Let's Go Fishing - a childhood fave for me and thousands of other kids

Playing “Let’s Go Fishing” with my favorite four-year-old (a cousin of my fiance’s) this New Year’s Day with the dull portion of the Winter Classic flickering in the background, the topic of conversation turned from what kindergarten would be like next year to the Boston Red Sox. Favorite Four-Year-Old, like every child born and raised in the Greater Boston area, understood that he was a Red Sox fan prior to understanding that hands were for picking things up, not chewing on.

Over the summer, Favorite-Four-Year-Old and I had played “Big Papi” and “Jason BAAAYYY” in his backyard – a catch-tag megamix named after his two favorite members of the Red Sox roster. This afternoon, I wondered if he knew what had conspired a few days before.

We held our faux primary colored fishing rods over the faux thrashing primary colored fish. I sighed, and asked the question that had to be asked. “Who is your favorite Red Sox player?”

Favorite Four Year Old’s head snapped up, forgetting about the fish. “Jason BAAAAAAAYYYYYYY!” he exclaimed, proudly, with a giant grin on his face. He quickly returned to faux-fishing.

I was left with a dilemma. Was I susposed to be the one to have the “free agency” talk with Favorite Four-Year-Old, or was this a talk that his father or grandfather needed to have with him? This was an important talk in the life of a young sports fan, and I felt that it needed to come from a close relative, and not just little ol’ me.

I looked around, trying to find Favorite Four-Year-Old’s father. He was busy in another room eating. His grandfather was no where in my sightline either. Favorite Four-Year-Old didn’t seem to sense the turmoil within me.

So I said nothing and set to not lose too poorly in “Let’s Go Fishing.” In that four-year-old’s world, Jason Bay could still be his favorite Red Sox player. If only just for one more day.

Unless you’re an athlete. Because if you are an athlete, sports fans – fickle ones, at that – make it their own pastime to comment about your bad day, remind you about your bad day, and hold it over your head for days, weeks, months, years, lifetimes on end.

Heaven forbid said bad day occurs due to an injury. Then you’re “injury prone,” “weak,” “not a professional,” “disingenuous.” Injury equals weakness, and unless the limb is severed, many believe you ought to be out on the field, ice, court, or pitch.

Jason Bay is having a bad week. Maybe a bad month. (Photo: Flickr user lifes ill)

One could say that Boston Red Sox’s outfielder Jason Bay is having a bad week. Maybe a month. After he pulled a hamstring this past weekend, he had to sit out two games. Nevermind that Bay was the last Sox player to take a day off since the All-Star Game. Nevermind that the last day he had off was when he was hit by a pitch around Memorial Day. Bay suffered from a bum hamstring, and Sox fans took to the Boston.com comments labeling the guy as a “bust,” as “lazy,” as being not worth the money he allegedly is asking in a new contract.

Bay came back for Wednesday evening’s game against Tampa Bay (the 2009 home of everyone’s favorite Californian Jewish Outfielder, and your June interleague play run leader, Gabe Kapler), and tweaked the hamstring again. Hamstrings are a fickle part of your body. Any athlete will tell you that. You can aggravate it running sideways, in the beginning of a vertical jump, on the landing of a leap – all routine parts of an outfielder’s game. It shouldn’t be a great surprise that maybe Bay shouldn’t have played Wednesday. He most likely felt fine on Tuesday, and then in the routine movements of playing his position on Wednesday, felt the injury again. That happens. Heck, as a teenager, my permanently wrecked knees felt great when I wasn’t throwing roundoffs or doing my ballet bar exercises. And then I would do such things, and holy heck, I thought someone was splitting my knee open like one would take a cleaver to an avocado pit and eating the bone alive. But you wouldn’t know if you would feel the pain until you tried physical activity.

No tears were shed for former fan favorite Bay in the comments section of Boston.com. One of the first commenters to the report about his hamstring re-aggravation claimed that, “Star players step up,” and accused Bay of being lazy, and that he ought to get out there and play like a professional. Others followed the negative suit, saying that he isn’t worth the money he might get in a new contract, that he’s been nothing but a disappointment, and that he ought to be replaced by farm system players. One commenter even went as far to describe Bay as “injury prone” throughout his career – Bay, of course, being the guy who played all 162 games in 2005, 159 in 2006, 145 in 2007, and 155 in 2008. If that’s injury prone, I would hate to see that commenter describe JD Drew or Carl Pavano.

