Profile
|
||||||
| User: | catslash (955472)  "We just got a lotta pride."
2007 World Champions - Boston Red Sox |
|||||
| Name: | Cathryn | |||||
| Website: | Cathryn's World of Pretentious Vocabulary | |||||
| Birthdate: | 1983-01-23 | |||||
| E-mail: | catslash33@gmail.com | |||||
| LJ Talk: |
|
|||||
| AOL IM: |  catslash33 (Add Buddy, Send Message) | |||||
| Bio: | Hi, my name's Cathryn and I'm finally going to use this space to write up an actual bio. Once upon a time, this journal was concerned with details from my actual life. These still pop up from time to time, but now I am a baseball fan. My life is boring - I go to college, I spend too much time online, the end - and baseball is not, so now I write mostly about that. I follow and love the Boston Red Sox, Detroit Tigers, and Houston Astros. I follow and hate the New York Yankees. Title quote courtesy of Jason Varitek. When asked, "So if the 2004 team were the Idiots, what's this team?", he replied, flustered and emotional from the victory, "I don't know. We just got a lotta pride." From time to time, I write baseball RPS, with stands for Real Person Slash, which is stories about the players being gay with each other. I always cut-tag these fics, so if they're not your bag, just don't click them. And yes, I do know that the stuff in my stories is pure fiction and none of the players are really gay with each other I am allowing anonymous comments, so if you don't have a journal but have something you just have to say, please feel free. All I ask is that you be nice. With that out of the way, a bit of history as to how I got hooked on my teams. (Uh, it got kind of long, so you might wanna grab a drink and settle in.) Red Sox: I spent the first twenty years of my life convinced that the only thing more boring than playing sports was watching them. However, after my (late) graduation in 2003, I went up to live with my mother and stepfather for the summer. My stepfather is a lifelong Red Sox fan, and in the year or so since I'd moved out, he had managed to convert my mom. Since we live a couple hours or so away from Boston, they went to games as frequently as the parents of small children can, so when they would return, I would ask who won for the sake of being polite. Except that as the summer went on, I became genuinely interested in who had won. Meanwhile, due to the crazy good season the Sox were having (one that I would later kick myself for missing), Sox fever was rising in Maine and it seemed I couldn't really get away from them. I was getting more and more curious in spite of myself, until finally in early September I sat down and watched a game. I won't lie and say I was hooked immediately, but I liked it well enough, so I kept trying them out. Meanwhile, I moved back down to live with my dad, who is also a Sox fan and was probably thrilled to death that his bookworm daughter was showing an interest in his beloved team. Having him around to answer my questions helped a lot (though if I had realized at the time how painful the answer to "Who's Bill Buckner?" would be, I would have just looked it up). I don't really remember the details of the game that did get me hooked; after all, I was new to watching baseball and just barely understood what I was seeing, and I don't remember things that I don't understand. I do know that we were down 5-2, and my dad decided he'd had enough and went to bed. I kept watching, and guess what? We tied it with what must have been a three-run homer, I think from Todd Walker. I didn't see the actual homer because I'd been channel surfing a bit, but when I saw that they'd tied it, I went and woke my dad, and we watched the Sox win that game together. (If you know which game this was, please let me know.) And that was it, I was hooked good. I discovered that my friend ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} manderspander was also swiftly becoming a Red Sox fan (having seen the light after a brief turn as a Yankee fan), and we spent a lot of games on the phone together.And oh, the 2003 ALCS. I could go on and on, about how I was such a newbie going in that I didn't even understand what a series was, about how I knew vaguely that was I required to hate the Yankees and so I did even though I didn't know why, about how to this day I think Manny overreacted to that damn pitch, about how I had to miss Game Six for work but got my dad to tape it but knew the score by the time I got home anyway. But let's skip to the joys of Game Seven, shall we? What I remember most about Game Seven, aside from how it ended, was how drastically it ended up illustrating the difference between a seasoned fan and a new one. When Grady Little left Pedro in, and the Yankees tied it up, my dad cringed. I know now that he was having severe '86 flashbacks, because he