I played a variety of sports as a kid: 9 years of dance, short stint in gymnastics, few good seasons of cheerleading, childhood swimming revisited in high school, 2 uncharacteristic weeks of rugby, and a golden period of pre-teen softball. Softball was #2 in my Myspace Top 8 of youth sports. It was the first time I remember experiencing discipline, pushing my limits, camaraderie, and to be honest, masculinity. I looked forward to dirt and rainbow bruises. The boys from my class would come watch us play and I wanted to impress them on their level. That's great you think I'm pretty but what about my batting average? Impressive, huh? We didn't get baseball pants. We wore the iconic Soffe short in candy colors. No sliding pad, which means rounding home into a plastic, slightly-raised-above-the-dirt home plate, which also means sporting a bruised thigh for the summer. I was sublime.

Around the same time, my mother was researching our ancestors (pre-Ancestory.Com, mind you). Lewis Merriwether, some guy named John on the Mayflower and...

MICKEY MANTLE. ⚾️🌭

Center fielder (me too) and first baseman from 1951-1968 for the New York Yankees. Switch hitter (not me), won the Triple Crown in 1956 (obvi not me), and went to 12 World Series (totally me!). He's a pretty distant ancestor (great great great grandfather's cousin) but I cherished knowing that my love of baseball ran vein deep.

I found this vintage Bugle Boys raglan in a shop somewhere in LA and bought it because it reminded me of MM. I saw these Who What Wear x Target flared track pants and knew they would be the perfect contradiction to a multitude of occasions and outfits. Floppy wool hat to amp the femme and a grey heeled ankle boot to fancify.

No autographs please. I'm a person, just like you, with a moderately famous relative.