Bay had been out 2 games as of Thursday morning. He had been out maybe 4 games all season.

I know most newspaper commenters exaggerate in their comments. That the majority of commenters don’t think before they type. But listen to sports radio. Read blogs. The commenters are just joining in the negative fray of those contributors. How disingenuous is a fan that their first thought upon the injury of a player on their team is that the player is lazy or undeserving of a chance to heal? Bay isn’t the first one to be held to the impossible standard possessed by sports fans, and he won’t be the last. Athletes may be paid for their physical ability, but they shouldn’t be put down and used for glue the minute they suffer a muscle pull. Sports fans ought to lose the barbarian-ness and reestablish their humanism.

Because, after all, I don’t see strangers publicly criticizing stenographers suffering from carpal tunnel syndrome who need to take a day off, or a lunch lady for missing work because she’s sick from caught-from-first-graders flu.

Last Monday was my birthday, and Gabe Kapler, my favorite baseball player of all time, unknowingly gave me a birthday gift.  How? Because on that day, without much fanfare,  Kapler signed with the defending American League Champion Tampa Bay Rays. I wasn’t sure if he would stay in baseball this year, so his signing with the Rays is a mighty fine birthday present.

The Rays added Kapler as insurance for center fielder BJ Upton, who some sportswriters speculate may not be ready for Opening Day due to his recovery from shoulder surgery. Kapler signed a one year, one million dollar contract with the Rays.

This is a great move for multiple reasons. One, because the Rays are a divisional opponent and thus will play the Boston Red Sox multiple times. Red Sox outfielder and my favorite Canadian baseball player Jason Bay and Gabe Kapler on the field at Fenway at the same time? That might be too much for me to handle. You will literally see my brain on favorite baseball player overload.  Sparks may actually shoot from my ears.

Additionally, the move allows Kapler, who is a California native, to play in a warm climate.  While he coached in a warm weather climate with Greenville in 2007, he hasn’t played in a warm weather climate for several years.

Will this allow for more shirtless photo ops, by chance?

Either way, this move by Kapler means that I will have to add to my ever-growing “Gabe Kapler T-Shirt Collection.”

My Gabe Kapler T-Shirt Collection. I'll soon add a Rays shirt to the mix.

I really think my fiance is sick of buying me a new Kapler shirt every year.  (Truth be told, I bought the first one myself.) Although, it does mean he doesn’t have to think that hard about an anniversary gift.

See, this is a win-win-win situation for all involved: Kapler extends his career for another year and gets to play someplace where he won’t worry about games in 40 degree weather. I get more opportunities to see Kapler play. And my fiance has his anniversary gift to me predetermined for another year.

I had a great phone conversation with Gentry a few weeks back, and he agreed to be one of my first “Five questions with…” subjects. Here’s the interview!

Kat: Why did you found CPR Gear?

Ryan: I always wanted to have something to do with sports in New England. I’ve been a personal trainer for fourteen years, but haven’t had the chance to work with any of the professional sports teams. A friend and I had been toying with the idea (for the line) for a few months, and my son’s birth was the impetus for the creation of the company.

I wanted to pass onto him that being a New England sports fan is more than loving a team – it’s like a religion or family. Players always change, but the one thing that always stays the same are the fans. They are always there. Being a Boston sports fan is a real uniting factor – I have been in Machu Picchu and have met people with Red Sox gear on, and have been able to spark a conversation with them because they were wearing their Sox gear. I have been in a bar in the Caribbean and made a connection with the owner because he too was a Boston sports fan from my hometown of Lawrence, Massachusetts.  You can make a lot of connections with complete strangers because of the devotion of Boston sports fans all over.

I started to type a creed of what it means to be a Boston sports fan taking all of that into account, and that is what appears on the inside tag of all of our shirts. The acronym “CPR”  is just the acronym – there’s no slight intended to anyone, because at the end of the day, it’s about all New England sports, including Olympic and college athletes.

