Any Team but Boston

~ Laura

Steve and I have got ourselves a babysitter. (Large grin.) On Saturday at 8:00, a shy thirteen year old who twists her hair and watches HBO on our sofa arrived. And we ran out the front door to a local pub.

Davey’s has Guinness on tap and grandma at the bar. Jersey girls arrived with their parents, and a bachelor party of construction workers stumbled in. Steve and I sat at the bar gossiping with the bartender and watching the ballgame.

When I was thirteen, my dad started taking us to ballgames, because he thought that dads were supposed to do that. He hated it, but he wanted to be a good dad. Daaaad, it’s an inning, not a down.

Thurman Munson was catching. Chris Chambliss on first. Greg Nettles on third. And Reggie was up. Which was great because it was Reggie Day and we were all holding our complimentary Reggie bars. When Reggie blew that ball into the stands in right field, we all lovingly tossed our chocolate bars onto the field. He ran the bases amidst the falling chocolate bars like a Roman lord showered with palms.

What’s a Yankee fan to do? There is no fucking way that I can root for the Sox. It just isn’t happening. I guess that means I have to cheer on the Cards. I’m not excited about it, but I just can’t stand gloating Boston fans.

I think that’s what most people feel about this election. They are not excited about Kerry, but they just can’t let Bush win. A vote for Kerry is a vote against Bush. Those motives don’t exactly drive voters to the booths. It’s probably a bad sign for Kerry, that after a while the bartender turned off the World Series last night. Nobody was interested.

Published by Laura

10 thoughts on “Any Team but Boston”

  1. Y’know, I watched the intros of the game last night, and I kept expecting the crowd to chant “Oh!” at “o’ say can you see”, but I guess that’s just something we do here in Baltimore.

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  2. You know, you might actually be capturing the mindset of the Bush voter perfectly. Having made a catastrophic mistake backing an immoral, cruel, process-addled asshole (Steinbrenner, for those of you playing along at home), the Yankee fan/Bush voter finds himself/herself incapable of rooting for anyone else, even when the victory of some deserving other might bring joy to the nation and the world. It’s like watching heroin addicts try to tell everyone else how insanely great smack really is.

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  3. Don’t you think that the Sox fans finally have a right to gloat? They won, it’s their moment in the sun. The Yankees have won so much that I am sure they have skin cancer from all their time in the sun.
    In this house, we are Tiger fans. We just have to console ourselves that we didn’t suck as bad this year as we normally do. We are rooting for the Sox, because its ’bout time and all.
    We are also Al Sharpton fans. We will vote for Kerry though, cause come on, we couldn’t vote for Bush.

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  4. Lisa said what I was going to say…GLOATING Red Sox fans? Do you know how much these people have suffered? For decades and decades. I’m from New England and have watched psyches be battered from the process of getting their hopes up year after year and getting shot down. If this doesn’t happen for them, it will finish them off.
    Have a little charity, woman!

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  5. Yes, yes. Terribly uncharitable of me I suppose. But these are HISTORIC rivalries. I don’t suppose that Boston fans rooted for the Yankees in previous series either.
    A quick survey at a family party yesterday about the series. Everybody was pulling for St. Louis. It’s just the way it is.
    (Laughing at Tim for turning around my post.)

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  6. After all those years of Mets bashing whie you watched Thurmon and Reggie and I watched… Dave Kingman and Tom Seaver (the second tour of duty) I think you will understand why I ahve joined with other Mets loyalists in rooting for the Red Sox. Don’t hate the Yankees, just the Yankee fans who squandered all their sympathy after 9/11 by trying to push around the rest of the league with their big sticks. Acquiring A-Rod as an attempt to assert hegemonic power was just foolish. Now what does that remind me of?

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  7. You go girl! I can take a bit of Sox gloating, but only a bit. When the discussion shifts back to baseball history, we find our solace. We lost this year, but just think of the Jeter Era: in eight years, six pennants and four world series wins. That stacks up quite well against any other baseball dynasty – most of which, of course, are other Yankees teams. We may be coming to the end of this era (hopefully not another 15 years in the wilderness), but it is high unlikely the current Sox will come anywhere close to matching the accomplishments of the Jeter Era. And here is our secret wish: Sox go on to win game three….and then lose four straight, joining us in our newfound uniqueness. Hegemony? Sure, why not?

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  8. Being a football fan, all I can say is that I can’t wait for this tedious, boring baseball season to be over so we can get to good old fashioned violence on TV. But I’m rooting for the Cardinals.

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