Flavio Morales remembers his first outing to Dodger Stadium like he was Neil Armstrong landing on the moon—his heart pounding in his chest, the glove warped around his hand, gravity slightly dissipating as he finally set foot on this place he had only ever seen on T.V.
“It was the Dodgers vs. Phillies. A Sunday day game. Jerry Reuss vs. Steve Carlton.
They lost 1–0. But it was an amazing experience with our dad,” he tells me.
He also remembers how his mom got the tickets—carefully cutting the barcodes off boxes of Grandma’s Cookies.
“My mom got tickets via a promotion,” he says. “She saved a bunch of box tops.”
The way this memory jumped out when I asked him how he felt about the Dodgers tells me everything: the team means a great deal to him and his family. And yet this weekend, as the Boys in Blue begin their defense of a World Series title—after cutting down the Cincinnati Reds on their way to the NLDS—Flavio finds himself wondering the same thing I’ve been thinking a lot lately:
Is it okay to root for the Dodgers right now?