Last week we put up two Dodger posters in Micah's room, all framed up, along with two pennants (one of which I've had since 1986, signed by the legendary Tito Landrum. And when I say legendary, I mean that since being a Major League Baseball player, he has gone on to be a forerunner and pioneer in the broccoli puppet creation industry (his broccoli likeness of William Taft is amazing, by the way).Anyway, once we finished up, Micah says (telling me as if I hadn't noticed, in that "I just discovered something" voice), "Dad, I have a cooool Dodger room."
Yes, son, you do. Daddy is proud. And slightly jealous.
So anyway, on one of the posters (which we got free as a giveaway at our last Dodger game) is a collage of all the Dodger players for 2008 (pictured above), which is cool because even though it's one of those cheesy "LA Times/AAA.com" free giveaway posters, we'll keep it forever because it was the first year he went to games and got into it...pretty cool, I think. Anyway, he insisted we figure out what each guys name was, and since then, he now points out to others (like our sister-in-law Jessica) which guys are which.
A couple funny ones, on the bottom right if you can see, Coach Joe Torre and HOF Coach Tommy Lasorda are catching an opening pitch. I have to explain to him that the guy wearing #6 is Coach Joe (I tell him the Coach is like the daddy) and that the guy wearing #2 is the old Coach, Tommy. Right above that is another picture of Joe and Tommy, and then there are also single individual pictures of both Tommy and Joe near the top, so now he knows that there are three pictures of Tommy and three of Coach Joe. But when he points this out to people, he also points to relief pitcher Joe Beimel and says, "but that's not Coach Joe, that's a different Joe, there's two Joes, that's Joe Beimel, he's a Bobblehead," referring to the Joe Beimel Bobblehead I got back in July for him. Then he points to the three Coach Joe pictures and says "that's Joe, that's Joe, and that's Joe, too, he's Coach Joe, but that's a different Joe," (again pointing to Joe Beimel, just to remind you). "He's not the coach, he's a Bobblehead."
So now, when we watch games, he asks to see Coach Joe, of course, and he loves that, because Joe is the daddy.
He's now got on his memorization list a total of 10 players: Manny (Ramirez), Russell Martin (first and last name), Casey (Blake), Matt (Kemp), Andre (Ethier), Coach Joe (Torre), Joe Beimel (first and last name), Nomar Garciaparra (amazingly his first and last name, which he now pronounces right, as he used to say "Nomar Garcianomar," which I kind of like better, actually), Juan (Pierre), Jon (Broxton, who we call "Three Strikes Jon" because we yelled that to him at the game to get the batter out). Additionally, and much to my chagrin, Katie is trying to teach him Andruw Jones, our $18 million dolllar a year waste of money just to irritate me. She tells him, "Andruw is Daddy's favorite."
And that's cool if she wants to do that, I just have her sleep on the couch.
