2.12.2007
What The Truck
Nothing tells us more about Boston's mania for all things Red Sock than Truck Day. For those of you unschooled, it's the day a semi leaves Fenway Pahk loaded with the team's geah for the warmer climes of Fort Myers, Florida. Spring training is nigh, even though the New England winter slouches grimly forward.
People actually show up to watch the truck. There is an official ceremony. Can you imagine the Giants trying something like this?
No, you can't. I mean, yes, you can, but then you imagine it going horribly awry like Crazy Crab or Rusty the Mechanical Man or quickly fading into obscurity as did the Portguese water dogs. Excuse me, you don't remember the Baseball Aquatic Retrieval Korps -- B.A.R.K., for you acronymically challenged -- a herd, um, gaggle, exultation, er, pack, that's it, PACK of dogs trained to jump into McCovey Cove to retrieve home runs?
The difference between having a Truck Day and not having one is an unbreachable divide. Giant fans will never gather outside Whatever Park to watch Matt Cain's jockstraps and Dave Groeschner's tubes of unguent toodle south, because we have better things to do in mid-February. [Editor's note: Ahem. Like blogging when you should be working?]
Yes, well, where was I? Ah -- East Coast fans would point to this scorn of an as-yet-theoretical Giant Truck Day as a sign of faulty bona fan fides; we point out that we are not cold miserable zealots.
Indeed, this whole East Coast/West Coast fandom thing, like hip-hop rivalry, is spun from the raw materials of our environments. After a week of rain, the sun is out today, and I plan on having a catch, as my Brooklynite college friend used to say -- another odd regionalism that struck my West Coast ears as quaint. But not as odd as standing in feels-like-25-degree weather and watching an 18-wheeler grind into second gear, headed for the I-95.
Question: Should the Giants institute a Truck Day, or something similar to generate that all-important pre-Spring Training buzz?
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People actually show up to watch the truck. There is an official ceremony. Can you imagine the Giants trying something like this?
No, you can't. I mean, yes, you can, but then you imagine it going horribly awry like Crazy Crab or Rusty the Mechanical Man or quickly fading into obscurity as did the Portguese water dogs. Excuse me, you don't remember the Baseball Aquatic Retrieval Korps -- B.A.R.K., for you acronymically challenged -- a herd, um, gaggle, exultation, er, pack, that's it, PACK of dogs trained to jump into McCovey Cove to retrieve home runs?
The difference between having a Truck Day and not having one is an unbreachable divide. Giant fans will never gather outside Whatever Park to watch Matt Cain's jockstraps and Dave Groeschner's tubes of unguent toodle south, because we have better things to do in mid-February. [Editor's note: Ahem. Like blogging when you should be working?]
Yes, well, where was I? Ah -- East Coast fans would point to this scorn of an as-yet-theoretical Giant Truck Day as a sign of faulty bona fan fides; we point out that we are not cold miserable zealots.
Indeed, this whole East Coast/West Coast fandom thing, like hip-hop rivalry, is spun from the raw materials of our environments. After a week of rain, the sun is out today, and I plan on having a catch, as my Brooklynite college friend used to say -- another odd regionalism that struck my West Coast ears as quaint. But not as odd as standing in feels-like-25-degree weather and watching an 18-wheeler grind into second gear, headed for the I-95.
Question: Should the Giants institute a Truck Day, or something similar to generate that all-important pre-Spring Training buzz?
|