CPR Gear's Boston Bruins women's t-shirt - I'm giving one away (see the end of the interview!)

Kat: Like you, I am a fan of my hometown teams away from home. Living in California, how do you stay connected? Do you take pride in keeping up your devotion living so far away?

Ryan: I absolutely have more pride (living away from New England.) I can’t stand not being at home when big events go on in Boston sports. I rarely get to see any of the Boston sports teams live – I will go down to Anaheim to see the Sox, LA to see the Celtics, and sometimes I get to see the Patriots. I rarely get to see the Bruins here in California. When one of my hometown teams are playing here in California and I get to see them, it feels like one of those nice early spring days – you get all excited.

When New England teams are playing outside of California, I’ll go down to Sonny McLean’s to connect, which is a big sports bar for all Boston fans. At one point, I definitely went there once a week for four years.

Kat:  You talk about a “go to” shirt on your web site – your favorite shirt, the one you must wear to watch any of your favorite teams. What is your “go to” shirt now? What was it growing up?

Ryan:  Right now, it is a Patriots Vince Wilfolk jersey. You do not see a lot of Wilfork jerseys in New England, let alone in California. I really like him as a player. I also have a green Red Sox jersey that I wore during every important game in 2004. Growing up, I had a green Celtics shirt with all the 1980s players and numbers on it that I wore all the time. And then, I had these solid white Celtics warm up pants – 1980s style. They probably would be considered atrocious now!

Kat: CPR Gear has some awesome women’s fan wear, both in traditional team colors and in pink. What has been the response? With all the criticism around the “pink hat” fans, why did you choose to design some pink shirts?

Ryan:  Fan wear for women needs to be less cheesy. For the longest time, women were regulated to too oversized crusty jerseys that just didn’t fit their shape and were not flattering. CPR Gear is making shirts that are more refined and stylish, and that fit people, particularly women, well.

As for the pink question, before we designed the line, we polled women in Boston about what they were looking for in this line. Many voted for pink, so we included pink shirts in our line. But we have traditional team colored items for women as well.

The entire line is higher quality than normal fan gear. The t-shirt fabric of is a very high quality, very vintage and soft. The design isn’t loud. You can wear the shirts to dinner before or after the game without looking out of place. We are looking to make more of a lifestyle brand – fan wear that could go anywhere. I think women will appreciate that.

Kat: Where will you be taking the company in 2009?

Ryan: We will continue to sell CPR Gear online. I like the online aspect – it is like you got a shirt custom made just for you. You know you can’t just get these shirts anywhere.  We may expand into boutique stores, because of the lifestyle nature of the brand. This will help reach out to local Boston die-hard fans. I recently had a chance encounter with Jonathan Kraft (son of Patriots owner Robert Kraft) and gave him some shirts, and hopefully something may come of that. I hope to keep getting the word out and spreading the fan base, and uniting the Boston sports community.

The First SportsGirlKat Contest!

Thanks, Ryan, for the fun interview! I definitely enjoyed our phone conversation. CPR Gear has graciously provided me with three of their shirts from their women’s line to give away to my readers. I’ll give them away to those of you with the best comments surrounding the following question – What is/was your go-to sports fan wear item? Comment before Wednesday, January 14, 2009 at noon Eastern time to have your answer considered to win!

• the start of football season
• the pennant race
• NHL and AHL training camps
• and, most importantly, the countdown to college hockey season. (T minus 8 days, if you are a Boston University men’s hockey fan, and if you follow the women’s team, 2 days.)

Those aspects alone make this time of year one of my favorites.  It’s all sports, all the time.  I can’t complain.

In addition to these general reasons why late September is wonderful, here are four things making this week better than most:

Steve Young's already in Canton, now he'll have his #8 retired by the 49ers.

Steve Young is getting his number retired by the San Francisco 49ers on October 5th. – In their game against the Patriots, the 49ers will retire Young’s #8 in a halftime ceremony. Because it’s against the Pats, Bostonian-me might actually get to see a snippet or two of it!  Now let’s hope JT O’Sullivan can make like Young and crush the Patriots that day.

