Not even the Yankees have sunk to this level. The Red Sox are fast descending into Dan Snyder territory.

Not that there's anything wrong with it, as long as they keep piling up the rings. That's one aspect of marketing that Snyder hasn't quite mastered.

I'm running for president. Here's my Five Point Plan:

1) pizza shall no longer be tossed at fans trying to catch a foul ball, unless that fan is wearing a Yankee cap. Any fan that hits another not wearing a Yankee cap with a slice of pizza will be forced to perform 1 month of community service lecturing grade school children throughout the New England area on the dangers of Ben Affleck.

2) Dan Shaughnessy will be appointed Red Sox Nation propagandist, assigned to create and edit all educational materials emanating from the nation, with two restrictions: 1) he has to forego all previous realtionships with other media outlets and 2) he is not permitted to write anything remotely related to baseball or the Red Sox.

3) use all Nation resources to get the team to retire Maury McDermott's uniform number.

4) invade Florida to retrieve the frozen head and body of Ted Williams, have Doris Kearns Goodwin sew them back together using the old Singer machine she inherited from her Irish grandmother, and have them both re-buried under the plate in the rightfield hometeam bullpen, with a small stone plaque that says "Here lies Ted ####### Williams, the greatest ####### hitter in baseball".

5) campaign to hold a Jim Piersall Day. Any fan that gets off his meds and climbs the screen behind home plate in a delusional rage will get an autographed ball signed by Piersall himself and a complementary Beatle wig.

OK, fellow BTFers. We all know what's at stake. Let's all go out there and try like the dickens to get out the vote and make this happen. What we need is change, not more of this "inside Rt. 128" status quo.

Blech. I'd rather just be one of the 17 remaining A's fans, ugly stadium, tarps, players made of tinfoil and all. Better to be a fan of The Spent Poets than latch onto The Stone Temple Pilots.

Jeez, Kevin. You have no idea how badly I needed some levity today, and that posting delivered it in spades. Classic.

4 is almost enough to make me "unignore" Kevin. But not quite.

4 is almost enough to make me "unignore" Kevin. But not quite.

So if you have him on ignore, how do you know . . .

Point two (fan census/feedback) is actually not a bad idea. Point four (benefits/freebies) is just the usual promotional crap. And point five (giving tickets to people in the community) is also just fine.

But point one ('governors' for each state in new england) and point four (kid captains) are the most blood curdlingly awful stuff ever.

Jeez, Kevin. You have no idea how badly I needed some levity today, and that posting delivered it in spades. Classic.

If it were anyone but kevin, I would say the levity was intentional.

i dunno, i kinda find the president of Red Sox Nation's ideas dorkily cute.

Blech. I'd rather just be one of the 17 remaining A's fans, ugly stadium, tarps, players made of tinfoil and all. Better to be a fan of The Spent Poets than latch onto The Stone Temple Pilots.

Oh come on, STP were never cool.

Oh come on, STP were never cool.

True, true. What would be a better analogy? REM? U2? Metallica? Post David Lee Roth Van Halen?

Oh come on, STP were never cool.

Isn't that the point?

Oh come on, STP were never cool.

Isn't that the point?

Well, yeah, but then I thought I was just being mean. I cry on the inside very easily.

Kid Nation Captains

What, "Red Sox Youth" wasn't a good enough name?

What, "Red Sox Youth" wasn't a good enough name?

Posts like these are why I keep wasting time here.

I expect that this new version of Red Sox Nation will be campaigning for ways to improve the slumping economy shortly.

I think the current economic troubles can be traced directly back to Red Sox fans buying less World Series stuff for Christmas 2007 than they did for Christmas 2004.

What, "Red Sox Youth" wasn't a good enough name?

Wow. That is awesome. Kudos.

What, "Red Sox Youth" wasn't a good enough name?

I've been a Red Sox fan since 1978 and I still found this RDF. Well done.

There's no stopping this thing. Bostonians, get ready to hear bar after bar filled with the inspiring strains of Das Trot-Nixon-Lied.

Die Gonfalon hoch! Die Reihen fest geschlossen!
Red Sox marschiert mit ruhig festem Schritt.
Kameraden, die Yankfront und Reaktion erschossen,
Marschieren im Geist in unseren Reihen mit.

