10 Reasons Why I No Longer Care About the Boston Red Sox

Lay a whisper on my pillow Red Sox. I’ve lost that lovin’ feelin and here are ten reason why.

1. They became too popular. It used to mean something to be a Red Sox fan. They didn’t always sell out every home game, win a ton of games and get so much attention. Unlike loving Apple and jumping in the air for pictures, being a fan wasn’t necessarily the cool thing to do. Eventually, if you wanted to be like the crowd, you rooted for the Red Sox. If you wanted to dance to a different drummer, you needed to find another club. (“Club” is a pun. Get it?)

2. They became too good. When you’re used to winning, it’s easy to take it granted. When you haven’t won in a long time, you appreciate it more.

3. They became too evil (part 1). As a young person, I despised the Yankees for having so much more money to spend than everyone else. It was so unfair. The Red Sox didn’t win, but at least it felt like more of an honest effort. Now, the Sox are just as bad.

4. They became too evil (part 2). Sticking with the integrity theme, I was outraged when I learned that Jason Giambi, who hit a key home run to help the Yankees win the 2003 ALCS, was on the juice. Little did I know that Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz were also not playing by the rules. I was so blindsided, I started question a lot of things – like whether my real name is actually LaMarcus.

5. They kept turning the team over. I’ve not sure I’ve ever cared about a team as much as I did the 2003 Red Sox. I grew to love those players and when they lost, I was heartbroken. It didn’t mean as much to me when they won in 2004 because half the team was new. Many of those guys I desperately wanted to see win a championship were long gone. More recently, the team became a lot of overpaid mercenaries.

6. They traded away my favorite player. There were other fan favorites, but something about the connection with Nomar was special. We loved him and he loved us. Thing spiraled downhill faster than the first time I hit a ski slope. His bizarre departure – complete with a smear job by management which led Nomar to calling into the Sports Talk radio station to salvage some love with the fans – was too hard to take. He let us down by seemingly pouting on the bench while Jeter was diving into the stands. We let him down by turning on him before having all of the facts. It was as if Nomar was a girl I was deeply in love with. Then, our parents got into a fight and the next day her family moved to California. No closure. No explanation. Not even a chance to say goodbye.

7. They got too boring. In hindsight, I kind of miss the “idiots” with the “Cowboy Up” routine. They had a lot of personality back then. This past team seemed about as interesting as those PBS specials on birds that I watched in third grade.

8. They got too disjointed. What the bleep bleep bleep (picture creative string of obscenities using words not heard since Middle School) has been going on lately? All the stories about the management, players and coach reminds me of the band at the end of the movie “That Thing You Do”. Things absolutely unraveled.

9. I became too old. The older I get, the less closely I follow sports in general. I still love them, but I’ve rooted for enough champions to realize that they can’t fill a hole in a heart. It is like Ice Cream – good for desert, but limited in nutritional value and nothing you could ever live off of.  There is an emptiness to it.

10. I became too busy. Along with being a young dreamer, part of the reason I liked baseball so much is that I used to have a lot more free time. There really wasn’t much else going on. What could be more exciting than watching the Red Sox? This was before Al Gore invented the Inernet. The world has changed. Attention spans are getting shorter and shorter and baseball is pretty darn slow.

Having said all that, I suppose that if I really didn’t care about the Red Sox, I wouldn’t feel the need to write about them. Maybe a better title would be “why I miss the Red Sox”.  Or, at the least the Red Sox I once knew. When I take a step back, though, I realize that it isn’t really baseball that I miss. What I really miss is dreaming about playing for the Red Sox one day and taking my first steps inside Fenway Park. I miss being in awe of how fast they could throw the ball and how hard they could hit it. I miss have heroes to look up to and wondering what it would ever be like if they won. I miss pouring over the box scores, talking about the team with my Dad and wondering what kind of player Mike Greenwell would turn into.  What I really miss is not being disillusioned with life on earth.  As I try to rediscover some childlike faith, I live with that ache that the Red Sox can never fill.

“If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.” — C.S. Lewis

 

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