Boston Red Sox Fan - Defined

Before I start any major contributions geared toward a dialogue among fans of this major league baseball team, I consider it appropriate to define the word 'fan,' particularly as it relates to me and the Red Sox.

I was born in Boston; actually about 6 miles or so south of it, in a town called Weymouth. I don't remember when I first started to attend Sox games, although I do remember trying to keep up with my Dad as he strode up the ramps at Fenway Park. I have something of a 'muscle memory' of pumping my short (and still relatively short) legs up those ramps and discovering the green magic (and Monster) that was Fenway Park. Had to have been in the 50s, sometime. I also remember travelling to Detroit on a camping vacation once and sitting in Tiger Stadium as Ted Williams stepped to the plate and hit a home run. I was jumping up and down, when a man seated next to me asked, "Who's Ted Williams?" I have a mental 'muscle memory' of my jaw dropping and then, as I started to explain, realizing that the man knew damn well who Ted Williams was.

That's the distant past of it. The present of it is that I've twice moved away from the 'friendly confines' and find myself some 16 hours away in Wilmington, NC, which greatly inhibits my ability to see even broadcasts of the Red Sox; in fact, here in Wilmington, the only teams I can follow with any regularity are the Braves on TBS and the Cubs on WGN, out of Chicago. I'm looking into subscribing to NESN and barring that, signing on to available MLB feeds, for which I am more than willing to pay.

As to being a 'fan' and what that means, I believe myself to be among a 'silent majority' of Red Sox Nation citizens. That means that while I'm aware that Jim Rice just fell short of the necessary votes to get him into the Hall of Fame, I haven't a clue as to his lifetime batting average, nor his home run and RBI totals. I don't know and frankly don't care how much money Manny makes. I couldn't tell you where the Red Sox ranked in terms of runs scored in 2007, nor could I rattle off the team ERA. I will endeavor, as this exercise proceeds, to seek that sort of information when it becomes relevant to something I want to write about.

One other relevancy here. My first major move away from the Boston area, aside from a stint in the US Army which dropped me all over the place, including a two-year stint in Panama, was to the New York area, where, being a baseball fan, in general, I found myself in need of a team I could follow on a more or less daily basis. My Dad would (seriously) have crawled out of his grave and throttled me back to death with him, if I'd opted to follow the Yankees, so by default, I started tracking the Mets. And got to like the most recent reincarnation of this National League team; my first NL experience, really. I found myself, as well, tuning in to Yankee games that put me in a position of rooting for a team (any team) to beat them; an odd sort of mind-set to have when you're watching a baseball game. Not rooting for a team to win, but hoping that one of them will lose.

So, with the start of spring training a mere matter of weeks away, it's time for me to brush off the dust of a strange winter. I made the move here to NC right during the World Series and watched the Red Sox win in a bar with a 24-ft rental moving van full of my 'stuff' parked outside, ready for the 12 hour trip which commenced the followiing morning. In a lot of ways, I'm still settling in down here; establishing contacts in my freelance writing career and trying to make sure the rent gets paid every month.

But being so far away, I'm psyched to get involved here, because it will force on me a measure of discipline to keep track of my beloved Red Sox and how their 2008 season will be shaping up in the weeks and months ahead to opening day. It is my intent to bring a measure of knowledge to these postings, while at the same time, trying to steer clear of too many 'stats' and a sense that, as a team, the Sox should be afforded a measure of respect that they don't earn; every day, out on the field, where it counts.