Dark days are approaching. A shadow falls over the motherland. Who, who has the strength of will and purity of purpose to fill the shoes of departing Reichspropagandaleiter Bob Lobel?

"Springtime for Theo and Bosox Land,
Winter for Toronto and the Bronx.
We're moving at a faster pace.
By September we'll clinch division race."

Hell is reserving a special place for Larry Lucchino, mastermind of this mess.

When I saw Tom Werner attempting to clap along to "Sweet Caroline" as one of Neil Diamond's backup singers on the jumbotron yesterday, my first thought was of that old Sontag article on fascist kitsch.

And this is just that much worse. Now, it functions purely for purposes of making money, so it's really a late-stage capitalist kitsch more than anything. But either way, it's a horrible thing of horrible proportions.

Red Sox Sonic Youth?

Don't blame me. I voted for Sonny Siebert.

Red Sox Sonic Youth

or Kid Daydream Nation Captains


Maybe I should have accepted robinred's nomination, if only for the opportunity to follow through on my stated promise that my only action as president would have been to blow the whole damn "Nation" up.

Bring back the Royal Rooters.

They're making me proud never to have joined the "official" Red Sox Nation.

Now, it functions purely for purposes of making money, so it's really a late-stage capitalist kitsch more than anything. But either way, it's a horrible thing of horrible proportions.

It's a voluntary direct-marketing relationship. It's like giving out your real e-mail address to any business.

And kudos on post 2, kevin.

It's a voluntary direct-marketing relationship. It's like giving out your real e-mail address to any business.

I once registered to buy tix online from the Sox and I get spam from them all the time. No big deal, cuz I can always erase it. But I don't need an email to know that:

a. they won the WS
b. They re-signed Lowell
c. Pedroia was RoY and so on and so forth.

I once registered to buy tix online from the Sox and I get spam from them all the time. No big deal, cuz I can always erase it. But I don't need an email to know that:

a. they won the WS
b. They re-signed Lowell
c. Pedroia was RoY and so on and so forth.

I don't know who your internet provider is GGC, but with mine (Cox) you can have multiple e-mail accounts. Our household has three: my regular one, mrsidiom's, and one I set up specifically for stuff like that where I have to give an e-mail address but don't want to. It's nice having, effectively, a mechanism for sorting my mail between good stuff and junk.

isnt that exactly what bselig@bselig.com is for

I don't know who your internet provider is GGC, but with mine (Cox) you can have multiple e-mail accounts.

Gmail gives you unlimited email addresses. If your address is me@gmail.com, you can use me+anything@gmail.com, and it will reach you. So you can vary that 'anything' part each time you provide your address. And if you end up getting spam (or non-spam marketing messages) at one address, you can create a rule to send anything to that address to your spam folder.

Which doesn't necessarily address concerns like GGC's, since occasionally you get a useful e-mail from that channel, and you don't want it going to your spam folder. But if you're just getting unwanted messages, this is a way to avoid it.

And if you end up getting spam (or non-spam marketing messages) at one address, you can create a rule to send anything to that address to your spam folder.

And you can still create a rule to just tag it and remove it from your inbox. So say I buy something online from Circuit City; I don't want to see all the marketing emails from CC, so I can use a unique e-mail address and a rule to tag all those incoming messages as from Circuit City and archive them. So I won't see them; but if I ever need to find a confirmation for an order or something, I know how to find it.

Though I agree with the first point from GGC, which is that businesses shouldn't automatically opt you into mass marketing e-mails just because you transact with them. Hell, if they value their relationship with you, then they should allow you to manage your subscriptions, and assume you don't want to opt-in to everything.

I was going to rip on the Red Sox Nation, until I realized that a Brewers Nation with Bob Uecker as the president/God would be amazing. I picture Brando in Apocalypse Now...

Unfortunately not all online forms accept plus addressing. It's really annoying when I give a plus address and it craps back at me. Since it's just a mindless form, there's not much to be done. However, I do enjoy the looks on salespeople's faces if I give them an address with a plus in it. I'm not even really sure if they use the symbol or spell it out.