by Christine Whitmarsh

Created on: April 24, 2008   Last Updated: May 08, 2009

A Foul Life Indeed

"I think if you're Red Sox, well, it's something you're born with, an affection you have."
-Johnny Pesky

I am one of those passionate, pathetic creatures born into life as a Red Sox fan. I grew up taking the green line train into Boston to Copley Square and the best place in the whole world Fenway Park. Despite what you might have heard from other outsiders, the Fenway experience is so much more than the green monster, fenway franks, and the now ex-"%$#-rse" of the you-know-who. On October 27, 2004, we gave that piece of folklore back to the Yankees where it has always belonged and again in 2007, we told them to keep it.

Being a Red Sox fan is about this unbelievable love of baseball attached to a team, a city, a beloved ballpark, and a history more colorful and dramatic than most countries can claim. This is what defines the year of a Red Sox fan from April-October and at a slightly quieter more sober level during the off season (like a hurricane quietly gaining momentum off the coast of Florida).

If I didn't have the Red Sox to root for come rain or shine, streak or slump quite frankly, I don't know what I would do with the stores of emotion I've spent a lifetime breeding. I would be a lost amnesia patient, knowing that something massive was missing from my life the thing that makes people more excited, emotional, energized, and absolutely alive than anything else in their life. Oh, and did I mention completely and thoroughly agonized, crushed and insane!

These are the precious months Red Sox fans look forward to every year. What can I say? We're into this kind of thing. And without having any personal experience in the area (God strike me down if I ever do), I know that the experiences of lifelong Yankee fans are similar. Sure they pay cash for it, but at least they go to the trouble of caring about their team. This is a bond that ties us together as much as it drives us apart. Sox and Yankee fans get each other, while despising each other in the way that an estranged couple can run into each other in the hallway of family court and laugh at the other jerks in the hallway yeah, you think you're estranged? We'll show you estranged!

We love our teams in a way that other baseball fans don't get and that non-baseball fans will never, I repeat NEVER understand. Fine, just don't try because that's just sad. We don't try and understand Xbox video games or water polo, so please don't feel obligated to chime in with some lame, "86 years huh

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