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October 24, 2007
World Series time
Ah yes, now that the harshness of another long winter has started to descend upon us, it's time for, of course, the Fall Classic. The World Series. This year it's the upstart Colorado Rockies - who, I am pretty sure, nobody predicted to make it this far - and the Boston Red Sox. Although you didn't ask, I'm going to tell you anyway. I'm pulling for the Rockies this time around.
Back in my college days, I took the Boston Red Sox as the team I wanted to be a fan of. I studied their history, their roster, and that curse of theirs. But soon, it began to wear on me: Red Sox Nation is insufferable. Fenway is beautiful. Woe is me, we can't win the World Series. Buckner. Bucky Bleepin' Dent. Aaron Boone. Yaz and the Splendid Splinter. The Damn Yankees. Pretty soon, I got sick of it. When they won the World Series a few years ago, it was the culmination of a process started about ten years back: an unequivocal arms race with the New York Yankees.
Every baseball fan worth his salt knows the Red Sox/Yankees rivalry is the most intense in all of baseball. Part of that stemmed from the Sox' perpetual inability to best the Yankees. Between the Sox' World Series triumphs in 1918 and 2004, I think the Yankees won it 26 times. That's incredible.
However, nowadays, the Yankees and Sox are virtually indistinguishable. I mean, there's still lots of differences: Steinbrenner's an asshole, and the Sox owner doesn't have much of a reputation. Chief Yankee propagandist/nostalgist Billy Crystal is annoying and grating as ever, while prominent Red Sox fans like Bill Simmons and Ben Affleck are merely annoying. (No, Bill, I don't care what your buddy Sully thinks.) There's the ballparks: Fenway is gorgeous, and Yankee Stadium is a cavernous monstrosity.
Yet I still have the haunting feeling they are now one and the same: they have the two highest payrolls in all of baseball, they are always 1-2 in their division, they overpay for free agents, and their fans get PO'ed if they don't win the World Series every year. If the Yankees are the evil empire, the Sox are, uh, evil empire 2.0. I, personally, am over that. My only fear is that the Cubs, my team for the past five or six years, are next in line. They are displaying many of the same symptoms.
So, this year, I will be pleased if the Colorado Rockies emerge as this year's champion. Though somehow, I doubt the Red Sox war machine will let that happen. It's a possibility, though. Cheer for the men in purple, why don't you?
entry no. 989
Posted by oz115 at October 24, 2007 12:03 PM