Stranger in Our Midst

The unmistakeable signs of spring are all around us: We've had that last, false-hope-crushing snowfall.... The drive-in up the road is open, and the locals are huddled around the picnic tables in forlorn knots of 2 and 3, eating their First Ice Cream of Spring.... Tax season is upon us, and I'm getting my laptop charged up so I can finish my return next Tuesday on the way to the post office.

My Leading Indicator is always the crack of the bat being heard all across this great land of ours. Around here, we've been observing our own forms of Spring Training, on two fronts -- first, I used the March exhibition games to get the troops a little hyped on watching the Mets again... hoping that if I can amass three votes, I might prevail against our local Superdelegate, who is definitely voting "against." And, rare is the day when the girl doesn't jam on her Mets cap and say, "Dad, will you play catch with me?"

She's even starting to recognize individual players on TV. Naturally, most sports enthusiasms and loyalties are acquired virally, from someone close to you who already has the bug (although I think mine was definitely a spontaneous genetic mutation).

I just consider it responsible parenting to do whatever I can to nurture the ardor for baseball in general, and the Mets in particular -- although last fall my son, especially, figured it might be cool to be a Red Sox fan, since they were the champs.

So I was a trifle surprised when my girl came home from a trip with her grandmother to Wal-Mart with a shirt bearing the logo of...

I can't even say it. Suffice it to say that it's rumored that there's a second major league that also has a team located in New York. The New York Yonkers, or something like that.

She saw it in the store, it was sporty, they didn't have any Mets stuff in her size; so she begged Nanny, who ended up going back to get it for her.

At first, she thought it was the coolest shirt ever... then she said she didn't want to wear it to school and have kids laugh at her (as she herself has been known to do to perfect strangers -- perfectly large, beefy strangers, whom she spots on the street wearing similarly non-Mets attire).

But then as we were snuggling later that evening, she suddenly said, "Dad, what happens if I like the Yankees?" One of those times that tests your parenting skills.

I hugged her tight and said, "Sweetie, you can like whoever you want to." She seemed pleased with that answer... and fortunately has not yet noticed that Dad, who does the laundry, has somehow not yet gotten that shirt back in her drawer...