This is a real good story about Bronx and his dad Ryan, real United Airlines customers.
We were returning home and one of the flight attendants asked Bronx if he wanted to see the flight deck and meet Captain Andrew.
I got to sit in the driver's seat.
I grew up in an aviation family and seeing Bronx kind of reminded me of myself when I was that age.
That's Andrew, a real United pilot.
These small interactions can shape a kid's future.
It felt like I was the captain.
Allowing my son to see the flight deck will stick with us forever.
That's how good leads the way.
Hey, it's Christopher Kimball from Milk Street Radio.
Sounds like I'm bragging and I am.
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Welcome to Love Letters.
I'm Meredith Goldstein.
So today's episode is a public service to me, because now that it's November it's a very unromantic time.
We go from the sexiest holiday, Halloween, to a period of the year that is a lot of sports.
Football, hockey, basketball, sometimes baseball is still happening right around now.
Maybe not this year, I don't even know.
All I'm sure of is that, right at this beautiful moment, even though it's cozy and there's pumpkin spice, everything
A lot of people are solely focused on games.
When I was younger and trying to date, this bummed me out so much.
Back in the day, I had a boyfriend or two who arranged outings around the Celtics.
And this is not gender-specific, of course.
Anyone can be obsessed sports fans.
While I've gotten better at working around people's passions, as a person allergic to sports, it can be difficult.
And now, I know what you're going to say.
Being a fan of music and TV shows is the same, and not everybody has to like what you like.
But being a big sports fan is different than enjoying the arts.
If you're watching The Summer I Turn Pretty, for instance, there's a finite number of episodes.
You can plan your life around.
But with sports, there are one billion games.
It's inescapable.
And if you're into fantasy sports, every game somehow counts.
Anyway, I've long tried to find a way into enjoying sports.
That's why I did those episodes back in the day about the spouses of athletes, because I thought that might be a good way for me to start connecting to the people behind the athleticism.
Today I'm back at it again, going to two experts hoping they can get me a little more interested and to help me tie the emotional piece of sports to what we do here at Love Letters.
Because to be honest, it is kind of a bummer when everyone is excited about something and I'm not.
Our first guest is someone very special to me.
Meet my former roommate who knows a lot of things about sports and I think might be able to help me care about it.
I'm Chris Gasper.
I'm a sports columnist at the Boston Globe, and I've had that role since 2009.
And I've known Meredith even longer and can say that I've been her friend even longer than that.
What are we talking about here?
Do we want to date ourselves, Meredith?
I don't know if we want to date ourselves.
My next question was going to be our meet cute origin story of friendship.
So well, let's talk about it.
So yeah, we would have met In what year?
2002.
Oh my God.
See, I asked you if we wanted to date ourselves.
Is that 2002?
Oh, we just dated it.
I was a young news writer and you were a young sports writer.
But one of the things that helped us be friends really quickly was that you are one of the few sports writers I know, and I'm generalizing, who has a lot of interest beyond sports.
Whereas I couldn't really hop on the bandwagon for the Red Sox.
Like you... loved Gossip Girl.
Yes.
So can you talk about how you fall into the world of sports writers?
Are a lot of people like you and I just haven't met them.
They all seem so one track mind.
Well, it's interesting because it can be an all consuming job.
But here's the thing that I've learned for a lot of people.
Sports is like an outlet for them.
They have their job that they go to Monday through Friday.
They have some other things they do.
But sports is their relaxation.
It's like their hobby following these teams.
So what do you do when your job is everybody else's hobby.
So for me, the way for me to turn my mind off, or some things that, like I was interested in a lot of it was pop culture related, whether it was music or it was certain television shows back in the day.
And for whatever reason it seemed like, when it came to pop culture taste, I had the sensibility of a 16 year old girl.
If we're generalizing about taste, Tell me all of the pop culture romantic narrative, story things you love, the shows, the music that you grew up with and liked as much as sports.
Oh, yeah.
So anytime the movie Cocktail comes on with Tom Cruise and Elizabeth Shue, that's a movie that I'm going to watch.
I always love those sort of type of movies where two people fall in love, even though maybe they don't realize initially they're right for each other or there's some sort of obstacle that you have to overcome.
You mentioned Gossip Girl.
