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If you live in Chicago and are a Cub fan you may qualify as even more loyal than some of the front running phonies who have jumped on board the fan base of either glorious team in the American League East. The respective fans of either the Red Sox or the Yankees have been spoiled by their recent success so I would ask if the teams were not as successful would this even be a subject for serious discussion. Yanks versus Red Sox is a great rivalry but both teams have won World Championships relatively recently and so the fan base has been fed and knows what it likes to win and has ownerships and players that know how to play and win.

I think it is easy to be loyal to your team if it wins championships, has a long and proud history of success and legions of good players

Several years ago before the Red Sox broke their streak of bad luck, beating the Yankees and going on to win the world series that year, I would have agreed that the Boston Red Sox had the most loyal fans in the country.

Fenway Park was and is still an old, quaint ballpark, the curse of the bambino, Ted Williams,Yaz, Buckner, Manny being Manny and Johnny Damon getting a hair cut and plying for the Yankees are all subjects of conversation for the faithful. The team is surely colorful but I think you have to go back to the real glory days of the Red Sox say 1929 when they finished in last place for the fifth straight time and seven out of the last eight years.

In 1932 I'm not sure if it could have gotten worse as the Red Sox finished 43-111, 64 games behind the Yankees, lead by Babe Ruth to their fourth championship since being sold to the Yankees. If attendance was any measure of loyalty, those 182,000 fans were either rabid fans or came to see the visiting team.

This level of ineptitude breeds a form of character that burns very deep into the soul of a baseball fan and as result you start judging your life by the results of your team. Superiorty or inferiority, joyous or despondent, optimistic or pessimistic, the sports page told the story as you lived your life from spring training till the time that the team was mathematically eliminated from participating in post season play and the cry of wait till next year was the charge for the future.

The catharsis for Boston after winning the championship in 2004 was something that even the most hardened non baseball could understand.

Baseball is changing. I thought this year I would start following the Tampa Bay Rays as the fan base was being tested in a manner I thought would leave them in such a funk that they would ask to be switched to a less competitive division as they would forevever be out matched by the large market teams with larger fan bases and histories of success. In their history they have only been out of the cellar one time.

The playoffs are approaching and the baseball world is almost upside down. The Cubs have the best record in baseball, and the Rays are in first place way ahead of the Yankees and 4 games ahead of the Red Sox.

Maybe this debate should have been which team has had the most improbable season.

Learn more about this author, John Asgeirson.
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