Is it possible that men like these—priests, coaches, etc.—find a safe haven in the men’s clubs that both the Catholic Church and College sports provide? Look, there is a camaraderie that prevails in these organizations, a “we will protect you” type of environment that wouldn’t exist if women were part of the club. A woman in the Penn State debacle might not have been willing to look the other way. And let’s face it, the evil that lurks within those men might not have been quite as comfortable in the presence of a mixed crowd of men and women. College men’s sports and the Catholic Church have one thing in common: no women in their midst.

Now, I understand that this comparison may be far-fetched, and I may lose Freesia Lane‘s few male readers, but I have to put it out there anyway. Plain sight has always been a good place to hide, and the old boys’ networks in both the college sports arena and the Catholic Church have served these perverts well for many years.

I remember in high school we had two female PE teachers. One taught swimming and the other taught gym. One night after a field hockey game (I wish I still played), I forgot something and went back to the locker room. In the office I saw the swimming teacher sitting on the PE instructor’s lap in a way that made me uncomfortable. They looked up. I looked at them. They looked terrified. I looked away and ran out of the locker room. This was 1970, and I assure you I didn’t think about being gay, or about them being gay, because that kind of thing wasn’t on my radar screen. But I knew something was off about it, and that I should never tell anyone. I didn’t play any more sports after school, and I think I had my period for the next year and a half every time I was supposed to swim and no one said a word to me about it. So I know the feeling of disquiet you get when you know something—and I also know I didn’t tell.

Then, in my early twenties, a pedophile member of my extended family brought a young boy to a family gathering. My boyfriend at the time told me we were leaving, and said he was never coming back to my family’s house. I look back on my lack of action at that time as one of my greatest failures in life. I just didn’t say anything to anyone. I didn’t rock the boat, and I’m sorry. Since it wasn’t blood family, I haven’t seen the perpetrator in more than twenty years (he’s actually on the lam, if the truth be known, and for something totally unrelated to his sexual predilections). But I know I was a party to what he did back then, and I apologize for it now. Oprah is right—you are only as sick as your darkest secret, and that is certainly one of mine. I think if it were to happen now I would not just stand by, but rather stand up. Times they are a-changing, and I’m grateful.

Upon further reflection I realized that all of us who are screaming, “I would never have hidden it or looked away,” need to regroup too. I went and saw Midnight in Paris even though I had sworn off Woody when he went after his common-law wife’s underage child. Is Woody Allen a pedophile? Oh yeah. And don’t talk to me about Roman Polanski and his latest movie. The truth is, we are fickle people who don’t see our own forest through the trees. And I, for one, intend to change.

Here is a message to all pedophiles: Let the bells toll far and wide. There is no safe haven for you people any longer. You will be found. You will be prosecuted, and henceforth you will not be allowed to pick a career in which you might feel safe in the evil that you do. End of story. And if there are other industries providing safe haven for child molesters, let us figure it out now and sweep clean that which has been unswept for far too long.

First, and I must confess to not following baseball, I had no idea that something big happened in baseball in 2002. I think it should have been bigger news. I can see you shaking your male heads in amazement that I missed it, but something as big as changing the way the game is played should have risen above the sports pages, and I don’t think it did. I remember asking my ex-boyfriend Kenny Newman why he loved baseball so much, and he said, “because it’s a perfect numbers game.”

The screenplay—written by my all-time favorite movie and TV writer, Aaron Sorkin—is the reason Moneyball may be one of the best films of the year. The script is perfect. Every line, every look exchanged between the characters (which is a form of dialogue, isn’t it?) is just right. I have not seen such perfect communication since Silence of the Lambs.  I should have known. Thank you once again Aaron, for understanding that words matter, and that the best delivery in the world doesn’t matter if the words are not brilliantly written in the first place. A Few Good Men, The West Wing, and Moneyball: the perfect writer’s trilogy.

The real Peter Brand, Paul Depodesta, just doesn’t seem to be the guy I loved in the movie.

