she's not the kind to need or use an alibi

My baseball season has been officially over for a week, and I'm experiencing some withdrawal. The days are getting shorter and cooler and while I'm way excited for the White Sox in the World Series, I'm also getting wistful for the regular season baseball. Less worry, more romance. I have, therefore, turned to Ken Burns's Baseball.

Now, I watched this in fits and starts with my dad when it originally aired, so it's familiar ground, but man. It still rocks. Plus I'm much more of a fanatic now, and therefore paying closer attention. It's an intellectual orgy on many levels for me. A full-on historic study of baseball (touching on its relationship to the Civil War, which was my pet historical topic as a child... That's right. I listened to the Andersonville Diaries on tape whilst going to sleep). Baseball musings by people like Billy Crystal and George Plimpton. And, a connection that I had forgotten about, namely the Vassar Connection.

They are everywhere, Vassar Connections. Sometimes they're a little "c." People in your building, at work, next to you on a plane. The Vassar Baseball Connection is a big "C" because those intrepid ladies of Vassar Female College were the first women to play organized baseball, beginning in 1866.

This photo was taken in 1876, shortly before a public outcry against the "vulgarity" of women playing baseball shut them down. The team pictured here called themselves the Resolutes. How fuckin' cool is that? The Resolutes! Brilliant! I may just have to make a request to the powers that be at the old alma mater to scrap this Brewers business for the Resolutes. Or we could go whole hog (and ignore the gents) and be the Resolute Roses. Look out!

Dork I may be. But if baseball's good enough for early Vassar women and Walt Whitman, by golly it's good enough for me.