You May Now Kiss the Centerfielder

Weddings...

Yeah, I really don't have much to say about weddings...

Sure, I'll take the proverbial plunge myself one day. A few tax breaks, free Corona, an opportunity to finally let myself go like Phil Mickelson — how can I say no to that?

(Sorry, Phil. I'm writing a column on Major League Baseball and I, in a non-sequitur of sorts, decided to venture into the realm of golf just to call you fat. I apologize wholeheartedly — I should have used the porcine David Ortiz in that context. I don't know if you watch baseball, Phil, but just like yourself, Mr. Ortiz is pretty fat.)

Anyways, Phil, I was coerced into showing up to this wedding Saturday. Don't quote me on this, but I guess my uncle Joe needed something else to do in Los Angeles since the Dodgers have been fielding a team of brides-to-be for so long.

Like I've told you before, Phil, I'm not a real fan of weddings. There's just something unsettling about watching two grown adults engaging in public displays of affection similar to the acts of endearment witnessed between Johnny Damon and Kevin Millar en route to the World Series last fall.

Like Mr. Millar, though, Phil, I mistake Mr. Damon for a woman every time I turn on ESPN and see his shoulder-length hair streaming behind him as he chases down another home run given up by overrated-starting-pitcher-turned-batting-practice-closer Curt Schilling.

With Mr. Damon in the outfield looking like a woman and Mr. Schilling on the mound throwing like one, I think that finally explains the homoerotic feel to last year's playoffs in Boston.

Wasn't Jimmy Fallon in some movie about the Red Sox during that time last year as well, Phil? Hmm...

Not that there's anything wrong with that, Jimmy.

I can see the SNL script now:

Tina Fey: Hello, Jimmy.

Jimmy Fallon: Hehe, you said Jimmy.

Tina Fey: Hehe, you said Jimmy, too.

Queue audience laugh signal.

So back to the wedding, Phil.

I'm sitting there in some uncomfortable chair with my arm around my teary-eyed girlfriend (women eat that whole matrimony stuff up, don't they?) somewhere between the last "I do" and the first trace of remorse on my uncle's face when some drunken old lady (sorry, Mom) decides it is time to start dancing.

Now few things irritate me more than weddings and the Boston Red Sox Nation, but dancing is most definitely one of those things. I do not mince my words, Phil, when I tell you that I would rather watch an entire Red Sox game sober than either witness or participate in anything remotely associated with dancing.

Case and point, Phil: look where dancing got that poor Kevin Federline fellow. He's dancing one minute, Phil, minding his business, you know? Then, out of nowhere, he meets this uber fertile Britney Spears character and ... end of story. Put you and Mr. David Ortiz together, Phil, and throw in that famous hot dog eating Takeru Kobayashi guy and Britney covers you guys carne asada for carne asada.

So, in an attempt to avoid such a fiasco, where I'd end up dating Kristie Alley or something, I pulled my arm from the girlfriend and, more troubling still, dropped my Amstel Light to charge for the nearest exit faster than Manny Ramirez from a steroid screening.

It is all a blur form there, Phil. I suppose I was intercepted on the dance floor, where I proceeded to go into preventative shock, for when I came to I was participating in some absurd, ritualistic motioning of the letters Y-M-C-A with my arms and upper-torso.

This is not something I'm proud of, Phil, but I am of the opinion that people can grow from such traumatic experiences. It was during this dance of sorts, Phil, that I felt a certain sense of oneness with the 2004 world champion Red Sox and, in a larger sense, the city of Boston.

Now, when I turn on ESPN and see Matt Damon and Ben Affleck sitting side-by-side in Fenway Park, I, in an odd way, understand where they are coming from. Love — as in the uniting of man and woman in the sanctity marriage, or in two middle-aged men uniting to catch a ballgame together on a Saturday night — I have realized, Phil, is something to be cherished in all its myriad forms.

Here is to the Boston Red Sox, the Village People of the MLB.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.