I was big into the OC back in the day.
Even some of the reality stuff, you know, Laguna Beach, I was really into the hills.
I'm so glad you brought up Laguna Beach, which I had forgotten, because I think that's one of the things that helped me realize very quickly you were a relationship guy, like somebody who wanted to consider who people should be with what a breakup felt like.
Do you remember that we went there?
I do remember that we went there.
And what I remember about it, too, I always wanted to go there.
I had watched the show.
So I was big into the love triangle between Lauren Conrad Kristen Cavallari, who I'm still a big fan of to this day and follow on Instagram.
And obviously, Steven.
Steven.
As she used to say.
Steven.
Steven.
Steven, stop.
Steven.
Steven, it's cold.
I was so into that.
And we had to go.
That was like a pilgrimage for me.
You know, some people, that's like the sports fan version for me.
That's like the sports fans who come here and say, I have to go to Fenway Park.
I was like I need to go to Laguna Beach and go to Yahoo's fish tacos and all these things I've seen on television.
And I don't know if you remember this.
I think this trip was with you, but there was this little vegetarian lunch place and it was pretty close to the beach, but it's on the main street there.
And it was one of the biggest compliments I've ever gotten.
The guy said, Oh, I thought you guys were locals.
And that made my life.
I was like, yeah, I fit right in here, Laguna Beach.
It's worth mentioning.
Chris has remained a diehard fan of reality show relationship analysis, which is not unlike an NFL postgame.
Like Vanderpump Rules, I'm all about that.
Do you just have any Vanderpump takes?
Just in general about how you feel about certain characters that you just want to get out there into the world.
I'll give this take.
I don't understand why people are so mean and so hard on Sheena.
I don't understand that.
She seems pretty cool and pretty normal.
And I also didn't understand I know it was really tough, obviously Scandaval, and how that went down.
And I thought it was really tough though, the way Ariana was sort of like well Sheena, you have your like no one could have their own relationship with Tom Sandoval.
Sheena had a relationship with Tom Sandoval as a friend.
That was sort of like when everybody else was trying to get me off the show and cut me out.
He was my lifeline.
And he said, you belong.
And that's important to her.
And that matters.
But Ariana was like well, if anybody even thinks about you know, not being subhuman to Sandoval, like you're out.
You're out of my life.
I thought that was That was very unfair.
Truly, I could do 16 episodes with Chris where he just does sports style analysis of Vanderpump.
But back to the point.
This is why you're such a good person to help me with the sports of it all, because I do feel like in the past 10 years or so especially, there has been a real marriage, no pun intended, of sports narrative and love narrative.
The most obvious way we've got the Taylor Swift of it all people dating athletes, which I find deeply unromantic because I'm like I don't get that.
Every time I see media about this.
None of my business.
She can do whatever she wants, but I'm like, oh my God, she's going to have to sit through so many football games.
It's like dating a guy who does stand-up comedy.
You don't like where I'm like oh, but she probably likes it.
I don't have that access point.
But then also just seeing sports as a distraction from real life in a way that I have always found frustrating in this city that in the fall I can't get anybody to pay attention to me about certain things because they are so caught up in three sports at once.
So how do you get somebody like me into this kind of world if the actual athleticism has no appeal for me?
Are there emotional ways in, whether it's through stories of players or even just repetition of viewing?
I'd like to be able to get it.
I just am like, why are we watching this?
In terms of what you just were talking about, There's a huge similarity between sports and, I think, reality television.
I always say sports is like the ultimate reality television.
And there's a huge parallel between sports and soap operas, which I also loved watching.
And a lot of the shows like you mentioned Gossip Girl, The OC those were basically nighttime soaps.
So it's the same thing for someone like you.
If you find that there are narratives, you know, I remember one time this was during 2008 when Tom Brady had torn his ACL.
And Matt Castle, the backup quarterback, was playing.
And we were out in Oakland with the Raiders.
I was with Mike Reese, legendary Patriots reporter who used to work for the Globe.
And Matt Castle's dad had passed away that week.
And he had a great game.
And we were trying to decide the storylines after the game.
And I turned to Mike and I said, Mike, this is a people game.
It's about the people.
It's about the personal story.
It's about Matt Castle and this week.
