Splice Today: A Defense of Red Sox Nation

A week ago, The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Bob Ford ranted about the interlopers who came to see the Sox play the Phillies in a three-game series at Citizens Bank Park, lamenting that the “casual fans who [want] to glom on the gravy train” were wreaking havoc in his city.

He wrote: “Once, there was something appealing about the passion that that Boston fans brought to the team that had broken their hearts on such a regular basis… The team offered a counterbalance to the corporate machine of the New York Yankees.” Hey, Bob, stick it up your ass. As a Sox fan since the mid-60s when I was a squirt, there was nothing “appealing” about losing the World Series in ’67, ’75 and, especially, in ’86. It sucked. When the Yanks’ Aaron Boone took Tim Wakefield deep in the seventh game of the ALCS in 2003, I simply turned off the tube and went to bed, hardly surprised and certainly not “heartbroken.” One of my nephews, who grew up not far from Fenway and went to Boston College, was devastated after the ’03 loss, which makes sense since he was a toddler when Bucky Dent became a household name in New England in 1978. I didn’t share his pain, and I doubt anyone who remembers Frank Malzone did either.