Dan Mooney

The other half is of Lithuanian descent, and while it wouldn’t necessarily go around willy-nilly wishing people Happy St. Patrick’s Days, neither would it mind throwing a few back on a Tuesday night during the thawing of an endless winter.

As I look back at this date through the years, memories come not fully formed but in shards…

…in seventh grade, my mother surprised me and walked into my room, opened my closet, and took out a bright green, corduroy kind of shirt, one that I didn’t wear particularly often.  She placed it on my bed, without fuss and without words but with the clear message that I’d be wearing that shirt that day…

…in eighth grade, our one-off English teacher kept saying “Top of the Morning!” A hilarious, genuine guy. That day he welcomed everyone into our classroom with a “Top of the Morning!” and let fly another “Top of the Morning” in the cafeteria after he had led us down there and bought everyone his/her choice of a bagel, or a hot chocolate…

…in twelfth grade, when Joe dyed his goatee green… incidentally, I grew my first goatee the following summer but it was the only color any of my more recent goatees have been: “rich auburn”…

…in my junior year of college, when I had a nasty cold but soldiered over to my old roommate Ed’s off-campus place, where he was hosting a party, to say hello… many pitchers of beer later, I was not feeling sick anymore. It’s still the origin of my stance on drinking while under the weather (for strength!)…

…in my senior year of college, going on a fantastic Green Line pub crawl through Boston, Allston and Brighton, MA – extant unscanned photos include one of me lying across the T tracks – and also having one of the most seldom and complete moments I’ve had in life, at Big City, pausing during a game of pool and soaking in the cigarette and the pool cue in the one hand, a Carlsberg (made green with food coloring) in the other, and a girl (that one long since departed) tucked under my arm…

…in 2005, what I’ve already immortalized here …

…in what must have been 2006, nearly busting some plaid-shirted, lacrosse-hat wearing frat guy’s head open after he shoved me after I told his boozy friend not to keep running into me in a bar too crowded with boozy frat guys for him to be taking up so much space poorly dancing with his girlfriend/hooker, knocking into me and spilling the expensive drink I’m too busy not enjoying because I want so much to throw the beer in the one guy’s face and smash the glass across the other’s… luckily for them, it didn’t come to that… the 6’10”, 280 pound, impeccably dressed African-American bouncer held me back (came to my rescue) in time for me to leave the bar with my posse and all the dignity of Buford “Mad Dog” Tannen sobbing his way out of the Hill Valley Festival… I had a smoke and went right across the street to the Slaughtered Lamb, which despite its kitschy décor was unjustifiably empty, especially in the downstairs, where our group of 12 drank away the rest of the night by ourselves.

…in 2007, walking up 3^rd avenue in the early afternoon, it being the weekend, and seeing 21-year-olds throwing up their brunches in phone booths – clearly the reason why there are so few phone booths anymore… then thinking every bar in the area WOULDN’T be crowded… getting mauled by the crowd at the Black Sheep… finally just going for it and grabbing fistfuls of Best Wingers and gorging ourselves on many kinds of chicken and World Famous Potato Wedges while watching BC rather unfortunately losing to Georgetown in the NCAA tournament…

…in 2008, driving home from work on a day where the weather is as beautiful as Ireland itself…

For each of these grains of memory lie five more colorful ones undisturbed… Cheers to those as well…

Enjoy the day today… enjoy the night tonight… and after you’re done remembering what you’ll remember, please don’t forget to forget…

It’s going to be hard to enjoy this World Series, from a subjective stance at least.

Do I root for the Phillies, who beat out my flaccid Mets for the East title, then the pennant? Or the Rays, the new team on the block who as far as I can tell play in a bomb shelter deep beneath the icy Russian surface?

It’s tough. I count two schools of thought on rooting for teams in the postseason: Root for the guys who beat you, so your neck of the woods gets some representation (Go Eastern Time Zone!); Root passionately against the guys who beat you, because you still despise them. I could root for the Phillies, but won’t – that leaves the Rays.

The Rays gave the Red Sox just enough slack to ambulate comfortably before choking themselves. They’re the new media darlings, as motley a crew and with as much upside as the 2004 Red Sox, before they won that title. The booth guys love Upton and Longoria as much as they seem tired of the same Red Sox faces who won twice in the last four years. But I still root for the Red Sox, because I went to school in Boston, support my many Red Sox-loving friends, and love any team that competes with the Yankees, which includes the Rays, who beat the Red Sox team I was pulling for.

Turning 180 and rooting for the team that sixteen hours ago I was sad to see flourishing just seems like a wimpy thing to do. And rooting for the American League is strange for me in general, growing up a Mets fan in a league where pitchers are required to bat, holding themselves relatively accountable; where games move along at a crisper pace; where double-switches exist. I don’t want to cheer in a world where double switches don’t exist.

These are the questions a fan like myself has to face. Sure, other fans have it worse, some for obvious reasons – those in Seattle, Kansas City, Buffalo – Pittsburgh doesn’t get as much sympathy because the Steelers won the big one a few years back.

The brightside for me: It can’t be as unwatchable as the 2003 Yankees-Marlins series. Red Sox-Cubs would have been remarkable; instead we got yet another expansion team with no fan base winning the World Series. Myself, I watched but five minutes of that Series, at Big City in Allston, MA. I saw Josh Beckett get that comebacker and that was it. All I needed to see. All I wanted to see.

My verdict: Rays. Heaven help us.