Notes from Red Sox Nation, Wauwatosa bureau

I'm writing.  Not surprising, because that's how a blog post is brought into the world.  But I'm writing at a coffee shop (also not surprising) in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin.  The place is full; probably sixty-five or seventy people are drinking coffee and using yellow highlighters or texting whoever they text from a coffee shop on a Saturday afternoon.

There are three of us in the place with baseball caps - at least baseball caps that represent a baseball team.  They're all Red Sox caps, which strikes me as a little odd, since we're all of a ten-minute drive from Miller Park, which drew more than three million fans last year to watch the Brewers.  

But more than casting doubt on the depth of Brewers fandom in suburban Milwaukee, it causes me concern that my Red Sox cap has become iconic, more than a Red Sox beacon in the Central Time Zone, like a Michael Jordan shirt in a remote Guatemalan village, or a Brett Favre jersey in Warsaw.  Maybe the other people in the Tosa Alterra saw Tony Conigliaro play DH at Fenway Park in his short-lived comeback attempt in 1975.  Maybe they pulled half their hair out every time Bob Stanley came into a game in the mid '80s.  Maybe they know that before there was a Jacoby Ellsbury, there was a Steve Ellsworth, and before that, a Dick Ellsworth.  But alas, I'm guessing not.

On the other hand, I've purchased two Red Sox caps in the past five years, and each time, the Red Sox won a World Series.  I believe there's a direct cause-and-effect relationship there, but in case I'm not the factor at work, I urge everyone else to stop by their closest hat shop.