Any Red Sox fan stumbling here expecting to read insightful sports commentary should know three things right away:
1. This piece is most likely too all over the place, written for my enjoyment only.
2. I don't give a shit about the Red Sox, and yet...
3. I'm glad they lost. Now all you fans stop pissing all over Kenmore till next year.
A year ago, I prayed for the Sox' winning streak to end so I could ride the T in peace. A year later, my prayer has finally been answered.
Since Friday, the world is making sense again. Summer is finally taking a hint and leaving. My roommate situation is stable again and just might be for the whole year coming. Rove just might not get away with skullfucking Valerie Plame like he planned to next week, with Judith Miller documenting the event from start to finish (mind you, I said might). And, if we're lucky, one other person will raise an eyebrow to all the buddy shots of Clinton and Bush popping up lately and realize the two-party sham that exists in America.
One can hope.
Though not a sports fan, I have enough of them as friends and family that I've listened to (and even gone to games with) over the years. Through these experiences, I have come up with two theories that just may well become laws of the Boston Red Sox and it's fandom:
1. Every Red Sox fan either will hate, hates, or has hated every single Red Sox player in the team's history.
2. Every Red Sox player has to leave Boston and go to New York to make something of themselves. This goes up to and includes the 2004 World Series Champion Red Sox team.
My third theory might be that America is (slightly) better off when the Red Sox lose. I don't think the country could have taken a second year in a row.
Last year, with the Sox winning their first World Series in 86 years, reality was upheaved on top of the previous four years of upheaval. From there, Curt Schilling, living up his name, proceeded to whore for GW, who beyond all reason won four more years for the opportunity to turn the clock on the country back to Jesus' first birthday (trying to rush past the sixties, because why focus on old, unrealistic ideas, y'know?) while helping to destroy the place where his favorite philosopher supposedly came from. Oh, yeah, and also helping to destroy the source of Jesus' original fan base here at home.
I could go on from there, given that the above only covers October and a part of November, but do I really need to?
It must have been a Herculean effort for the liberal fans to see last year's world champs pose with Bush and not see something wrong. I wonder if any of them looked at that class picture from Hell and went "Oh, no, not like this. Don't have our day in the sun be like this!"
Sure it seems a little weird to expect good things to happen now that the Sox are no longer champs, but really, a lot of fans out there blamed the team's near-century long losing streak on Babe Ruth, a man who a) had done good things for the Sox (see Theory One), b) didn't want anything do with the Sox and probably had greater resentment towards New York, and c) was probably too busy drinking and whoring to ever utter a curse let alone one that would span generations.
With that in mind, am I really making that much of a stretch in most Sox fans' belief systems?
For a long time, I have noticed the sheer fanaticism and society's willingness to take advantage of it and them. Massachusetts people should remember that we do come from a puritanical, zealot history, and even in a so-called liberal haven, that part of our past seems to pop up in modern life from time to time. If it isn't funding terrorists in Ireland, it's a few thousand Sox fans going, "Celebrate our team's win like complete savages until someone dies? Sure."
Now, you might be thinking that a great deal of that crowd (like the gang of idiots that gathered after the Patriots' Superbowl victories) were likely out-of-state students who never cared about the Sox before that. Well, I agree, and that's what fanaticism can do to people who even just watch from the sidelines.
You would think Baseball officials or so-called moral majorities would have called for at least a postponing of the World Series while those people thought of what they were doing in this city. But no, this devoition was either too shared and/or profitable to delay.
Maybe in the future, ten years or a hundred from now, when there are other Red Sox victories to overshadow this one, people might look back on this year with some shame. I, for one, find it embarrassing that in such an important year for our country, young people were noticed more in Massachusetts for gathering in the streets over something comparatively trivial.
Maybe a whole new curse is upon us: the curse of Snelgrove. Then again, fans would have to blame themselves instead of New York. And most probably don't even remember who that was.
When you think about it, the Salem Witch trials pretty much had people dying over less than nothing, with people probably even more embarrassed over the frenzy. Look how that turned into a tourist trap.
More likely, we'll see something erected to commemorate the lifting of the curse yadda yadda. And Ben "I am so a Bostonian" Afleck will narrate it.
(Apologies to my Red Sox fan friends. I do this so I can keep quiet when I'm around you. No, none of you would cause a riot knowingly. Yes, I know some of you wanted to vote for Bush before Schilling. Don't make me read my sestina about the damned New England Patriots.)