So even if you're not really into the statistics, if you don't care who wins or loses, if you're not really into sports balls, as people have started calling it now, you can maybe latch on to a person or a personality or their story that resonates with you in the same way you would with a musician or an actor.
Because at the end of the day, athletes are entertainers, too, and they're artists, too.
And a lot of this stuff, there's a lot of parallels and it follows the same story line.
Can you talk about, to whatever extent you're comfortable, what it was like as a younger sports reporter and trying to like date around a calendar that is unforgiving.
And it was definitely a turnoff for some people.
Maybe I was the turnoff, but I know it was a turnoff, too.
But it's interesting, especially because when we were working together I was covering mostly high school stuff back then.
And for anybody that understands high school sports, particularly in the fall, the biggest night is Friday night.
I mean, that's the night everybody wants to go on a date.
So my Friday nights, if my friends were out or if a girl wanted to go, I couldn't do that.
And then as my career progressed to some of the professional stuff, it's similar.
NFL games are on Sunday.
If I'm covering an away game, I'm flying out Saturday at seven o'clock.
So you're there and you're not coming home until midnight.
I always remember this with my wife.
We were, this was early on in our dating.
It was the off season and she had gotten used to the off season a little bit, but I was covering the NFL draft and that's a very busy time.
And the draft now is multiple days.
It was back then, it's like three.
It was only two, but it used to go like all day for two days in a row.
Like the first round, I'm not making this up.
I'm not exaggerating.
The first round would take six hours.
So the first year we were dating, I'm covering the NFL draft and it's like Saturday and Sunday.
And at the end of Sunday, Sunday night, I'm feeling great.
I'm excited.
I'm like, oh, I'm going to get to hang out with, you know, my girlfriend who became my wife.
And I text her and she goes, I've not heard from you in four days.
What is going on?
Like she was mad.
And it took me a second to get it.
I was like, no, this is just what I do.
Like, it's NFL draft time.
And that was the day I realized that I was a crappy communicator, by the way, in a relationship, because I was like I'm just doing my thing.
And it didn't even occur to me.
She's right.
We haven't I hadn't called her in like four days.
We hadn't really texted.
I just in my mind was like well, when I'm done with this NFL draft thing that I'm completely immersed in, then I'll, you know, pull her off the shelf.
And we'll hang out.
But she was so mad and totally not ready to hang out.
So it can be a challenge.
Well, also, I love that she was assertive about it, was like, actually, that does not work.
I will not be pulled off the shelf.
She did me a huge favor because I realized that I had to work harder to keep the communication.
And I realized that I do have to pull myself out of that.
Or before I go into that, I do have to make a phone call or send a text and let this person know that you are invested and you're thinking about them and that they matter.
One of the ways I'm trying to get into sports through this idea that athletes are interesting people and that they have interesting relationships and that fans are fascinating, whether they be fans of the things I like or fans of a sport is through romance novels, which is always a good gateway for me into any topic, right.
I am really making a commitment this year, of all years, to read some of these romance novels that are so popular, that are very much rooted in the sports world.
I'm sure you have heard that there are hockey romances.
Yes.
And football romances.
Certainly the second.
Taylor Swift started dating Travis Kelsey.
I was like here we go with football.
And I assume you have not read these.
Have you read these?
I have not read these.
The only thing I read about was there was one hockey player and I can't remember his name where it seemed like he and his wife felt the romance novel had gone a little too far.
Like they didn't like it and they didn't like the attention from it.
I remember that.
Yeah.
I mean and I won't name him here because I feel like that was really he obviously didn't want to be named, but it was clearly based on, or someone had fan cast.
Right.
In the telling of fictional stories.
Hockey romance fans had objectified and sort of called attention to the guy they thought was good looking.
And it was, you know, two in that person's personal life.
But, you know, most of these books I read because I don't know a thing about sports.
I don't know who they're Referencing anyway, or or who I'm never going to be like.
Oh, this is.
This person is clearly like a Travis Kelsey.
Travis Kelsey might be the one person I know right now.
You don't know Josh Allen, who's married to Haley Steinfeld.
OK, I know that guy.
Do you know that one?
Yeah.
But had you said who's married to Haley Steinfeld, I wouldn't I'd be like that guy.
But I wouldn't know.