Every character in Moneyball was a starring role for me. Jonah Hill (Knocked Up), plays Peter Brand, the Yale Brainiac who puts together the numbers that change the face of baseball. The movie is perfectly cast, perfectly set up, and rich in content. Hill plays Brand with perfect lip quivering and eye contact that pierced my soul. His performance made me wish I had been nicer to Peter Hein, my long-ago boyfriend for five minutes who was just like the Peter in the film—a brilliant, shy person of substance, a keeper. I did a little more research, and it turns out there is no Peter Brand, and the real brilliant Assistant GM was in fact Paul DePodesta, who is a fabulously fit, handsome personage with no resemblance to the Peter Brand I fell in love with for two hours. Oh, well.

Sweet-singing Kerris Dorsey, who plays Pitt’s daughter, has been in twenty-two films and TV shows, and I have never seen her. No matter. She is as talented and mesmerizing as Dakota Fanning. And boy, she can sing!

Philip Seymour Hoffman lives up to his reputation yet again as the naysayer who turns out to be a fool. He plays the role in a subdued, simmering-with-anger sort of way that can’t be challenged. Great work. Everyone is great.

Ok, I know, I know. I haven’t mentioned Brad Pitt. Everyone seems to think  Pitt will get an Academy Award nomination for Moneyball. I don’t think so. His beautiful face can’t quite sell us the cut-throat, I-will-follow-my-own-drummer-no-matter-what-anyone-thinks sort of person he needs to be as Billy Beane. He’s not horrible, but he is miscast. Trust me on this. It’s only the genius of the dialogue and the story that allows him to almost get it right. Mark my words: not this time Brad.

You have to appreciate true stories that prove it’s not always about the amount of money spent. Sometimes it’s about other things, and that’s an important lesson—especially in America, where baseball is king.

Our company does a lot of work with the Super Bowl, and I sent the Dallas team an e-mail about our social media options, saying, “Give me some data on the Super Bowl that we can provide our clients, not related to us, but to the Super Bowl, like where to get tickets, parking, parties, and the two teams that were chosen to play, so we can provide some real content.”

So the General Manager of Dallas took it to the VP of Sales and said, “What do I do with this? She doesn’t know the teams haven’t been decided yet and she thinks they ‘choose’ them?” Being the sensitive type, she looked at him, picked up the phone and called me. “Merser, it’s me. Are you stupid? They don’t choose the teams, they win a spot in playoffs and that hasn’t been decided yet.” I was on speaker phone and felt the need to regroup quickly. “Well, that doesn’t work for me. How do they expect us to market the damn thing? Call the NFL and tell them to get on it.” Then I hung up. I regrouped, man. I showed my firm grasp of the situation and how agile I am when I need to change my marketing approach.

Last night was the college football finals.  So, being the kind of person who recognizes weaknesses in herself, and always wanting to improve, I went across the street to watch it with some peeps from the office including the VP of Sales.

Well, surprise, surprise. I have a few comments.

1. What’s with the shoes? Are you serious? Aside from being anything but gold (which is the team color they were supposed to be mirroring), they left no room on the field for seeing anything else. Ok, so I get the Nike connection (apparently the CEO of Nike went to Oregon and has given millions to the team and they wear Nike stuff, often new each game). Well as someone who works in marketing, that’s a nightmare. Do you know how many calls their VP of Marketing gets from other teams? Hellloooo. But secondly, I thought college football was not supposed to go there with corporations. Whatever.

2. Tell the GD Tiger to stop with the bobbing head. It was driving me crazy. What happened to simple costumes?

3. The announcers are way overdressed. No one wears a three-piece suit to a football game. Get over yourself.

Now, on to the game, which I must admit, was very exciting. It really was, and I had forgotten how much more I like college football than professional football.

We did laugh a lot.

When we walked into the male-dominated Q’s on Wilshire Boulevard to watch the game, the guys at the next table asked us which team we were rooting for. Since I had no idea which teams were playing, and I was the one he was looking at, I answered, “Which team do you want us to root for? We are a versatile group.” Oregon it was—which was fine by me because they were, in fact, the underdogs.

When a guy got hurt on the first play, one of us said that the guy’s mother was yelling from the stands, “Get up! You are fine. I didn’t come all the way here to watch you get knocked out on the first play of the game. Suck it up!”

Here’s the thing. I had a great time. We placed side bets on where the next play was headed, up the middle, running it, long to the left, etc. We laughed. We texted others, and I’m in.

