Vocation

I don’t necessarily consider myself a sports fan.  I usually have some consciousness of what’s going on in te world of sports, but don’t spend a whole lot of time following it in detail.  I am, however, a die-hard baseball fan.  Living abroad and in different cities for so long somehow precluded me from attaching myself to one team or another, but my mother’s entire family loves the Red Sox, and when I moved to Boston nearly three years ago, they stole my heart, too.

The summer after my freshman year I stayed in Boston, working days at the Admissions office, and evenings and nights at Fenway Park.  The atmosphere in that place is truly unbelievable.  The “church of baseball” metaphor may be somewhat overused, but I’m not afraid to say that Fenway is something of a sports cathedral to me.  The energy in that ballpark, the history enshrined therein, the appeal to every sense and the way the game enraptures the soul–something about it just defines baseball.  It gets my heart pumping to be in the park, to wait for the home runs, to feel crushed by the strikeouts, to celebrate the wins and mourn the losses.

In a semester that has been supremely stressful, when I’ve not had a lot of time to just sit and do leisurely things I love (don’t get me wrong–I LOVE my work and studies), I’m really looking forwards to getting to attend four Sox games in the next two weeks.  My hat’s been collecting dust on my desk all winter, I’ve burned my Youkilis shirt and laundered my Ellsbury jersey, and dug out of storage my Sox fleece with the subtle “B” on the chest; the outfit is ready to go.  Tickets have been purchased for the bleacher section (let’s be real, that’s where all the action is), and the schedule has been hung up above my desk.  I am a devotee of the cult of the Red Sox, and I’m not sorry.  I can’t wait to take some time to care about something that has no weight on my future, on my career, on my academics–besides providing me with pure joy.  Go Sox.