1. This piece is most likely too all over the place, written for my enjoyment only.
2. I don't give a shit about the Red Sox, and yet...
3. I'm glad they lost. Now all you fans stop pissing all over Kenmore till next year.
A year ago, I prayed for the Sox' winning streak to end so I could ride the T in peace. A year later, my prayer has finally been answered.
Since Friday, the world is making sense again. Summer is finally taking a hint and leaving. My roommate situation is stable again and just might be for the whole year coming. Rove just might not get away with skullfucking Valerie Plame like he planned to next week, with Judith Miller documenting the event from start to finish (mind you, I said might). And, if we're lucky, one other person will raise an eyebrow to all the buddy shots of Clinton and Bush popping up lately and realize the two-party sham that exists in America.
One can hope.
Though not a sports fan, I have enough of them as friends and family that I've listened to (and even gone to games with) over the years. Through these experiences, I have come up with two theories that just may well become laws of the Boston Red Sox and it's fandom:
1. Every Red Sox fan either will hate, hates, or has hated every single Red Sox player in the team's history.
2. Every Red Sox player has to leave Boston and go to New York to make something of themselves. This goes up to and includes the 2004 World Series Champion Red Sox team.
My third theory might be that America is (slightly) better off when the Red Sox lose. I don't think the country could have taken a second year in a row.
Last year, with the Sox winning their first World Series in 86 years, reality was upheaved on top of the previous four years of upheaval. From there, Curt Schilling, living up his name, proceeded to whore for GW, who beyond all reason won four more years for the opportunity to turn the clock on the country back to Jesus' first birthday (trying to rush past the sixties, because why focus on old, unrealistic ideas, y'know?) while helping to destroy the place where his favorite philosopher supposedly came from. Oh, yeah, and also helping to destroy the source of Jesus' original fan base here at home.
I could go on from there, given that the above only covers October and a part of November, but do I really need to?
It must have been a Herculean effort for the liberal fans to see last year's world champs pose with Bush and not see something wrong. I wonder if any of them looked at that class picture from Hell and went "Oh, no, not like this. Don't have our day in the sun be like this!"
Sure it seems a little weird to expect good things to happen now that the Sox are no longer champs, but really, a lot of fans out there blamed the team's near-century long losing streak on Babe Ruth, a man who a) had done good things for the Sox (see Theory One), b) didn't want anything do with the Sox and probably had greater resentment towards New York, and c) was probably too busy drinking and whoring to ever utter a curse let alone one that would span generations.
With that in mind, am I really making that much of a stretch in most Sox fans' belief systems?
For a long time, I have noticed the sheer fanaticism and society's willingness to take advantage of it and them. Massachusetts people should remember that we do come from a puritanical, zealot history, and even in a so-called liberal haven, that part of our past seems to pop up in modern life from time to time. If it isn't funding terrorists in Ireland, it's a few thousand Sox fans going, "Celebrate our team's win like complete savages until someone dies? Sure."
Now, you might be thinking that a great deal of that crowd (like the gang of idiots that gathered after the Patriots' Superbowl victories) were likely out-of-state students who never cared about the Sox before that. Well, I agree, and that's what fanaticism can do to people who even just watch from the sidelines.
You would think Baseball officials or so-called moral majorities would have called for at least a postponing of the World Series while those people thought of what they were doing in this city. But no, this devoition was either too shared and/or profitable to delay.
Maybe in the future, ten years or a hundred from now, when there are other Red Sox victories to overshadow this one, people might look back on this year with some shame. I, for one, find it embarrassing that in such an important year for our country, young people were noticed more in Massachusetts for gathering in the streets over something comparatively trivial.
Maybe a whole new curse is upon us: the curse of Snelgrove. Then again, fans would have to blame themselves instead of New York. And most probably don't even remember who that was.
When you think about it, the Salem Witch trials pretty much had people dying over less than nothing, with people probably even more embarrassed over the frenzy. Look how that turned into a tourist trap.
More likely, we'll see something erected to commemorate the lifting of the curse yadda yadda. And Ben "I am so a Bostonian" Afleck will narrate it.
(Apologies to my Red Sox fan friends. I do this so I can keep quiet when I'm around you. No, none of you would cause a riot knowingly. Yes, I know some of you wanted to vote for Bush before Schilling. Don't make me read my sestina about the damned New England Patriots.)
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