One thing Chris tells me that helps is that maybe I'm watching the wrong sports, because I ask him what sport might make the best fodder for the kind of narrative I like, or for a romance novel.
So this might surprise you.
I'm going to go a little bit off the board.
Soccer.
I'm going to say soccer.
Say more about that.
Yeah, because if you look at first, it's an international sport.
The guys that play it.
A lot of them are not hulking guys or they're not exceptionally tall like in basketball.
The best leagues are obviously in Europe.
I feel like when you see these guys come in, or even the coaches someone needs to do a romance novel about a high level European soccer coach, because these guys are often.
They're like so well-dressed, like so Natalie dressed.
They always look super distinguished.
They're not, they're like in their forties, maybe early fifties.
Somebody could definitely do that.
And that would, that would take off.
You look at some of these, like Liverpool, their former coach, Jurgen Klopp, you know really sort of rugged, ruggedly handsome, good looking middle-aged German guy.
Like it would, it would sell like hotcakes.
Pep Guardiola, who's the coach of Manchester city, one of the best dressers like I've ever seen.
And these guys are, and then the players, the players are just, again, this is why it would work.
And I don't mean to objectify anybody, but they, they are in incredible shape, playing 90 plus minutes.
So to be honest, Chris didn't fully get me there.
But he did make me think I might like a love story about soccer.
And that got me thinking more about these sports romance novels that he and I talked about.
Maybe if I talk to an author of these stories, they can help me understand the love of sports.
I'll try that when we return.
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A few years ago, I was asked to moderate the launch of a romance novel called Fangirl Down.
I love romance novels and I love the Brookline Booksmith, the independent bookstore that was hosting the event, so I said yes.
Then I got the book and thought, oh no, this is one of those sports romance books and it's about golf.
Truly, I cannot think of a less interesting and less sexy activity than a sport that involves a full day of walking around and trying to win a blazer.
It's just not my thing.
But I'd already said yes, and I'd heard the author of this book, Tessa Bailey, was nice.
Anyway, I start reading the book, expecting to dislike it, and I figured I'd be polite.
But I read this book and I kid you not cover to cover, in hours, barely even getting up to snack or pee, because I was truly enjoying it.
It was super fun.
And I was like, how is this woman making golf appealing to someone like me?
She must know how to frame sports in a way that's accessible. people who don't like it.
And that's why I asked Tessa Bailey to come on Love Letters to talk more about finding ways into sports and loving it.
I'm so excited to be with you here today.
You are someone who writes romance and has veered from what I would call traditional romance into sports romance.
And I want to talk about all about that.
So welcome to Love Letters.
Thank you for having me.
I'm so excited to be here to talk about sports, romance, anything you want to talk about.
So without bragging, you know, some of our listeners are not huge romance readers yet.
You're kind of a big deal.
And I don't want to make you talk about what a big deal you are, but you've written a lot of books.
Yeah, I mean, I have.
I've written, I think, around 65 books at this point.
A little behind the scenes, which is that the Brookline Booksmith, which is a bookstore near me, messaged me and said will you moderate this event?
You'd be a really good match for this.
And I was really interested in talking to you.
And then I saw what the book was about.
And I was like shit.
I had really, really been trying to avoid sports romances as someone who I just don't give a shit.
It's just not a really, and not only was it a sports romance, it was golf.
And, but I was curious, right?
So would you mind talking a little bit about that book and why you were like I'm going to write a golf romance and it's going to be horny and sexy and happy and center a great woman character.
Tell me a little bit about the origin of that book and whether you were intimidated by the golf of it all.
I think I was intimidated after I saw my editor's reaction to me, telling her that I was wanting to write a golf book.
Hockey was in the upswing at that point.
Everybody was writing hockey. football romance and baseball romance.
There have been golf romances, but nothing that's like particularly blown up.
And I am a true believer that anything can be made sexy.
Maybe 99% of things can be made sexy.
And I had this idea for like years about this sort of down and out golfer that is on the last legs of his career, falling in love with his caddy.
And I just thought that is such an intimate relationship.
And I had this idea of this fan being brought in as his caddy and them working together and him actually becoming better for her advice and her guidance, because there's nothing sexier than a man taking a woman's advice, in my opinion.
I sat down I said you know what, like I have to trust myself, and so I did.
