Smooth Mark Loretta

There's a good Gordon Edes piece in today's Globe about Dave Loretta, Mark's Dad, who was at Fenway yesterday and got to see his son hit a walkoff homer to cap off a terrific game. Among the gems in the article is Loretta the younger describing the pounding he got when his teammates mobbed him after his home run trot:

But [this being] the first time [to hit a walkoff], I felt like I wanted the entire
experience, and [Jason] Varitek certainly gave it to
me. He was right there waiting for me. My lips are sore, who knows who
got me where.

The whole family, which hails from the Golden State, was in Boston for the weekend and when Mark's youngest sister (a senior in high school) asked about our fake holiday and whether CA had any similar historical sweetness, Loretta the elder quipped:

I said, 'Kelly, California was colonized by the Spanish. No major
battles. A lot of Franciscan monks going up and down, establishing
missions. That's the history of California. There were no wars, no
revolutions for independence, no Bunker Hill, no Boston Massacre, no
Boston Tea Party. All that stuff happened here.'

She said, 'That's funny, Dad. I was wondering whether California had anything at all.'

And
I said, 'Frankly, no. There really isn't. It's a nice place to live,
but it doesn't have the tradition, history, any of that stuff.'

Damn straight.