Color

The Dodgers-Red Sox series in Boston this weekend gave me an excuse to visit some family and root for the boys in Blue at the home of the Green Monster.
I walked away from the Friday and Saturday games feeling like I'd overdosed on colors. I'm warning you now, if you're going to visit Fenway for the first time, be careful there's some bad green going around. Walking to my right field roof section seat in plenty of early evening light, buckets of color came at me. The grass is brilliant, as in most ballparks. However most of Fenway Park is painted in coats of green that look fresh but feel old. It's a mid-20^th century green, a green from World War 2, from a gloomy time; from rationing days. Fenway's green outdoes L.A. noir hands down.

In contrast, the blue of Dodger stadium's outfield walls, top deck seats, and trimming, is a John F. Kennedy blue, it's a space age blue. It's a blue after the gloom. It's a blue that says, "Hey, let's splurge."
I'm not saying through armchair psychoanalysis that one's better than the other. Fenway green, in combination with the Red Sox fire station red, screams that the stadium has issues. Chavez Ravine blue does the same. However that Dodger stadium's happy blue is a blue in denial or a blue that's been medicated to permanent joy.

 Once the game started it was unsettling to see patches of Dodger blue t-shirts and caps in a sea of hostile Red Sox red. That's because blue is my tribe's color. It's the color of the warriors I've cheered for: Green, Gagne, Martin, and Kuroda. It's easy, we of the same colors are of the same tribe. What happens when someone jettisons the tribal color? Is it betrayal? That's the dilemma Manny Ramirez presented fans of both tribes at every at-bat during the series. At his first plate appearance on Friday I heard about three quarters of people cheer and the rest boo as Manny took his first pitch from the team he'd led to double World Series wins. Here was the most celebrated warrior for the tribe in another color. The rest of the at bats the cheering and booing was split 50-50.

 A Manny Ramirez fan couldn't express the mixed emotions any other way but to sew together the two halves of a Ramirez jersey. I understand, it's like being bilingual and bicultural. I'll give credit to the Red Sox fans I talked to. While loyal and opinionated, the ones I met were not fundamentalists.
On my third beer run I stopped in the standing room section where the slope of seats toward field level is broken by the I-beam supports of the elderly stadium. A twenty-something man with an upside down, backward Red Sox hat looked over and as soon as he saw my Dodgers t-shirt rolled his eyes in disbelief and said, "Nah... you?

That was followed by a back and forth about the competitiveness of the American League's east division and his hat off to the Lakers. I like that, loyal and opinionated but secure enough to talk to the other tribe. I know it's only baseball, right? Don't let the three losses of the blue tribe against the red tribe get you down, right? Back to my color analysis of the Boston/L.A. sweep series this weekend: revenge is best painted in what color?