I took a big chance writing golf romance and I, through the research of that book, ended up falling in love with the sport.
I don't know.
It's crazy to me how much I like it.
Now I was going to ask about your own fandom and interest in sports, growing up as a person in the world.
Were you somebody that was naturally interested?
So I actually I did play sports growing up.
I played really competitive basketball from second grade all the way through the end of high school.
Played club basketball throughout my whole life.
And it was like my dad's sport, my dad's taught me how to play.
It was his favorite pastime.
We watched Larry Bird on the couch together growing up.
I've always been in love with basketball.
And it's like where I had my best experiences learning how to support other women, learning how to lift people up, learning how to lose gracefully.
These are like lessons that I think really were most valuable in not just winning and losing.
It's really about like, what you do along the way and the people you meet and how you respond to adversity.
I love the camaraderie of it.
It's sexy to me, but I also understand why it would be sexy to everybody.
This is the thing.
It was sexy to me.
I was completely converted when I read it.
And actually it.
It made me think a lot about the reversal of the trope and having this woman advisor, coach caddy.
I think a lot about the, this trope in cinema or or in books of the man behind the woman putting his arms around her, showing how to swing a tennis racket, showing her how to swing a golf club.
That doesn't get like a sort of sexy let me yeah, but it did feel like you have the these two characters almost flipping it in some way.
Where he needs help, he needs a lot of help emotionally and otherwise and in golf can you just tell me a?
Yeah, so we have Wells Whitaker, who came into the PGA Tour as this kind of hotshot, like new kid on the block.
Everybody wanted to be him.
He got these endorsement deals, and then he just lost his edge.
Golf is very mental, and if you lose whatever mental edge you had... to make you good.
Like you can lose your stroke.
You can lose everything.
It goes out the window.
So many players that's happened to.
And then we have Josephine who runs her family's pro shop on a golf course in Florida.
And she's a golf genius, but she's also this guy's number one fan.
And she's the only one that hasn't quit on him.
She still shows up.
She wears the sign.
She wears his merch.
And she's like the last remaining fan of Wells Whitaker.
And he, he won't quit because she keeps showing up, but he finally is, get out of here, like i'm done, i don't want you around anymore.
And then, like she does leave and this, like hurricane hits florida and he goes.
I have to go find her, i have to make sure she's okay, and so that's where it all begins.
It's probably one of my favorite books i've written.
You know, it really is.
I talked to people a lot about the crowd that night.
It was hundreds and hundreds of people.
I felt like i was with a one direction person, or a beetle or a frankly, a Red Sox player.
Romance fans always come in strong, they come, they come in hot every time yeah, and you're like, so game to just talk it through, which is great.
But golf is not the only sport you've written about in romance.
Can you tell me some of the other sports where you thought okay, this is the kind of team, this is the kind of athlete I want to write about?
Yeah, I think I've only written about one other athlete prior to this series and it was baseball.
He was also like a, an athlete who'd been at the top of his game and then lost it because he got an injury and he got removed from the league.
So that back book was called Fix Her Up, and that was probably five years ago.
But now in this series, I went to hockey for a while and then came back to baseball.
I think those are my three sports golf, baseball and hockey that I understand the rules and I understand, I think, the mentality of those athletes more.
I do like writing baseball players quite a bit.
There's just something about it's very all American pastime.
It's very like masculine.
I just love I love baseball players in general.
Is there a way I should be watching Boston sports to make these narratives more? pop for me.
And they do always pop when I read them, by the way, your books, the books of other writers.
But I'm hoping there's a reverse effect, that now, when I can watch sports, I can think oh, like what's happening in people's lives.
What are the emotions here?
As opposed to just feeling this very two dimensional relationship?
Is there a way I should be thinking about following teams that I'm not?
I don't know.
There's plenty of romance readers that like definitely read these books and don't give a crap about sports, because it really is for them.
It's about the relationship between the two characters that are falling in love.
And sports is the backdrop.
And I think that the reason it's so fun and the reason it works so well in romance is because the stakes are really high.
If you're a professional athlete, you have an image to maintain.
This career is something that is making you millions of dollars.
You're driven by person by nature.
If you're a professional athlete, you have incredible ambition and drive.
You don't get to that level without it.
