I've been rooting for the Sawx since 1974, when a late-season pair of promising callups made their debut, a couple of outfielders named Fred Lynn and Jim Rice, so I pinned my hopes to the Red Sox. It really didn't matter that they lost in 1975, because Game Six was the flat out best baseball game ever played. 1978 was a heartbreaker, as was 1986 and 2003. Anyway, my story involves 1995. Wife is a huge Yankees fan, she really understands the game and is capable of correcting the baseball announcers when they make mistakes on the air. It's a late-season game between the Yankees and the Red Sox, in the year Boston actually won the division with a cobbled-together lineup of other teams' castoffs. Score is tied after 8 innings, so I suggest to Kelly that we turn off the TV now, and, uh, perform our "marital obligations" before either of us has the opportunity to get in a bad mood because our team lost. So, she succombs to my "sweet talk" and we have our evil way with each other. Afterwards, we turned the TV back on and saw that the Red Sox had beaten the Yankees in 12 innings.

Nine months later, to the day, my daughter Lisa was born. For some reason my wife objected to my suggestion that we give her the middle name of "Yastrzemski".

Best,
WMD