Back 2 Back

It's been a while since I bored everyone to tears by prattling on about baseball, so I guess now is as good of a time as any to do just that. This weekend the Toronto Blue Jays are having a reunion of their back to back World Series champion teams and after much debate and discussion, I made the executive decision earlier today that I owe it to my tween baseball loving self to go. The main draw for my inner tween? An autograph session before the game [because, in truth, I don't like going to day games @ SkyDome as on nice days the wind swirls around so much and the heat is just ridiculous, on bad weather/dome closed days it's very humid and not unlike sitting in someone's very big basement watching baseball].

The object of my autograph seeking is one and only - Roberto Alomar - my ideal man/supercrush for many years in the early 90s. In an incident that has been told and re-told, my cousin Mark went to a game and got his autograph as Alomar was finishing up batting practice and since he had his friend Darryl with him, he's always maintained that Darryl would be bequethed the autographed ball should anything horrible befall him. Even though I was clearly the biggest Alomar fan ever. Boo! My dad once bought me an Alomar collectible with a legit autograph, but really - it's not the same. I need the autograph to be more personal. I'm not even an autograph seeking type of person - I don't really see the point...it's just more to show up Mark. I'm optimistic that I will be able to get the autograph and hopefully I won't revert to my twelve-year-old self in Alomar's presence. Also, I need to go buy a baseball for suitable for an autograph as I don't have any memorabilia in my current home.

And I know that it's silly and pointless nostalgia [even more silly and more pointless as it's just sports - not real life] - but 1992 and 1993 were really magical seasons [again, I dunno why they are having the reunion on this - the seventeenth anniversary? why not wait until twenty?]. I often wonder what it would have been like to actually live in Toronto during those years - in my hometown everyone was buzzing for the whole of the playoffs [and @ school I always had an excuse to talk to my current crushes about baseball]...but I can imagine it was much more intense here. My relationship with Toronto was different then as well - it was a magical and interesting place - now that I've been here for almost twelve years, it's just depressing and overrated. It's cheesy, I know - but I do have great memories of baseball during those years [my dad always said I would regret spending so much time with televised baseball, but he was wrong]...I remember my silent celebration when the Blue Jays won in 1992 [I was babysitting and it was late @ night]. Better still was the win in 1993 when I was with my family and godparents and cousin Mark - everyone jumping up when Joe Carter hit that homerun - it remains one of the most effusive displays of emotion in family history.