There's a 'Green Monster' in this bedroom

For the love of the game, Johannah and Frank Nevico have started their children early.

No, their son Michael, almost 4, and 11Ú2-year-old Julia aren't sluggers with plastic bats and Wiffle balls just yet. But their allegiance to the Boston Red Sox is serious, and they have the props to show it.

Michael's bedroom in East Hampton, Conn., pays homage to his favorite baseball team. The Green Monster, painted by his mother and her friend Melissa Granger, decorates the back wall of the room, complete with the line score of a June 8, 2004, Red Sox victory over father Frank's favorite team, the San Diego Padres.

"Daddy (Frank) says I'm brainwashing him," says Johannah, 34, a Hartford, Conn., native and the family's biggest Red Sox fan.

But no matter. Michael's full-size bed, converted from his crib, sports a red bed-skirt and beige comforter. His pillows are blue, his throw pillows red. A baseball pillow and a green baseball-motif fleece blanket complete the look. The newest addition to the room, a World Series Champions pennant, is painted on the wall above the bed.

A gray locker-room look-alike coat hanger, complete with a name painted on it - "Nevy," for Nevico - decorates the entrance. A small Red Sox jersey shares the space with a Padres jersey, but the Red Sox theme prevails: A Boston cap hangs between the jerseys.

Johannah says the Green Monster was completed on the day of Game 4 of the American League Championship Series, in which the Red Sox started their historic comeback against the New York Yankees. The rest of the baseball decorations - except the pennant - were finished by the time the Red Sox won the World Series.

You wouldn't expect anything less from a woman who dyed 50 socks red, filled them with candy, inscribed "How sweet it is" on them and distributed them to every adult at work the next day.

Baseball's just in the Nevico blood. Frank, a police officer, was a third baseman at Eastern Connecticut State University, on a team that won a national championship. Frank's college jersey hangs in Michael's room.

Decorating comes naturally to Johannah, a special-education teacher in New Britain, Conn. When she's not watching baseball on television, she's usually tuned into Home & Garden Television.

The color coordination in Michael's room was not planned that way. When she began decorating Michael's room, she started with the primary colors. "And it's funny how red just went to the forefront," she says.

Julia's room, meanwhile, is surprisingly devoid of the baseball theme. It's not that Johannah isn't encouraging Julia to be a Red Sox fan. "Julia has all of her Red Sox stuff, too," Johannah says, but it's not displayed anywhere. Johannah's friends convinced her that a feminine touch would be more appropriate there, so Julia got the soft colors and the fish tank.

Johannah says she isn't trying to force anything on the children but believes that sports are an important way of learning life lessons and creating bonds.

What if Michael grows up to be a Yankees fan? "He won't," Johannah says quickly. She turns to Julia, who is sitting in her mother's arms wearing her brother's Red Sox cap backward. "No Yankees. Yankees stink, huh?"

"Yankees stink," Julia affirms.