Alternative Title: Sports Talk From a Girl’s Perspective: Honestly.

What’s your favorite Sports Team? My answer to this question has changed a lot over the years, but it mostly just consists of me adding new teams that I feel a vague sense of loyalty to despite my mediocre interest in sports. If we’re being honest, I’m not athletic and watching sports, especially on tv is often pretty boring to me. Especially if I don’t know the team well.

But there have been a few exceptions – a few sports and teams that have caught my eye. Possibly because liking sports is a good way to meet guys. Possibly because if you live in certain towns long enough you start feeling a loyalty to your home team, or a strong desire to buy one of the 800,000 hats or t-shirts flaunted at your local Target. If Target sells it, I must want it, right?

When I was little, there was always a kids’ Red Sox hat floating around. I didn’t know who the Red Sox were but I knew those hats were coveted and that owning one seemed like a mandatory rite of passage. You were instantly cooler if you’d owned one of those hats with the funny B on them at some point.

Back then I was pretty sure the Red Sox were the only popular sports team in the country. Everybody loved the Sox, right? I figured probably every kid in the WORLD had a Red Sox hat or wanted one badly. Mine was one of those older faded hats I think, at least that’s how it looks in my mind.

I’ve always preferred the older hats partly because they fit better and partly because I feel like wearing a hat that looks brand spanking new is an obvious signal that you just jumped on this bandwagon yesterday and you have no idea what any of the players’ names are or what the difference is between a foul ball and a home run. And even if that’s true, you don’t want other people knowing that.

But when you’re a teenage girl, you discover the novelty that is a pink baseball hat. The hat that says, “I’m sporty, but I’m a girl, too – I wear lipstick and fancy underpants while I drink beer with the guys.” And even if that’s not true, don’t you want guys to think it is? Of course you do.

BB is going to be a perfect Girl Next Door – she can totally hang with the fellas in her Red Sox hat and hoodie, but all the guys will have a total crush on her and she’ll probably never have to buy her own drink, ever. Of course she won’t drink alcohol until she’s 41, but still. Coca cola costs money, too, y’all.

When I was in middle school I discovered basketball. I was living in Kentucky at the time and decided I was a University of Louisville fan, aka the Cardinals. They were kind of the underdogs – most people probably rooted Wildcats (U of K), at least that’s how it seemed at the time in my very limited view of the world. But I’ve always liked the underdogs – the teams that rise above. It’s more fun to cheer over unexpected wins that were EARNED than over another win from a team that pays well enough to only hire the best players. I’m talking to you, Yankees.

Truthfully though, I’ve always preferred playing basketball to watching it (and by that I mean throwing a basketball into a hoop, not the actual GAME of basketball), so my Cardinals devotion doesn’t run very deep and I probably couldn’t name any other basketball teams at all.

In college I decided I maybe liked football more than baseball for awhile and made friends with some guys that were big into the Patriots. It’s hard not to love the Patriots though. When they run onto the field, I kinda feel like the other team there is thinking, “Aw, shit, we’re about to get trampled.” They are a pretty intimidating team, in my experience. And their uniforms are pretty awesome, too. You know, I like the colors. These are the things that girls think about when rooting for a team, I think. Which team has the better jerseys? That’s how it is for me anyway, since we’re being honest.

But the Patriots also have that cold weather advantage. When it snows, they don’t have a problem, it’s all normal to them. Feel bad for the teams coming from the south whose schools close when they think it might rain (I’m not exaggerating, guys, I’ve been to those schools). Hot weather? We know that’s not really a problem either. So maybe we have an unfair advantage, but who’s complaining? Not me.

If we’re going to be honest though, the actual game of football is pretty boring. Really, watch 30 minutes. A bunch of very large men run towards the guy holding the ball, a few feet. Then they tackle him. Ouch. Then they stand up and do it again. And again. And again. It takes like 2 hours for them to run from one side of the field to the other. Damn. That’s a long game of people jumping on each other, fighting over a ball. I’d rather take pictures of my daughter picking up leaves, honestly.

