The Ugly New Englander

From the Maineline to the Connecticut Shoreline, people across the six New England states are often lauded for their friendliness, world-class universities, and outstanding seafood. However, get a group of three of us outside of our ancestoral homeland and we are flat out obnoxious. This weekend I attended the Red Sox/O's match-up in Baltimore and it was quite the sorry state of affairs.

The crowd at Camden Yards on Saturday was the sixth largest crowd EVER recorded at Oriole Park. Of the over 48,000 fans who attended Saturday's game, at least 3/4 of them were Red Sox fans. If you've ever lived in Europe, after being there for a while you automatically cringe when you spot a jeans-and-sneaker wearing American loudly complain that the McDonald's in Tulsa is soooo much better than the McDonald's in London. That's kind of how I felt on Saturday.

It didn't used to be this way. Every August for the past five years Mom and I have visited the Troll in Baltimore to catch the Sox/O's series. Baltimore is only 7 hours from Boston and because they play a weekend series, and because Baltimore is only an hour from DC, it really is a great opportunity to check out the Sox and our nation's capitol. While Red Sox fans have always dominated the Yard during these series, we were for the most part very gracious guests. Sure some of our fans had a few too many Coors Light, and we definitely over-powered the home crowd by chanting "Let's Go Sox" when the monitor urged us to say "Let's go O's", but it wasn't anything like this weekend.

I personally think that this Red Sox Nation thing has gone a little bit too far. While I'm not the most rabid baseball fan you'll ever come across, I've always rooted for the Sox, even when there wasn't very much to root about. For the majority of my lifetime the Sox haven't been very good. Any year that they would scrape by into a Wild Card spot was considered a successful season. During this time (especially on a week night) they could barely draw a crowd to Fenway, never mind sell out an opposing team's ballpark.

For the first time in a long time the Red Sox are a very good team. As fans we travel with them, root for them, and have managed to sell out Fenway Park for the last 300+ home games. We pony up $85 for ok seats, $8 for a beer, and are completely arrogant about how die-hard we are for the home team. One of my favorite things to do is to watch my Mom try to have a conversation with an extremely drunk "fan" who claims to be a wicked hard core about his Sox. She'll ask him really basic questions about historic Sox games and they haven't got a clue. She won't admit it, but I think this is her way of fucking with the Red Sox Nation pledges.

Historically, New Englanders have always followed the Old Town Team in a civilized and dignified manner. We might lightly badger fans from the opposing teams (especially the Yankees) but we were never the drunk, elitist fans that we've recently become. Friendly rivalry is one thing, acting like a complete asshole is another. The Orioles may not be the best team in the American League East, but they did manage to sweep us 2-1 in this series.

Not to jinx it, but the Red Sox obviously can't be this good forever. Therefore, we shouldn't let this current wave of success go to our head. Like it did for the Bruins in the 70's and the Celtics in the 80's, the other shoe will eventually drop on the Boston Red Sox. In other words, just because we know that everything about Boston is superior to any other city, we needn't rub it in our opponent's faces. Rather than chant that the "Yankees Suck", let's just be happy that at least for the moment, the Red Sox don't.