declared, "We're done. I'm not watching this. I'm going to bed." I, on the other hand, still believed. I have never before or since believed anything as strongly as I believed we were going to win that game. That game was ours. And when Aaron F'ing Boone got that homer, I was thrown into such a state of shock that I honestly thought that I didn't mind. That I was okay and it was no big deal. Until the next morning, when I woke in a state of disbelieving fury. How's that for an introduction to being a Red Sox fan? "Here's the sort of thing you can expect for the rest of your life, kiddo. You still in?" HELL YES I WAS. In the space of five weeks I had fallen in love with that team so hard that there was no chance of backing out. And, as it turned out, I was not doomed to the life of despair that generations of Sox fans before me had suffered. But that's a topic for another time. Oh, yeah, and that little baptism of fire taught me why we hate the Yankees. Astros (the rest of this is shorter, I promise): During the offseason, I decided for some reason now lost in the depths of my brain that I also needed an NL team to root for. Well, it made sense at the time. The Red Sox had been inevitable because I live in Maine, but my NL team I could choose on my own. Meanwhile, the Astros were making news for stealing Andy "too hot for my own good" Pettitte and Roger "no, I'm retiring, I swear" Clemens away from the Yankees. I was so delighted to see my new nemesis thwarted that I adopted the Astros on the spot. I was not able to watch a single game of their 2004 season, of course, because of the aforementioned living in Maine situation, but during the postseason, when my brain was not eaten by thoughts of the Red Sox, I was thrilled that the Astros had made it to their Championship Series, too. I was also sad when they lost, but in retrospect (much as I would have loved to see Schilling vs Clemens), that was probably for the best. Because then I might not have been rooting for the Sox one hundred percent in the World Series, and then my brain might have exploded. This year, thanks to the magic of MLBTV, I am able to watch the Astros. And this year, they suck liek whoa. Of course. But that's okay, I love them anyway. It's the redheaded stepchild kind of love, but it's there. Update, October 25, 2005: Yeah, things changed a little after I wrote that in June. Actually, they were already changing, but I hadn't noticed. Or maybe I just thought it was temporary. I don't know. But anyway, my redheaded stepchild team fought and clawed their way out of a 15-30 hole to enter the race for the wild card toward the end of the season. That race lasted until the very last day of the season, when we won a crucial game to clinch the wild card and avoid a tie and one-game playoff with the Phillies. We went on to beat the Braves in the Division Series 3-1, including the amazing clinching win of that eighteen-inning marathon. We dropped the Cardinals 4-2, unfazed by Pujols' sock-in-the-stomach three-run homer in Game Five. Sure, we'd been one strike away from taking the series and the pennant at home, but we just shrugged it off (Brad Ausmus pulled a great prank in the team plane, having the pilot get on the intercom and advise the team that if they looked to their left, they would be able to see Pujols' homer ball in a couple minutes) and won it in Busch Stadium instead. This team made it to the World Series. They lost, but they made it that far. Guess they didn't suck so bad after all. Tigers: This one is due to my tendency to pick up my friends' interests. I like checking out the things that my friends like, because it's a good way to a) try new things and b) be guaranteed to have someone to discuss them with. So, during the 2004-05 offseason, when I made friends with americanleaguer and offspeed, both of whom are fierce Tigers fans, and started reading Sam's Red Sox/Tigers/many other things blog, I guess I should have seen it coming.Yup. I got kind of interested in the Tigers. Interested enough so that, when I found myself in a position to watch their opening day game, I did. They trashed the Royals, something like 11-2, and I was hooked. Turns out that Opening Day was not exactly representative of what they can do (as of this writing on June 21, 2005, they have just now hit the .500 mark), but that's not important. I love them. And during the Red Sox/Tigers series, my brain is very hurty. Update, October 28, 2006: Yeah, so things changed a little here too. I'm still kind of shellshocked from the way it all ended, so no lengthy love letter just yet, but I'm every bit as proud of the 2006 Tigers as I was of the 2005 Astros. Way to turn it around, boys. It was a pleasure to watch you play this year. Yankees: Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. And since I hate them, I mostly only talk about them when they lose. It's my journal and I'll be as selective and biased as I choose. Nuff said. If you are still reading, you get a cookie. So that's me, and my teams, and how they came to be my teams. I write about them quite a lot and have a tendency to offer game summaries and, if a game was really crazy, the occasional blow-by-blow. If that's your thing, and you love any of my teams, or hate the Yankees, feel free to bookmark/friend me. And what do I do in the offseason? Root for the Detroit Lions, of course. Yes, I know I live in New England near a non-sucky team. No, I don't know why I don't care about them. Go Lions! | |||||
