Tuesday, October 19, 2004
Red Socked
I'm not a baseball fan. But it's impossible not to get caught up in baseball when you live here in Red Sox Nation.
Last night the Sox survived their second elimination game against the arch-nemesis Yankees, and are now down 3-2 in the AL Championship Series. Shelly and I were out and about last night, shopping and visiting my parents at their hotel, and although we didn't care so much about the game, we were constantly aware of how it was going. The checkers at Bed Bath & Beyond had a little radio, and they told us the score as we swiped our credit card. Cheers erupted in the hotel, letting us know the Sox had done something good. And when we were driving home just after the game had ended, other cars on the street were honking in mad celebration.
Sometimes I wonder if Boston's Red Sox fanaticism isn't so much love for the Red Sox as it is hate for the Yankees. When Shelly went (as the governor's employee) to the rally celebrating the Patriots' second Super Bowl win in three years, the crowd, shivering in the bitter cold, spontaneously erupted into a chant of "Yankees suck! Yankees suck!" In March, we went to a Celtics game. It was close, but the Celtics won, and kept their playoff hopes alive. As we were filing out, the same chant suddenly enveloped us. In a store window in the North End we once saw the following picture with the following caption:
Last night the Sox survived their second elimination game against the arch-nemesis Yankees, and are now down 3-2 in the AL Championship Series. Shelly and I were out and about last night, shopping and visiting my parents at their hotel, and although we didn't care so much about the game, we were constantly aware of how it was going. The checkers at Bed Bath & Beyond had a little radio, and they told us the score as we swiped our credit card. Cheers erupted in the hotel, letting us know the Sox had done something good. And when we were driving home just after the game had ended, other cars on the street were honking in mad celebration.
Sometimes I wonder if Boston's Red Sox fanaticism isn't so much love for the Red Sox as it is hate for the Yankees. When Shelly went (as the governor's employee) to the rally celebrating the Patriots' second Super Bowl win in three years, the crowd, shivering in the bitter cold, spontaneously erupted into a chant of "Yankees suck! Yankees suck!" In March, we went to a Celtics game. It was close, but the Celtics won, and kept their playoff hopes alive. As we were filing out, the same chant suddenly enveloped us. In a store window in the North End we once saw the following picture with the following caption:
Don't you just HATE this guy?
I feel bad for the Patriots, who currently are the most dominant force that has ever hit the NFL. I feel bad for the Celtics, who, at a Red Sox rally at Fenway before the playoffs started, were completely excluded from a video clip montage featuring the best of Boston sports (it included the B.U. - B.C. hockey game, but no Celtics). I never hear a peep out of the Bruins. It's all Red Sox Red Sox Red Sox.
Shelly says she's disillusioned with the Red Sox fans' illusions of greatness. Me, I'm just happily entertained by it all.
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