And I think that's really sexy.
A man with ambition and drive or a woman.
I have like in my latest book, Pitcher Perfect.
I write about a division one pitcher, female division one pitcher.
And so I just think that yeah, it's inherently sexy to have somebody who had a goal and worked their butt off to reach it.
I think there's something that's really interesting about that.
Could you tell me a little bit about Pitcher Perfect and just the tour and the book and what it's all about?
Pitcher Perfect is basically about a Division I softball pitcher named Skylar.
She's been in love with her brother's best friend since she was a kid.
And he's never noticed her because she's like this kind of tomboy who's always been focused on sports, always been focused on softball.
And then we meet Robbie's a hockey player.
So enter Robbie.
Robbie is interested in her and she's no, I'm interested in somebody else.
And also I hate you because you're obviously this playboy jerk.
I want nothing to do with you.
He's so enthralled by her that he's like, I want to spend time with you.
Let me prove to you I'm not that bad of a guy.
I'll help you win your guy over.
And so they end up fake dating.
Long story short, they end up pretending to be boyfriend and girlfriend to make this other guy jealous.
But then...
They start to fall for each other.
And then, while all this is going on, he's actually sort of teaching her like sexy lessons, which is what we call it.
That's the micro trope is spicy lessons where he's teaching her like, how to flirt, how to make out, how to act on a date, things like that.
One of my favorite tropes is fake dating.
And I'm not entirely sure what part of my brain that hits, but I think it's like it feels low stakes.
It's just we're pretending to be dating and maybe we'll accidentally fall in love.
But I love a sexy lessons book.
Am I allowed to ask, just because I live here as you do your Boston research about the psychology of Bostonian people and their athleticism in whatever way, or just for books in general, what you're thinking and learning and you've been here, how would you describe how a Boston love story is different than other love stories?
The city of Boston has a very singular feeling to me.
Like I said, I've lived in Manhattan and at no point does it feel like everybody in the city is doing the same thing at the same time.
Where in Boston, it can feel like that.
It can literally feel like everybody is watching the same game at the same time.
And you can walk from one end of the city to the other and feel that way.
And there's really just a sense of community there that I think, like New York has communities, like lots of them.
But Boston really does sometimes feel just like one big connected group of people.
So that's what I like about it.
It's a place that it just really feels like there is an event taking place and everybody has signed up for it.
When I go there, I love that.
It's that old feeling I miss of, like when everybody used to watch the same TV show on the same nights, like everybody watched Seinfeld or everybody watched Survivor or whatever it was.
Boston feels like it still has that magic.
Knowing that you like baseball as you do and have spent time with these other sports.
What's your most romantic venue, stadium?
That's a good question.
Probably the old Shea Stadium has like really good memories for me.
That's probably my first baseball game.
I did grow up originally in San Diego though.
And so I went to a lot of Padres games growing up as a little kid.
And I remember one time going with my brother, bringing my brother for the first time and having him throw up in the stands.
I think that might be one of my favorite memories.
I recently went to the Miami Marlins stadium.
I got to throw out the first pitch.
So I have a really great memory attached to that.
Now I'm going to lose the Boston audience, but there is something to me about a New York baseball game that I really enjoy.
I don't think I've ever been to a game at Fenway.
Listen.
You haven't lost our audience because we've got a lot of New Yorkers who listen.
But I actually think some of the most exciting moments romantic baseball nights, when people are behaving and being respectful are Yankees, Red Sox nights at Fenway, because it's so like just tense and exciting.
Yeah, the energy.
That's what it's all about is that competition, that like high level of competition.
I was in Concord, New Hampshire doing for as part of my book tour for Picture Perfect.
And I said to the audience I was like yeah, my next book like these are the hero is a catcher for the Yankees.
And I got fully booed.
The whole place was booing me.
I was like, I forgot where I was.
Bad move.
They like to boo.
It's part of it.
It was good natured.
I think it was good natured.
I want to talk about something that occurs to me, about why sports has been difficult for me to access, as someone who's very interested in romance.
I think, living in Boston for more than 20 years.
Sports as a culture takes over the lives of many.
And especially now, it's so great for people.
I'm almost jealous.
They have great escapism.
They could talk about Larry Bird back in the day.
