“Why?” I said, shuffling myself two seats from the neanderthal asking me the question.

What I love about baseball is that like a nucleus it is has the power to draw two opposites onto a neutral playing ground. On Saturday, I was by default an electron because I “root for an OC b**ch like Torii Hunter.”

“I don’t understand this,” I said, ” you would rather have me root for the Giants than you would the cross town Angels?”

“Yep.”

“Son-of-a-b**ch.”

“Baby.”

And that was that. Two beers in, and we were old chums again, telling life stories, and watching America’s greatest past-time. The day was a classic Los Angeles, warm and muggy, with a still-life of clouds coating the marshmallow horizon. A 1:05 game, we settled into our entire row of seats (my uncle’s season seats; we totaled only four) as four kings with beers galore and a brazen of peanuts.

Beers=Baseball commonality where there is none...

I thought I had successfully dodgered the question. And I had…well, almost…

I am deciding whether I should still be a fan of beer, considering this cup caused the earlier question to bubble back to the surface.

"Beat the Bay," was the fuel to the fire...and I am not from the bay...

“Luuuuuukkkkeee,” my cousin said with the firm tone of a school teacher, “answer the f-ing question.”

I coughed. “Bless you,” my cousin said, “ey, buy me a beer?”

I did just to shut him up. The question faded off again because 2+2=foggy brain and too much beer. Our conversations left the earlier platform–baseball–and subsided into the usual male beer-coma.  For the next few innings we watched the Dodgers starter, Ted Lily, get pounded like a crinkled piece of worn sheet medal. My cousin’s furled brow and eyes squinted in perplexed bewilderment, gave me the feelings of sweet revenge.

“And you call Hunter a b**ch?”  I jabbed, embodying a hissing rat with boxing gloves. I snickered at his depressed posture in his losers seat. His Dodgers were down 5-0, and Giants starter Matt Cain was pitching a one hitter.

“You know,” I said standing to my feet, “Cain is a lock down pitcher. If you don’t get to him earlier, you might as well be drinking arsenal. See you lada’. Say goodnight. Sayonara.” For whatever reason I said all of that like a heavy chested Philadelphian slinging cheese steaks on a smutty street corner.

…nothing…he said nothing…

The stadium became a foreshadowed metaphor to this story. I would also be dining on some crow in a matter of an hour or so. From top to bottom Dodger stadium split like the McCourt divorce. It was 7-0 in the sixth. Rivers of blue blood hit the congested 5 en route to their bronzed tannings, dog dates, and the hollyweird rat race.

Losing=a river of blue

By the 7th, all four of us admitted defeat. My cousin waived me over with the look of a secret agent to an open walkway, which was one in a million walkways, causing me to question his Jedi-like motivations. As I approached, he pointed to one of many large openings in the stadium, where an individual can exit into the parking lots. With his Dodger hat limp in his left hand, his matted hair snug against his sun-burnt brow, he asked me a question with a lazy sincerity: half-sincerity is better than no sincerity at all.

“I will tell you something personal,  if you won’t tell anyone,” he said, shaking like a wigged crack feign. The sun opened through two thighs of whiskey colored cumulonimbus, where light erupted in an over-size spotlight– my cousin glowed in its presence.

“Growing up,” he began quietly, which, considering he has never been short of crazy, caused me to shutter a bit. A locomotive of thoughts steam rolled through my cramped brain. Drugs? Divorce? Swinging? What!?

“I was a Giants fan,” he finished. His barrel chest deflated, his watermelon head hung limp on the branchy fingertips of his veiny neck. To say I was relieved would be dishonest. I wasn’t. This was as bad as confessing you had an affair on your wife with a seventeen year old she-male. You were drunk and date raped. Drug to a steaming sleazy back corner and taken advantage of. You even have the bow legged limp to prove it.

But she won’t see it that way. She’ll call you a cheat, break bottles, and burn your MLB bobble head collection.

I asked him why? He answered concise and clear headed. Which surprised me, because the news he had just revealed to me was backward and wrong damn it.

Joey’s reasons for being a Giants fan ’til the age of thirteen:

1) His little league team was called the Giants.

2) Considering his love for his hoo-hoo, Joey always fantasized taking a elephantitis pill aka Giants syndrome for obvious reasons.

3) He found Matt Williams attractive, and Kevin Mitchell sexy.

4) On the day of his birth, he was abducted by aliens and a micro-chip was inserted into his huevos that caused an itchy, burning sensation on warm days. Considering the bay area has cooler micro-climates, he felt it necessary to try and relieve the pain there. It did not work. He was only five and had no way of getting there. Had seventy-five cents in his piggy bank. So he hid in the closet and collected Barry Bonds cards, where he stuck them in his used jock strap so nobody would have the guts to discover them. Thus the heavy binge drinking.

After hearing this bitter news, I thought of toying with his emotions a little bit. But to be fair, I fessed up too. My best memories are not lived in Angel stadium. In fact, I sort of resent the fact that my favorite team is ran by the circus of Disney. Before you know it, they’ll replace the Angels red ball caps with Mickey ears.

Dodger blue on the other hand has always been the signature of middle class America. They are the great West Coast team, the Cards in the Midwest, and the Yanks and Red Sox on the East Coast. This fact buried my shame momentarily, just long enough to help me reveal my dirty little secret.

“To set the record straight, its the Dodgers. Yes, the Dodgers. I am like an Independent: bleed red, vote blue,” I said, shrugging my shoulders.

“I knew it a-hole,” he slammed, “just kidding about the Giants, you dumb shit.”

Joey has always had a way of turning the tables. Always been the loud mouth comedian. And to be honest, that is what I love best about him.

Go Angel- Blue (?).