thirteenthirteen

Science History Art Politics Baseball

[archatlas]

[archatlas]

Italy 1959

[fifthstarter]

In Defense of Pink Hats

Part of being a sports fan is about shared memory.

When one meets someone else who’s a fan of the team, it’s typical to talk about favorite players from the past, best memories, most heartbreaking defeats. These interactions prove our interest level and create an immediate bond. We didn’t know each other then, we’re saying, but we were both so happy at the same time. We had that shared moment. We both remember where we were when that happened. Remember Game 162 of 1993? Remember the Brian Johnson Game? Remember Game 7 in 2002? Remember Will Clark reading Maddux’s lips? Remember Gregor Blanco’s catch and Arias from deep third? Remember how we (I) cried in 1992 when the Giants were moving to Tampa, but then they didn’t and instead they stayed and Barry Bonds came and oh boy do I remember Barry Bonds. How we sat in the cold wind to have the honor of watching him hitting home runs dressed in orange and black. And it was an honor.

When we remember together, we connect. We have found another person who cares about a game that is also a soap opera that has lasted longer than any of us have been alive. What other dramas are over 130 years old and still going strong?

I have spent a lot of time remembering with people, going over the joys and heartbreak from the past, and although it is often sweet and romantic to think back to our childhoods and relive those times, there is one thing I am deeply, painfully tired of - the proving, the quizzing, the testing.

Before 2010, this happened for one reason: because I am a woman. I have been asked about baseball history by men who manifestly knew less about baseball than I, forcing me to make a decision: play along with their condescending game, or ignore them and allow them to assume I am ignorant. (I don’t usually care these idiots think about me personally, but it is tempting to make a point about how you can’t judge knowledge based on gender.) I have been told that all women fans are really “cleat-chasers”, leaving me to either defend myself as a “real fan” who isn’t  “cleat-chaser” or to deride the assertion that “cleat-chasing” is somehow morally wrong. (Hint: it isn’t.)

In short, women fans are constantly asked, usually subtly but sometimes overtly: are you like those girls or are you like these girls? Do you wear makeup and heels to the ballpark? Do you have a pink cap? Are you like a girl or are you one of the guys?

No points for guessing which one the asker wants you to choose.

All of this was compounded in 2010, because the Giants won the World Series, and all Giants fans were subtly tainted with that most vile of suspicions - that we were bandwagon fans. Let’s double down on those memories, everyone: how long have you been a fan? Do you have fewer than three Croixs de Candlestick? Do you ever find yourself humming you gotta like these kids?

That suspicion went double for women fans. Women, as all know, are fickle creatures - not interested in sports, but interested in socializing. And if everyone is at the ballpark, why, that must be the best place to go! Men who suddenly displayed interest in the Giants were returning to their roots, fondly recalling those two years of elementary school Little League, but women had no roots to return to and were along for the ride, with their panda hats and newly purchased Buster Posey shirseys, enjoying the party atmosphere but not understanding the game.

Here’s my story: I never idly decided to be a Giants fan, or a baseball fan at all. My family is a baseball family. I don’t remember the first game I went to because I was too young. I grew up in San Francisco and never had a choice - we were Giants fans and that was that. My dad was my tutor into all things baseball and he never seemed to care that I wasn’t a boy. Obviously I was going to watch games with him, I was his kid. (In a short-lived rebellion when she was about nine, my sister declared that she hated baseball and didn’t care about the Giants. I remember my mom gasping at this blasphemy.)

But here’s what really matters: none of that. I’m not superior to a newer fan, and I’m not any less of a woman because I have excess amounts of orange and black swag. I don’t want to be one of the guys, I like being a woman just fine. I’m not a tomboy, I like makeup and jewelry and cute shoes and there is nothing wrong with those things. I can’t imagine what I could be lacking in my ability to talk about baseball that any man could. So I can’t hit a major league curveball? I’m pretty sure that 99.9% of men can’t either.

There’s nothing wrong with being a woman baseball fan. There’s nothing even wrong with being a new woman baseball fan. Yes, even if the fan she’s chosen to follow has recent success.  Maybe her parents didn’t like baseball and she never watched it until a friend took her to a game and she had a great time. Now she’s interested but still not sure about the rules, and she doesn’t yet have those connections to the past. Perhaps if the fan community is welcoming to her, one day she’ll be able to participate in those shared memories that we all enjoy so much.

And if she’s wearing a pink hat, so what?

(I originally posted this as a fanpost at McCovey Chronicles.)

[azspot]

Congress appropriates military funds with alacrity and generosity. It appropriates poverty funds with miserliness and grudging reluctance. The government is emotionally committed to the war. It is emotionally hostile to the needs of the poor.

Martin Luther King, Jr. (via theyoungradical)

[yoisthisracist]

Ian asked: I think this might be racist. Weird how fans of the Cleveland Racists always claim their mascot is respectful. Racists: you’re all completely full of shit assholes and you are too dumb to fool us. PS. Fuck you.

