for their number 13. They were loud and annoying at times, not to mention rude. (There was one guy in back of me in line in the store explaining to his obviously-dragged-along girlfriend why Steve Young didn’t deserve to be inducted, and that the only way they were going to let him in was to induct them a year with “totally the best QB of all time” so he would be outdone. I don’t know if the guy was blind to my bright scarlet number 8 jersey in his face, or if he was just trying to get my goat. I’d love to say that guy was the exception, and not the rule, but unfortunately, it was the other way around.) But I didn’t let it bother me, and settled in to hear Grit Young introduce his son.

All I have to say is that it is glaringly obvious that the Young clan are lawyers. 35 minutes later, Steve Young took the podium. Steve gave us his useful well prepared remarks, expressing his gratitude to everyone (even Joe Montana, who was notably absent from the lineup of previous inductees.) It was also interesting to hear him and his father speak about his family life–something a lot of people don’t know about, since he got married and had kids after he retired. We also got the standard story about how his mother came charging out onto his Pop Warner football field one time because a member of the opposing team made an illegal hit on her son, and the story of how he made his parents drag the whole family to the Hall of Fame on a family vacation–and how his siblings only agreed if they all got to go to Hershey Park afterward. He spoke for quite a while, but I relished every minute of it. He was obviously just soaking up the moment of being inducted, and realizing that there were some fans there for him, hidden amongst the vast seas of teal and orange. He was so appreciative that you couldn’t help but feel happy for the guy, even if you were a Dolph-fan.

After he finished, they took a commercial time out, and my mom turned to me and said, “Um…I hope you’re not planning to see Dan Marino.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because your face is the same color as your jersey.”

I felt my face and realized that I was done. As in, “I’m so done, turn me over” done. As in, almost-Italian-but-really-French-Canadian-me was fried to a crisp. (See photo evidence to your right. That was between Benny Friedman and Fritz Pollard’s inductions. Take that redness and turn it up a few notches and you’ll see what I was really like afterward.)

So my family packed up and left before the Dan Marino celebration began. Rude? Maybe. But I wasn’t willing to risk heatstroke to see the arch-enemy of all Bills fans get inducted.

We packed into the family roadster (well, actually the family Buick Rendezvous) and headed back to Rochester, sunburnt and carrying six tons of Steve Young memorabilia. A little less than five hours later, we were back in Rochester, and ten hours after that, I was back in Boston. It was a short trip (and yes, I missed my chance to stick around for Monday’s Meet and Greet with the inductees–I needed to get back to Boston by Monday afternoon), but it was worth it. I know this probably sounds amazingly stupid, but it was amazingly cool to do something that I said I’d do since the age of 13, which is when I turned to my father the summer after Super Bowl XXIX and asked him if we could go see Steve Young get inducted to the Hall of Fame whenever he was elected. I don’t think my father ever thought I’d 1) remember that or 2) really drag my whole family along for the ride when it did happen. So thank you Mom, Dad and Sam for letting me drag you to the boondocks of Ohio for Steve Young–and do you think we can go again in five years when Jerry Rice gets inducted? Please?