Sox in the City

The series was a run-away from the start, and my liver and sleep habits are grateful that the Sox managed to sweep Colorado in four straight games. I hardly ever go out on a "school night" but there was something about Mama T's text message that caught my attention. "It's not everyday that the Sox become the World Series champs", Mama T implored. As I watch every Sox game with the impression that they're going to blow it (until they prove otherwise), I fired up the Crossfire and headed into Town.

The main catch to watching the game with Mama T is the fact that she lives in Kenmore Square, home of shinanigan-loving underage students. We ended up at Copperfields, which incidentally enough was teaming with patrons who almost looked old enough to date. People were overwhelmingly polite - they were simply there to watch a baseball game. I gave a sigh of relief knowing that there would be no drunken brawls on my watch.

To be clear here, I went into Kenmore knowing full well that there would be a heavy police presence. Rather than add to the problem, I decided ahead of time that I would spend the night on Mama T's futon so I could enjoy the game responsibly. Despite the fact that both of us attended UMass-Amherst, we have never participated in a riot nor did we want to start now. After the Sox clinched it 4-3 we barreled towards here place, where we were intercepted by cops decked out in full riot gear.

There are a lot of things that the Boston Police could've done last night to prevent law-abiding citizens from getting completely frustrated. They could've posted which streets were going to be blocked off on their website or kept the T open later so people could take the T directly from Fenway to Kenmore without passing through Commonwealth Ave on foot. They could've had uniformed officers directing pedestrians through side streets or simply shut down bars in Kenmore Square for the game (like they do in Andrew Square for St. Patrick's Day)

Of course none of that actually happened.

The main problem for us was the fact that the police blockades barred us from getting to Mama T's house on Comm Ave. If we had known this ahead of time we definitely would've made alternate plans. I understand that the Boston Police were under orders to prevent riots like the ones in '04 and I'm grateful that a violent one didn't break out but let's be realistic here: some of us actually work for a living and simply want to get a good night's sleep.

Since I tend to get annoyed with stupidity rather quickly (when an officer explained that we couldn't go home because they didn't want last night to turn out like '04 I politely reminded them that the only reason that night was violent was because they shot someone in the eye with a rubber bullet) I let Mama T do all the talking. After pleading for almost a half hour she finally found a police lieutenant to take pity on us. To ensure that our intentions were honest, he literally escorted us to the front door.

Despite the post-game frustration, there was truly no better place to watch the Sox clinch the title than Kenmore. However, if the Red Sox are going to continue to dominate major league baseball, the Boston Police had better have more coherent plans for controlling celebrations without making us all feel like criminals. In all fairness, Boston isn't quite used to winning the World Series. One can only hope that the kinks between the BPD and reality will be worked out by the Sox win it again in '08!