| Memories: | 153 entries | |||||
| Pictures: | fewer than 10 public | |||||
| Interests: | 74: 2004 world series, 3:10 to yuma, baseball slash, boondock saints, bpal, bronson arroyo, buffy, coupling, crispin glover, daily show, david wells, detroit tigers, dexter, discworld, doctor who, everwood, fanfic, flogging molly, freaks and geeks, george/marty, gilderoy lockhart, gossip girl, hamlet, harry potter, houston astros, huckabees, i *heart* huckabees, icons, invader zim, jack sparrow, jason varitek, jeffrey dean morgan, jeremy bonderman, justin verlander, justin verlander's no-hitter, kenneth branagh, lois and clark, malagentia, mark bellhorn, mike piazza, milliways, morgan ensberg, mst3k, no country, pirates of the caribbean, pudge rodriguez, red dwarf, red sox, rp, rpg, sca, shakespeare, shaun of the dead, slash, snape/lockhart, society of creative anachronism, spider jerusalem, spole, star trek: new frontier, supernatural, swishy pirates, television without pity, the daily show, the sarah jane adventures, torchwood, transmet, transmetropolitan, treat williams, true colors, ugly betty, villainess, willard, willem dafoe, xena | |||||
| Schools: | Southern Maine Community College - South Portland, ME Yarmouth High School - Yarmouth, ME | |||||
| Friends: | ||||||
| Mutual Friends: | 78: ____suffocated, __kara__, aefallen, akatonbo, all_ahoo, aloha_moira, amatia, americanleaguer, annarama, antelope_writes, apiphile, appleredhair, ayrdaomei, bakoo, beckla30, cack_handed, cacopheny, captain_tek, captainderek, comme_un_buddha, courseofhistory, cruft, d_artful_dodger, disanddat, drworm, dxsenorita, ealasaidh, eephuspitch, fiareynne, fire_and_a_rose, foozled_up, freebrook, gileonnen, glendaglamazon, gutterqueen, harleymae, heckraiser87, hoedogg, iarwain, imnotpudgy, j_crew_guy, joanne_c, kleenexwoman, latewintrnights, leethaithbetht, lissa_ann, litalex, little_unit, maggiesox, manderspander, manram_24, my_broken_ways, neuronpop, new_world_smurf, nightanddaze, nomahsgirl, not_brandon, notatracer, offspeed, owllover711, peaseblossom03, phantomas, phantomtag, piney61, pitchcount, praelitisbackup, raiola, ravensgurl211, seth, starlasoma, supervillainess, the_lost_boy, thekatcameback, tijmetje, twoseamfastball, vange, workingslacker, world | |||||
| Also Friend of: | 21: 3551, bionic, carabba, dreamtijm, hidekisan, jennyagain, johnnyisjesus, kellibean00, lojus, moneyca, mountaineer9, mylife2u, mylockedheart, nyperold, shadesareraised, softasaprayer, stargurl137, tekstheman, thenillawafer, wieczorek, withyour | |||||
| Member of: | 112: 1bruce1, 50_darkfics, _norrington, album_share, ame_soeur, anthonybourdain, arrrrr, bad_rpers_suck, bad_service, badbuffyfic, badtwfic, baseball_icons, baseball_slash, battingpractice, bellhorn, bpal_feedback, bpal_wishlists, bpalanonymous, breaksyourheart, bridal_suite, brps_adult, bscovertocover, bttf_slash, bus_riders, c_suck_snark, childfree, claim_a_pitcher, comedy_exchange, contrelamontre, customers_suck, detroit_tigers, dexter_fanfic, dwfiction, ender_ships, everwood100, everwooddrabble, fandom_counts, fandom_history, fenway_faithful, gayingupsports, grave_watchers, hires_tvmovie, iheartcinema, ihearthuckabees, iheartland, ihearttvshows, italkcinema, j2sul, jack_owen, jaywalkingyay, jdm_daily, johnxjohn, justsoundtracks, little_details, ljmixtape, m15m, millarmanny, mock_the_stupid, mp3_share, my_lip_stuff, myfandom_icons, ncfom, neptune_pirates, notmyfandom, overheardfanfic, owen_fen_united, owenharper_fans, paidmembers, papawinchester, pirategasm, pirates500, player_journalz, potc100, ratpr0n, really_bad_eggs, redsox, redsoxicons, rpg_quotes, rufuslily, serial_drabbles, sjs_daily_pic, slash100, sn_provisions, sodomy_central, soxslash, spideyslash, spn_gen, sports_macros, sports_slash, sportsslash, sslyricwheel, stupit_question, supernaturalfic, the_backroads, the_icon_lab, the_ockult, theboysofsummer, thirtyforthree, thrownforacurve, tigersbaseball, torchwood_fic, twitchylove, uglybettyfic, unusual_liasons, v_d_d, we_love_varitek, withdaemons, yankeesfans, yankeeslash, yankeeswap, yaoi_daily, ysi_leftovers | |||||
| Account type: | Paid Account | |||||