And by the way, I appreciate that pandering to this audience.
I also, oh my God, no, I was like, oh, like this is one I'll send to my ex-boyfriend.
The first time Larry Bird, I think, has been name-checked on this podcast.
But I've had a lot of people in my life.
I dated Red Sox fans over and over when I was much younger, not even being from Boston.
And their entire mood changed could be good or bad, depending on the state of the union there.
It really was this language, a shared language with people, that i was always trying to figure out a way into but couldn't quite get there.
I wonder your thoughts about that, especially being in new york as a state where like, vibes can be off if a certain team is not doing well.
It's true, i mean, i also have a husband from ireland who is like a big Liverpool fan.
And I feel like there is no fandom more intense than soccer.
But yeah, it can absolutely change.
It can change an entire year for somebody, like depending on how their team is doing that season.
I don't know.
There's something that's romantic to me about that though, in itself like not in a love, in like a romantic love way, but in more of like a storied, historic way that there are people that can hang in there with the team when it's losing and be there when it's winning.
There's something about that.
I don't know.
That speaks to my romance heart.
I love that there's people that can be that devoted to something like rain or shine.
I love that.
Do you think I should be going to these games in person to get a better sense of?
I do a lot of judging and
Yes.
I feel like you should at least try.
Wait.
So have you been to like, have you been to, have you been to a Red Sox game?
I've been to a Red Sox game, which I appreciate the most because the snacks are good.
So to me, like cotton candy.
So like that.
And if it's nice weather, I have apparently been to some very groundbreaking, interesting games with records set, without knowing it.
Like I was at a Red Sox game on my birthday once that kept going inning after inning.
And I was like, why is this happening to me?
This feels like a special punishment.
And they're like, it's never been this long.
It would like it broken a record.
I've been to the Celtics.
I actually would go to the Celtics when they were bad back in the day and it was very easy to get a seat hockey like once that could be my thing.
Do you think maybe you could try a WNBA game or something?
Yeah.
And that was going to be my next question is as women's sports is finally in getting its due, and more so now, like this idea that you're introducing characters who aren't just helping some male athlete, but that women are athletes.
That's, probably something that I can get very romantic about any man who's supporting that.
Yeah.
I, it's like I.
I mean I think that's something I put in the acknowledgements for picture perfect was like we have these, like women who are suddenly at the forefront of, like the sports fandom.
Like I feel like Simone Biles.
And then we had Iona Maher from during the Olympics, who was the rugby player, and And then, of course, Caitlin Clark.
Everybody's talking about Caitlin Clark all the time.
And that's nice.
It's nice to have these women being spoken about with such respect most of the time in regards to their accomplishments.
And yeah, I agree with you.
I think when you go to a WNBA game and you see men cheering for women, I think that's really important to see.
And for our young men to see, like children, to see that happening and have it be normal.
You may have fixed this for me, because the way you just described that, I'm like yeah, I want to see that.
One of my favorite movies is Love and Basketball.
And that's a situation where you've got two athletes in love, but the trajectories of their careers are going to be really complicated, and gender has a lot to do with that.
So maybe I'm just I need to focus more on going to games where women are featured and also where women get the support they need.
I think that's the answer here.
I think maybe just go watch The Ladies and maybe you'll feel more of a connection.
And there, I think I might have my answer.
I love a heroine.
I'm guilty of trying to like the Red Sox and care about the Celtics when I could be doing more work to follow the WNBA Connecticut Sun.
So now I'm learning about Tina Charles, who seems amazing.
And I'm looking into the multiple women's basketball players on different teams who've had relationships with each other and, I assume, have had to play against each other.
That I find riveting.
Anyway, I think I found my entry point.
So with that, let's play ball.
Love Letters is a production of the Boston Globe.
Our producer is Christina Honichu.
Our executive producer is Kristen Nelson.
Story edit, mixing, and mastering by Jasmine Aguilera.
Sound design by Christina Honotu.
Special thanks to Nancy Barnes and Linda Henry.
Our music is from APM.
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At the time, you were more evolved than other men.
You'd be like, I love this.
I love that.
I might have been on the cutting edge of metrosexual before metrosexual.
I was just going to say, you invented being metrosexual.
I'm Merida Goldstein.
Thanks for listening.
