These are the days

Rider on Green Line:
Did you hear the latest from Gary Sheffield? He says wherever he goes, "They're there". Red Sox fans that is. Then he says he hopes he and his Spankee teammates can "erase that."

 

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Bill:
Too funny. The irony of course is that we've always been in all four corners, just cocksuckers like Sheffield were too blinded by narcissism to realize it.

 

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Rider on Green Line:
And as for "erasing" Red Sox fan pride, what's he gonna do, wish us into the cornfield like that freaky kid from the Twilight Zone?

 

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Bill:
We've proven time and again our resolve. Bucky Dent? Aaron Boone? That shit just makes us stronger. It's Yankees fans who've yet to prove that even though they walk through the valley of the shadow of death, they'll still be wearing their team's cap and holding their heads high. Instead, we are witnessing just the opposite.

 

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Rider on Green Line:
So we now have both A-Fraud and Sheffield on record basically admitting the Red Sox are in their heads 24/7. Beautiful.

 

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Bill:
Absolutely. Remember when the conventional wisdom was that the Red Sox identity only exists in association with the people who beat them? My how times have changed, eh?

 

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Rider on Green Line:
Yeah, ever since the Red Sox rallied from 0-3 in the ALCS it seems we can do no wrong. The good news just keeps coming.

 

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Comments

[Rick]

Another well-deserved award. h.b., when you're all famous and shit, sitting in the .400 club with young lovelies feeding you caviar-covered Fenway franks with black truffle remoulade, remember the little people who read you back in the day when the Sox were underdogs and you had a day job.

You do have a day job, right?

[da kine]

Was Sheff saying he wanted to erase Sox pride or Sox fans themselves? Killing Bostonians ain't funny, man.

I shall reiterate my constant refrain now: There is no such thing as a true Spankees fan. Those fuckers boo their own team at any opportunity. Their mercenary lineup fits the character of that beshitted city perfectly. The fans hate the team and the team has no respect for the fans.

[DaveL]

This one is DEAD ON and spankees
fans know it...

Ever notice that Yankees fans are
the toughest mofos ever on internet
message boards or when there's like
10 of them in a pack but one on one
they won't say shit??

and they're all short too like George Costanza...

[h.b.]

Rick,

I hope you're right about my future (though I'll pass on the caviar). And, yes, I sure do have a day job, little worker bee that I am.

da kine,

Diff to tell exactly what Shefftahd meant.

[LisaMk]

So, we all lived through '03, the Skankee string of late-90s WS, '86, '78, '75, etc and managed to stay Sox fans and Sheffield really thinks he alone can "erase" us somehow.

Son, narcissistic, misguided and stupid is no way to go through life.

[Tman]

Even though Sheffield is still a punk, I did see droves of bandwagon jumpers once the Sox made their comeback in the ALCS.

Funny how folks do that....one day, you don't care a lick for baseball or the Red Sox. Add GREATEST COMEBACK IN SPORTS HISTORY and BAM!- Instant member of Red Sox Nation.

It doesn't bug me though, the more folks there are annoying Spankee fans the better I say...

[rich f.]

congrats on the sxsw award hb. are you going to head on down to austin for the show? i had a splendid time there in '04- GO!

rf

[Tatiana]

I am in love with this psychological warfare... we as fans don't even have to do anything we weren't already doing, and the Yankees are quivering in their whitey-tighties.

[illegitimate son of dwight evans]

Tman - CARD-CARRYING members of RSN, no doubt. So when they caravan up to Fenway (because our field box seats beat theirs in style), they can flash them because all us fans really have cards, right?

right?

[mr blackandwhite]

Too bad for Sheffield, he will never be able to erase what happened in 2004. We are untouchable now and it's obviously driving the Spankees nuts that they have nothing they can hold over us anymore.

On a side note, I wonder if the Johnny Damon graffiti is still painted on the lamp-posts down there.

[Kluv]

Sadly, they did cover up the JD tag in Brooklyn. But, if we could just get some of those Obey Ortiz stickers printed...

[Whitey]

da kine,
You're a true vulgarian. "beshitted"--I love it! I'm going to have to try and use that in a sentence today.

[RonF]

Rick, that would be the .406 club.

My daughter is going to graduate school in the Boston area. She's a first-rate womens' fast-pitch softball player (First team All-New England Div. III, NCAA at 3rd base), and a big baseball fan. One of her teammates works for the Sox, so she has gone to many games at Fenway over the last few years. She even got me tickets for the Oakland ALDS last year and I flew out and watched both games with her in the bleachers.

Anyway, she calls from Fenway, blitzed. My wife hands me the phone and says, "She says she's calling from the four-seventeen club or something?" Now, I was not aware of the existence of this place, but I knew instantly what it had to be. I grab the phone and without any introduction or acknowledgement say, "That's the four-oh-six club, right?" She says, "Yeah!" and then we have our conversation. After I got off I told my wife the significance of the number.

[RonF]

Meanwhile, my brother-in-law, who was born and raised in the Chicago area, moves to New Jersey and decides to become a front-runner and root for the MFY. Last year after the ALCS he calls up, finds no one home, and sings "New York, New York" into the answering machine.

This year, the day after Game 7, he calls up to talk to my wife about something unconnected. I'm still plastered. I figure out that it's him about 10 seconds into the conversation. I yell "GIMME THAT!" and snatch the phone from my wife (who, God bless her, put up with it). I blew B-I-L bigtime shit for about 5 minutes; I wish I could remember what I said. We're meeting him in Vegas for his 50th, and I believe I won't let him see me without my Sox cap.

[RonF]

From Frank Deford's column linked in the 6th panel:

"I like the Cubs fans better. They go out and accept defeat the way they always have, with that grace that comes with resignation."

Having lived in Chicago lo these many years, I can say that he's right - the Cub fans accept defeat. Whereas the Red Sox fans never accepted it. They have always wished, hoped, prayed, and demanded that the Red Sox win. When the defeats came, they didn't turn off the TV or leave the ballpark; they watched the ax fall, the bullet leave the gun and stared it down until it hit them in the forehead. They didn't pretend that it was fate, they didn't try to deflect it or ignore it. They took on defeat and swallowed it whole. They grimaced at the taste, but never pretended that it didn't matter, that they didn't care. They still believed. That makes the victory all that much sweeter.

Should the Cubs ever win (and the current ownership seems little intersted in doing what it'll take to do that), there'll only be a small coterie of hard-core fans who will revel in the victory. The rest will be fair-weather fans, baseball tourists, the clowns who don't have a clue that you don't reach for a foul ball when you're sitting in the front row of the ball park. Should the Cubs win, they'll just wave at the camera and make another call on their cell phone to tell someone else, "Hey, I'm at Wrigley!" There in body, perhaps, but never in spirit.

[johnny]

RonF,
I think that was about the most beautiful thing I have ever read. I know some Cubs fans, and they are basically exactly as you described.

[Al Zarilla]

Congrats on the sxsw award, HB. This is the greatest sports blog on the planet. I take that back. It's the greatest blog on the planet. You and the folks who populate this cyberspace have a profound understanding of what it means (and takes) to be a Red Sox fan. I've been one since 1946. The upcoming season is my 60th as a Sox fan and I always thought that if the Sox ever were gonna do it all, they'd do it now. Surprise, surprise; they did it a year early. All things come to him who waits.

[AJM]

I was one of the multiple-post contributors to that 'Kryptonite' thread on SoSH...I was amazed that it lasted on the main board as long as it did.

And I'm not surprised at all by that drivel from last spring by Deford...he is, after all, a Princeton wanker (Penn man here).