Jason Bay Gets To Play Baseball in October, Seems Dazed and Confused - I was at Fenway Park when the Red Sox clinched their fifth playoff berth in six years on Tuesday evening.  Jason Bay, despite botching a few plays earlier in the evening (which I attribute to him having a newborn at home and for having played like every game this season, be it be for the Sox or Pirates), batted in the winning run for the Sox.  During the post-game celebrations, he was seen carrying around a case of Bud Light in a daze on the field.  It was amusing – I couldn’t get a great picture of it, but at one point they showed him on the Jumbotron just with this half-awake smile on his face.  You gotta love that the number of Bay shirts at Sox games has increased a hundred fold in between the game I went to on September 9 and Tuesday.

Also of note is Will Leitch’s great column for WEEI.com last week about Jason Bay – I choked on my coffee reading it, it was so amusing.  Choking = I highly recommend it.

Everyone’s Favorite Goalie Started His First NHL Game – John Curry, aka “Everyone’s Favorite Goalie” (unless you think Cory Schneider was better…which I don’t), was in goal for the Pittsburgh Penguins on Monday evening’s preseason game against the John Tortorella-less Tampa Bay Lightning (eh, Barry Melrose is full of mullet-y goodness, but as a Rochester girl, I’ll always have a soft spot in my heart for Tortorella.) He stopped all 15 shots he faced, after he entered the game for Dany Sarbourin, in a 3-2 Penguins win.  Sarbourin then went on to play a full game on Wednesday against the Leafs, where he let up two late goals, but the Penguins still pulled out a win.  Marc-Andre Fleury and Sarbourin haven’t been incredible (one might argue Sarbourin’s never been), and Curry hasn’t been sent down to Wilkes-Barre/Scranton’s camp yet.  According to the best AHL blog out there, Penguins’ Insider, the Penguins may bring Curry to Sweeden for their upcoming games there.

Listen, Pittsburgh – if you want a boost in merchandise sales, keep Curry in the big leagues, start selling his jersey, and find a way to get about 500 up to Boston.  I promise you’ll have no problem selling them out.

Happy, happy Bills fans. (Buffalobills.com)

The Bills Are 3-0, May Be Getting Media Love - Although my former idol Peter King chooses to ignore them (anyone else see the lame apology at the end of King’s Monday Morning Quarterback – Tuesday Edition for not mentioning the Bills, even mentioning that he had material to write about from an interview he did Sunday night with Trent Edwards?), the Bills are 3-0 after their heart-attack inducing win over the incomprehensible Oakland Raiders.  ESPN has begun to give them love – at least three Bills stories this week! – and Don Banks of Sports Illustrated devoted a substantial part of his Tuesday column to them.  The one beef I still have is with Tiki “I Was Never Really That Good At Rushing the Ball, Just Good At Making a Bigger Deal of Myself than Actually Necessary” Barber on his remark during NBC’s Football Night in America show on Sunday.  After a recap of the Bills – Raiders game, the floor was thrown over to Barber, Cris Collinsworth, and Jerome Bettis.  Barber said that the real story of the day had been “not the Bills, but the Raiders, and how well they played that football game.”

Umm…the Raiders let the Bills run over them in the second half and couldn’t stop two crucial Bills scoring drives in the fourth quarter.  I know the Bills weren’t impressive, but the Raiders were worse.  Does Tiki have friends on the Raiders or something? Maybe he was too busy judging on Project Runway to actually watch the game on Sunday afternoon.

I’m calling it now – there will be a Broncos – Bills playoff game.  And it’ll be awesome.   Just you wait.

It's GusGus (and I don't mean the mouse from Disney's Cinderella.)

Oh, the quarterback woes of…well, half the teams of the NFL.  The latest team to play quarterback musical chairs is my dad’s childhood fave Minnesota Vikings, who today benched Tarvaris “I Can’t Seem To Make a Name For Myself, and Will Probably Continue to Follow the Unsuccessful Career Path of Daunte Culpepper” Jackson for Gus Frerotte.

