Patrick Dowd ’17
“I’m a Red Sox fan. I was one of the many fourth graders swept up by the magical 2004 Boston season … I love baseball because it’s something that is totally ok to love as a kid and it’s something that’s totally ok to love as an adult, so it’s been fun to always love it … it’s added some continuity to my life. … The end of last season, it was like this rush from the Cubs winning, so much energy around me from Cubs fans and then that was immediately swatted down by Trump winning the presidency like a week later. So, I don’t know, it doesn’t feel like a clean slate this Opening Day but it’s baseball, it’s back. At least it’s something nice.”
Rachel Aaronson ’17
“I have been a Cubs fan my entire life, which up until recently, was not a great thing, not the most successful fandom. I grew up two blocks away from Wrigley Field … This year when they won was a really happy time. Probably the happiest I’ve ever been. I was so surprised that I cried when they won. I didn’t think I was that emotionally invested in baseball … The night that they won the World Series was the night that my brother turned twenty-one and so I was really, really alarmed for his safety, because if there was ever a twenty-first birthday that was going to result in alcohol poisoning, it would have been the one where he was celebrating the Cubs winning the World Series.”
Dylan Welch ’19
“One time, in eighth grade … it was sold-out, it was my second opening day … and me and three other friends, John, Sam and Danny [went]. Shin-Soo Choo played for Cleveland, he was fucking awesome, he was a right fielder. Everyone fucking loved Choo. And so we painted C-H-O-O. … I had an H [painted on my chest] because I wanted to be in the middle. So we had C-H-O-O [painted] for Choo—he was a fan-favorite for sure, he was a stud, I think he was an all-star. And it ruined my Bob Dylan shirt, which I was wearing to Opening Day, the supposedly washable paint. It never was the same—the shirt was red after that. … I think we lost.”
Compiled by Mira Braneck
