Dakota Lovins

My name is Dakota Lovins, and I attend Arizona State University as a Sports Journalism Major. I was born in Yakima, Washington (like Scott Hatteberg), but I’ve lived in Colorado, outside of Philadelphia, Boston, and now Spokane, Washington. My favorite Team is Boston Red Sox. In 2002, I had just turned 4, and was starting to get into t-ball. My dad went on an east coast business trip, and managed to scalp a ticket in Baltimore to see the Red Sox play the Orioles at Camden. The seats ended up being insanely good – right behind home plate, only four or five rows back. He happened to watch Pedro Martinez earn his 20th victory of the year. He bought me a Sox cap after that to bring to me back at home, and I’ve been a die hard fan of theirs ever since.

I can’t pick just one favorite baseball memory, so here are a few: David Ortiz’s game-tying grand slam in Game 2 of the 2013 ALCS, the time I got three balls at Coors Field on my 7th birthday, seeing Ichiro take batting practice for the first time (he was crushing homers, and then he went into the outfield and was making behind the back catches like it was nothing), Game 4 of the 2017 ALDS and Game 1 of the 2018 World Series (my first playoff games ever, both at Fenway).

Here’s my fun fact: When I was 9 years old, I lived in Fort Collins, Colorado. It was 2007, and the Rockies were in the middle of their ridiculous 21-1 run to the World Series, so the town was buzzing. I was a Red Sox fan, though, so as the World Series was gearing up to start, I was a big outcast at school. I lived about an hour from Coors Field, and my grandparents happened to be visiting us from Washington during Games 3, 4, and 5. My grandpa found a deal on eBay, and bought four tickets for us to go to Game 5 for four hundred bucks each. Except, my grandpa isn’t great with computers, and it turned out that the tickets were actually four THOUSAND dollars each, and if he couldn’t resell them, he’d be declaring bankruptcy. I had already been told I got to go to a World Series game, and then had the tickets snatched from my hands in a cruel twist of fate. I was devastated. Luckily, it all worked out; we couldn’t find anyone to buy the tickets, but the Red Sox swept the Rockies. I remember going and waking my grandpa up after Jonathan Papelbon struck out Seth Smith to end the series, giving Boston their 2nd World Championship of the decade, and saving my grandpa $16,000.