There's lots of stuff I could write about, it having been a hectic week, but the definite highlight was being at Camden Yards when Manny Ramirez hit his 500th home run. Pretty much anybody who knows me knows how I feel about baseball. Explaining why I can get so emotional about the Red Sox is the tough part.
I don't really remember a time when I didn't pay attention to baseball, but as a child it was the New York Mets. The Mets were created about the time I had enough of a brain to be aware of sports and their games were always on television. The single thing that most cemented my relationship with them, though, was the time (when I was maybe 5 or 6) that Ed Kranepool gave a talk at our synagogue and signed autographs. I could probably make some big extrapolation to the social and economic divides between Mets fans and Yankees fans in Island Park, but it would be guessing. At any rate, I always knew that the Yankees were a bad thing.
Mets fandom reached its high point in 1969, the year they lost last place. 1972 was another big year for them and I particularly remember a consequence of the day games of that era. One boy in my class listened to games on a transistor radio - during school. That ended when our math teacher made a comment to another teacher about how said it was that poor Mike had to use a hearing aid at his age and got a bit of a technology lesson from another teacher,
There were a couple of girls in high school who were really ardent Mets fans. Patty and Alison did have other crushes, but it was Tom Seaver and Jerry Grote who were decidedly at the top of the list. The Yankees were mostly ignored.
Then I went off to MIT. I began to follow the Red Sox, mostly because it was impossible not to. The year that totally did me in was 1978. I already disliked the Yankees and the tragedies of that year were what put me over the edge as I concluded that they are the Source of All Evil in the Universe, existing solely to torture the innocent good folks like me.
I left for California in 1980 and I think that part of continuing to follow the Red Sox had a lot to do with maintaining ties to a place I liked better. Graduate school was very stressful for me. While the Sox didn't exactly alleviate the stress, they were a good distraction for it. As the years went on, I also found Red Sox fans gravitating together. Working in a male-dominated industry, paying attention to sports during parts of the year can help break down boundaries.
And, frankly, the biggest advantage of being a fan is that it makes the games more exciting. There are times that I enjoy going to a game where I don't care about either team, since that enables me to focus on the quality of the playing. But there is nothing quite like screaming my lungs out as the stadium erupts into cries of, "Man-ny, Man-ny, Man-ny." Red Sox Nation is nothing if not patriotic.
It may not always be easy and it is inevitably bad for my blood pressure. But I am and will continue to be a fan.
Copyright 2008 Miriam H. Nadel