[fifthstarter]

Gut shabbos, everyone.

[selchieproductions]

Oh, so you've STUDIED about us

I AM one of us. 

[fifthstarter]

I used to have this coworker who was an absolutely insufferable know-it-all (seriously, this woman took it to a new level; she was just unbearable to be around) and I once witnessed her lecture one of our coworkers about our area's local Native American groups.

Our coworker was Native American and grew up on a nearby reservation.

It was one of the most jaw-dropping conversations I have ever heard.

(Our coworker was one of the nicest guys in the world and did not tell her to GTFO as I probably would have done in his place.)

[golden-zephyr-deactivated201401]

If you ask two Gypsies the same question, you’ll get three different answers

Tom Lovell, Roma Elder (via golden-zephyr)

Ha, this is what we say about Jews too: "Two Jews, three opinions."

[dynamicafrica]

Aluminum and copper wire tapestries by Ghanaian sculpture El Anatsui

October: Highlighting African Art & African Artists

[hagleyvault]

A Handbook for the Woman Driver: A Must for the Woman at the Wheel (1955)

"…we all love to be carefree and casual when we’re off on a motor trip, still some thought for our looks is worth while if we want to find ourselves ‘sitting pretty’ behind the wheel."

Click here to read more of Mrs. Montgomery’s advice for women drivers in our Digital Archives.

[dynamicafrica]

Larger than life installations and sculptures by South African performance artist Nicholas Hlobo:

born in cape town, south african artist nicholas hlobo draws from his xhosa roots to inform his body of work, which comprises massive sculptures constructed from an array of natural and scavenged materials. questions of identity and ethnicity run throughout his pieces, and ideas of masculinity and gender are strikingly reflected through a visual and tactile contrast in the materials with which he works. a speaker at the 2013 design indaba conference, the artist recently closed his first solo show at stevenson gallery in johannesburg.

many of the materials that hlobo uses serve as visual metaphors for an array of cultural phenomenon, and his works are not only named after particular ritualistic practices but consciously recall the rich history and tradition of the xhosa culture.

‘ingubo yesizwe’ (‘clothes or blanket of the nation’) is comprised of hundreds of tiny stitched pieces of discarded leather and rubber, sewn together to become the multifaceted skin of a large animal-like form. the work references the tradition in xhosa culture of commemorating important milestones with the ceremonial slaughter of a cow; in the death ritual in particular, the animal’s hide is used to cover the corpse before burial to protect the deceased in his or her voyage to the afterlife, the meaning of ‘ingubo yesizwe’.

in this work, leather is thus used to consciously represent traditional xhosa values and practices, while rubber signifies modernization. although seemingly perfectly integrated throughout much of the sculpture, the illusion is unwoven by the spilling out of cords and fabric in parts of the sculpture, a visual echo of the ceremonial slaughter.

October: Highlighting African Art & African Artists

[fifthstarter]

I forget what you do when there's no baseball.

[fifthstarter]

...ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.

Charles Darwin.

[soupsoup]

A judge in New Jersey has ruled that in light of recent Supreme Court decisions on same-sex marriage, the state must issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

[currentsinbiology]

Hornet attacks kill dozens in China

Twenty-eight people have died and hundreds have been injured in a wave of attacks by giant hornets in central China, according to reports.

Victims described being chased for hundreds of metres by the creatures and stung as many as 200 times.

The culprit appears to be the Asian giant hornet or Vespa mandarinia, which grows up to 5cm long with a 6mm sting, although the area is also home to the smaller Asian hornet, Vespa velutina nigrithorax.

[historicallense]

Afghanistan in the 1950s and 1960s, The Atlantic

Picture taken in 1962 at the Faculty of Medicine in Kabul of two Afghan medicine students listening to their professor (at right) as they examine a plaster cast showing a part of a human body.

Afghan man leading laden camels and donkeys through an arid, rocky landscape, in November, 1959.

Afghan women, men, and child in traditional dress ride in a cart through an arid, rocky landscape, November, 1959.

Women, wearing traditional burqas and Persian slippers, walk alongside men, cars and horse carts, in a street in Kabul, in 1951. At the time, this street was one of only three paved streets in the capital city.

A modern traffic light stands incongruously amid burqa-clad women sitting on a Kabul street corner with their backs to their men on May 25, 1964.

Scene inside the modern new government printing plant in Kabul on June 9, 1966, which houses Kabul Times.

Afghan boys, men, and women, some in bare feet, shop at a marketplace in Kabul, Afghanistan, in May of 1964. [x]

[fifthstarter]

YCPB

I just remembered that before the season, I predicted that both AL Wild Card spots would come out of the AL West.

[fart-witch]

[fifthstarter]

oh my god australia what r u doing