As much as I think this move by Brad Childress is questionable (the Vikings weren’t the worst team in the NFL last week, they just came out on the losing end of a bad call on a Joseph Addai touchdown), I welcome the continuation of Freotte’s career because it makes me feel young.  Frerotte has been an NFL quarterback since I was 12 years old.  I am now in my mid-late twenties.  It always makes me feel better about my age when a quarterback from my formative football watching years is still active on a NFL roster, and there is a fair share of them – Frerotte, Brett Favre, Mark Brunell, Brad Johnson, Trent Green, Todd Collins…heck, half of me expects Rick Mirer to still be on the Oakland Raiders roster somewhere!  (You’re telling me a thirty-eight year old Mirer wouldn’t be an improvement over JaMarcus Russell?)

Frerotte, along with many of the quarterbacks I listed above, have taken the term “journeyman quarterback” to a whole new level.  The quarterback draft classes of the early-mid 1990s make older quarterbacks, like former journeyman definition setters Steve DeBerg and Steve Beurlein, look lazy.  Frerotte’s travels include stops at the following NFL teams:

1. Redskins
2. Lions
3. Broncos
4. Bengals
5. Vikings (1st stint)
6. Dolphins
7. Rams
8. And now, the Vikings again.

Will Frerotte really make a difference for the Vikings this Sunday and for the rest of the season?  I doubt it.  But do they need a grand, long pass throwing quarterback, or just a competent enough guy to hand-off to Adrian Peterson every play (except when you hand it off to Chester Taylor just to shake things up a bit)?  They just need someone to hand the ball off and manage the game.  Their receivers are too poor to expect otherwise.  And if Childress believes Frerotte is better at handing off the ball, then so be it.  I think the majority of his players think otherwise – for example, in reports, wide receiver Bobby Wade seems very surprised by the move – and it could hurt the cohesiveness of the offense moving forward.  However, Frerotte starting makes me feel younger, so I can’t complain too much.

*********

After tonight’s Red Sox loss to the Rays, in which Tim Wakefield pitched poorly – big surprise there – may I hearken back to a blog post from last September, where I implored Boston just to let Wakefield go?

Look, Boston, the guy is old. In Buffalo, when guys are old, they trade them to places like Green Bay, San Diego, Washington and Miami, where they continue to have quiet, mediocre ends to their careers (Don Beebe, Steve Christie, Bruce Smith and Thurman Thomas, I’m looking in your directions.) So do like Ralph Wilson, and trade Wakefield already. Put him out to pasture. Let him fade gently away, until he decides to write a large print hardcover autobiography about him finding G-d especially when playing for the Packers (that time, I’m specifically looking in Don Beebe’s direction. And yes, my father owns his autobiography.) And then you still really won’t remember him all that much.

Can we finally put Wakefield out to pasture?  He’s not doing the Red Sox any good.  Sure, you can chalk up some of tonight’s loss to relief pitching, but still – Wakefield screwed up enough to let the Rays get ahead in the bottom of the first, and it just continued from there.  Look, I know I’m not the world’s most knowledgable baseball authority – I’m still relatively new to the sport – but I know when someone needs to hang it up.  And Wakefield needs to hang it up.

That is, until this afternoon, when Manny Ramirez was involved in a three-way trade for everyone’s favorite Canadian baseball player.

Jason Bay, welcome to the Red Sox. I finally have another hottie outfielder to drool over. And, did I mention that he’s CANADIAN?!

Yes, I knew of Bay’s existence before today. It’s been a running joke between my boyfriend and those in my fantasy baseball league for a good two years that Bay is my second favorite baseball player solely based on the fact that he is Canadian. (In case you haven’t noticed from knowing me/reading previous entries, I’m obsessed with Canadian things. All born-and-bred Western New Yorkers are.) Never mind the fact that he’s not too shabby of an actual baseball player – 22 home runs already this year – what really matters is that he’s Canadian and somewhat pleasing on the eyes.

Times like these I am happy I work a few blocks away from Fenway Park, because I will be traveling down there early next week to procure a Jason Bay Red Sox shirt. It’s a rare occasion when a player you like ends up going to the team you root for – for example, the only time Steve Young was ever in a Bills uniform is whenever I use the “create a player” feature on older versions of Madden, and Hot Forward Who Cannot Be Named will probably never play for the Sabres, Bruins or Amerks. Therefore I’m going to milk this Bay-to-the-Sox for all its worth. He’s hot, he’s good, and he’s Canadian – what else do you want?!