The A.L. will have home field advantage in the '08 World Series.
Those guys were having so much fun at Yankee Stadium they almost played all night...
Every year when they play the All-Star Game, I remember one such day from my errant youth.
I was a wild kid and a hardcore baseball fan.
On the day of an All-Star Game sometime in the early '70's, I found a BB gun in our attic, then channeled some inner Lee Harvey Oswald that hadn't beckoned before and hasn't since.
I thought it was a pretty cool idea to climb out onto the roof of our house and shoot at passing cars.
Nothing good can come from crawling around on a roof unless, of course, one happens to be Santa Claus and it's Christmas Eve.
I didn't mean to break those car windows; I really only meant to hear the "tick!" of BB's on car metal.
My mother came home from work to find her teenage idiot son hiding out in the attic like Oswald in that movie theater in Dallas.
Fast-forward past the screaming and welts left on my arms to the real punishment:
I couldn't watch the All-Star Game that night, and--besides--we were going over to Rene Rabideau's house so that I could apologize and promise to pay for that station wagon window.
The apology for the back window of the furniture store van would wait.
Rene was a good guy; he was a youth baseball coach and umpire, and I told him that I was sorry.
I was sorry; for Rene's window, and for the fact that I was such a bad shot.
My mother and Rene's wife sat in the kitchen and surely talked about the trials my mother faced as she tried to tame the lunatic masquerading as her youngest son.
Rene switched on the TV. We drank soda, ate chips, and--punishment be damned--watched the All-Star Game.
Mom didn't say I couldn't watch it at their house.
I also choose to believe that she stayed at their kitchen table talking just long enough for Rene and me to see the last out that night.
Paper route money paid for the windows, my welts went away, I still love baseball, and I'll always hate guns--BB or otherwise.
But sometimes I like to stretch out on a blanket on a grassy knoll.
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