Those who were in on the early days of my old blog know that I've suffered delusions of having a relationship to the Brewers' Ricky Weeks and Prince Fielder. Well, I was at it again today. Josh and I went to Miller Park to see the Brewers take on the Cardinals, and, first Brewer to the plate, Ricky hits a dinger. My eyes welled with tears of pride. Then, in the #5 slot, Prince hits one. Proud again. Not quite as proud as with Ricky, but we'll get to that in a minute. Now, I'm rational. I know that Prince Fielder could trip over me and not know that we've actually spent a lot of time together--well at least "together" in the same ballpark. (Don't laugh! Some of them, like Pohlman Field in Beloit, were quite small.) The point is, it's a one-way relationship. I have a sense of it, and he certainly doesn't. So far, I've been able to avoid stalker-type behavior, but it has given me a glimpse of understanding of how people might find that path. I mean, I'm standing in a stadium with tens of thousands of other people who all believe they have a right to a piece of these players, and I'm the worst of them. I want to kick these Joes for thinking they have the right to have their piece of "my" boys. They're Johnny-come-latelies jumping on my bandwagon. Those boys are the best thing in baseball, they're mine, and I'll shoot anyone who says different (Oops! I said I wasn't going down that road, didn't I?) So what if I'm proud of them? As long as I don't start making plans to off Prince's wife or kidnap his baby, what's the big deal? None. So I learned something about myself. I'm not immune to the draw of celebrity sickness. More importantly, I think I may have "discovered" that I believe that, like altruism, pure pride in someone else does not exist. The reason I was more proud of Ricky than I was of Prince? Because I was more proud of myself for backing the less obvious horse. Josh is always talking about Prince. Prince this and Prince that. I'm always reminding him of Ricky. So when Ricky does something great, it reflects well on me. Because that's what it's all about, right?