Baseball is a little bit more interesting. When I started watching Red Sox games as a college student, I got pretty into it. I memorized the players names and had favorites. But then I got too invested and cared too much. I had theories and kept tally and at the height of it, the Sox went to the World Series and it was awesome. My favorite player was Johnny Damon, the world’s cutest cave man who was totally in it for the fun of the game. He always gave it 500 percent and you could tell he just loved it. He was awesome.

Then he transferred to the Yankees. And I was like …………….. Clearly I knew nothing. I felt betrayed. Like nothing that I thought I knew about baseball was true now. It was all just about money and nobody was loyal anymore. I quickly became jaded and stopped watching. Plus I graduated and got married and no longer needed to like sports to meet men. I had a man. A loyal man who would never leave me for the Yankees, by the way.

When we moved to Wisconsin, it was like starting all over again. Who would our favorite teams be here? Should we stay loyal to the Sox and the Pats or maybe branch out a bit? For awhile we just dropped sports, because it didn’t really matter. Neither of us are athletic or big sports fans, we’re both more like the Social Drinkers of sports fans. We want to watch the World Series and the Super Bowl and in both instances we are really just saying we want to eat Nachos and drink beer / soda for an afternoon and pretend we like sports for awhile.

Don’t get me wrong. We LIKE the games. We’re not completely uninterested. We just don’t honestly care at the end of the day who wins or loses (at least I don’t, I guess I probably shouldn’t speak for the hubs, he may have a different opinion after all). I’m still choosing my favorite teams based off my current location and jersey colors, is all I’m saying. Because on each team, there are gonna be majorly talented players and less talented. There are gonna be the heroes and the villains in each state. The big guys and the under dogs. I personally like under dogs with nice uniforms. Cute players are a bonus.

So now we’ve been here for two years and we’ve decided that we really like the Packers. It helps that they just won the Super Bowl. That was pretty cool. We decided to like them at a pretty exciting time. But I like that “the Packers are the only non-profit, community-owned major league professional sports team in the United States.” I just think that’s really cool and the fact that the team is pretty rocking is a big plus.

We are also really into the Mallards which is a local collegiate summer baseball team in Madison, designed to give college players the minor league experience, providing players an opportunity to play under the same conditions, experiencing overnight road trips, and playing nightly before fans in a stadium. A big plus for us fans is that the tickets are FAR cheaper than tickets to see, say the Red Sox or the Packers would be. It’s financially feasible for me to take the whole family to the game without coming close to breaking the bank. And the games are FUN and family friendly – the whole family can truly enjoy the experience – yay!

Anyway, so lately we’ve been all about the Packers and the Mallards, kinda getting into the local team spirit and considering getting ourselves some baseball hats or t-shirts. Little BB already has her first Packers t-shirt and MM got a t-shirt for the Badgers, the big baseball team in the area (I think, don’t quote me on that actually). I’ve been looking at Baseball hats but haven’t committed to one yet mostly cause the style I like is more expensive (remember, I want to look like I’ve been a Packers fan for, like, years and not since yesterday even if that’s not true).

Then this week, I was digging through the closet for winter hats when BB spotted my pretty pink Red Sox hat and she was like, “OOOOOOOOOOOOOH B!” because she’s just starting to learn some of her letters and I was all Mama Hen proud of her letter recognition skills and handed her the hat and it was looooooooooooooooooove at first sight because it’s a pretty pink hat with a big letter B on it. What’s not to love?

So of course I had to take pictures to show friends and family from back home that we are still representing our hometown here in Wisconsin even though we are setting down roots and cheering for the Pack and talking about how we’re cheeseheads (you’ve gotta watch this video if you haven’t seen it yet, LOVE it) and stuff, you know, we’re still Sox fans at heart.

And allllll of this got me to thinking about my first Red Sox hat and way back when, when the Red Sox were the only sports team that exsisted as far as I was concerned. Man, look how far I’ve come. How many teams have crossed my path since then, how much my life has changed. But you know at the end of the day, I’m still a Sox fan all the way and probably always will be even if Johnny Damon kinda betrayed me and broke my spirit a bit. It’s okay, Johnny, I forgive you. Sort of. I suppose if I can sometimes root for other teams that maybe you can, too?

But seriously, did it have to be the Yankees?