Now, regarding the Super Bowl. I still think they need to give me more time to market the teams. Plus, people need to book flights early and get good rates. I’m still going to write the NFL, but I’m also going to pick a team next year to make my own, buy a shirt and start watching. Biggest Loser or Monday Night Football. Hmm.

I’d like to introduce the new me. My name is Christine, and I love hockey. I mean I love hockey.

I thought it would be violent and repetitive and full of sloppy men with beer bellies (no judgement, I swear) screaming with paint on their faces. It wasn’t any of those things. It was like ballet but better. The fluidity of the way they were on the ice; the gymnastic prowess of the goalie. I’m hooked. It’s fast, and it’s exciting, and I now have a national team I can follow with hope they will move to the finals or whatever the end of the hockey road is called each season.

A Canadian who was with us said of one of the players on the way home, “he is a good skater and handles the stick well.” I can see there are things to learn about how to refer to things in hockey. Like every sport, there is a language that goes with the sport. I’m going to work on it over the weekend.

Apparently it was one of the most exciting games ever. It went into overtime where one player from each team skates in and shoots to score. In the end, after ten – yes ten! – tries, my team, the Los Angeles Kings lost to the Canadian-some-city-or-other Oilers (Oilers? Why would they name a team Oilers? I looked it up. An oiler is someone who keeps machinery lubricated. I don’t think we want to go there) with a stunning shot into our goal.

The timing of the guys one on one quest against the goalie was awesome. The moment when they shoot. The way they have to wait until just the right moment of release. It was so beautiful.

I’m a convert.

My name is Christine, and I’m a hockey fan. Who’da thunk? I always thought those people are silly. But now, my personal team, the Los Angeles Kings, are going to be a part of my day to day routine. I will follow them in the news. I will buy one of their shirts. I will watch the games on TV. I might even pick a player – not sure yet – to covet and find out when his birthday is and send him a card. My life has changed. I have joined the ranks of Americans who have a sports team that I call mine.

Yikes. Could it be? I’m a fan! Wonders never cease.

I have to be honest. I don’t get it. Granted, last year’s half time performance by The Boss was spectacular, but you can turn that on half way through and see it as a show unto itself. It’s not like it has anything to do with football. And, the ads? A week of press leading up to some stupid beer ad really makes me smile. Fools.

And, while I’m on a roll, what’s with the word Super Bowl? Bowl? A bowl is a round object that holds things. It has nothing to do with football, and it just irks me in some subliminal way. Call things what they are. Football Finals. Football Madness. But bowl? Whatever.

Please don’t get me wrong, I’m all for tradition. I love making Christmas cookies for the holidays, and I love that I eat turkey only once a year at Thanksgiving, and even the groundhog tradition makes me smile and tells me that another year has passed. But let’s get a grip here. Putting two boxes in a tiger’s cage; each one with the team uniform for the two teams playing in the Super Bowl and watching to see which one the tiger tears apart to predict the loser is a bit much, right? Not convinced? They do the same thing with orangutans and team helmets to see which one he puts on to predict the winner.

I thought last year’s Super Bowl could have been sort of cool because I’m a mother and the two quarterbacks were brothers, and I kept thinking about how proud their mom must have been. I also wondered which one she was rooting for. Trust me, she likes one better than the other. I just know it. But they didn’t interview her, or even show her much, so I lost interest. She was in a lose lose situation for sure.

To be honest, I don’t even know who is playing this year. Because I am from NYC, I would have liked it if the Jets made it, but alas, they did not, so I seriously do not know. My brain can’t remember as much as it used to, and these days I have to be very discriminatory when choosing what I will remember and what is irrelevant to world peace or the greater good of those I love, so the Super Bowl teams doesn’t make it through the ‘what to file’ list.

I don’t feel this way about the World Seriers, although I did do a blog about American Idol being as important and loved as the World Series which was highly criticised by those around me. Maybe the fact there is a song (take me out to the ball game) from my childhood that makes me smile, or the fact that a good hot dog now and then is one of life’s great moments, that has something to do with it. As far as I know, there is no food association with football, and for sure no song. They ought to re-think that. It’s a great marketing opportunity. Maybe Buffalo Beef Jerkies or something? And, “let me freeze my ass off at the stadium” could be the song.

Either way, I will tape the game on Sunday and most likely roll through it to find the half time show and the commercials. If I have offended you, please accept my apologies.