Haircut...

I got my hair cut today. I kept telling the woman "shorter, shorter".

I was getting tired of it growing out a week after I got it cut.

Well, it ended up pretty damn short. The sides and back are... very short indeed.

I do not mind. It means it will be too short for a week, look decent for a week or two, and then get too long again. This is as opposed to the normal trend, which is to look decent for a week and then get too long again.

We will see how long it lasts.

Amazing to believe that at one time it was halfway down my back. Anyone remember that? I think I have a picture somewhere...

Anyway, i am getting to bed so I can get up early for the big Red Sox parade tomorrow. Duck Boats? For a parade? Craziness. I somehow got suckered into meeting friends over in Brookline for the parade. It would be so much easier to take a bus down to Lechmere and see it near the Museum of Science.

The more things change...

So I got up this morning and went to see the Red Sox World Series parade. It was a wonderful experience. I did not get to see the players for that long, but that was only a small part of the reason I attended. Being surrounded by tens of thousands (hundreds of thousands? millions?) of fans also cheering on the hometown boys, one definitely feels a sense of community.

Like a lot of other unproductive Boston fans, I watched every post-season game the Red Sox played during their march to the championship. One thing that struck me during this time was how baseball, ultimately, is the same be it Little League in Louisville, KY, or "the Big Leagues" in Fenway.

Between innings, while the pitcher is warming up, the first baseman throws grounders to the other infielders. On the last warm-up pitch, the second-baseman and the shortstop know that the ball is "coming down" and they will practice covering second for the catcher to stretch his arm to throw out someone stealing second.

This is something that occurs in Little League and, if you pay attention, you see that the Red Sox and every other Major League team do the same thing.

Today, people gather on the sides of roads to cheer on the baseball players and their families. I had a flashback to my days at St. Matthews Little League, when the teams would all pile into decorated cars and have a short parade to start off the season. Granted, there were not fans in the hundreds of thousands, and we did not have Duck Boats so as to better spend half the parade on the local river, but the idea was very similar.

I have my father to thank for instilling in me that a flyball is only properly caught with two hands, and that a grounder is to be fielded with your body completely in front of the ball. Every time we would watch a game and would see a player not do this, he would yell. Well, Dad, I have taken up yelling at players for something else, as well. The baserunner in me cringes when a runner bolts from first on a well-hit ball and pays attention to where the ball is going. Watch the third-base coach! That is something that gets taught in Little League, but even Big Leaguers are not immune to making that mistake.

Watching the parade today, I really got the sense that these guys were just doing what they have loved doing since they first set foot on a baseball diamond many years ago.