Fever Pitch

Every time the Red Sox come to town I know three things for sure: Safeco will be sold out, Manny and Pappi will be spotted partying in Belltown, and I will be angry all weekend at the sight of thousands and thousands of Red Sox "fans".

Seeing as how 45,000+ saw the M's prove themselves worthy competition for the Red Sox once again last night (9-0 in our last nine home games vs. Boston), assuming that Safeco will be full again tonight is more than fair.

And Nina Lang's freshly squeezed ass can attest to the night life of Manny and Pappi. (She saw them in Belltown, partied with them, made friends, and then David Ortiz asked if he could feel her butt. She politely obliged, and the rest is history. She will undoubtedly be a "Hero of the Week," along with Manny and Pappi.)

With the first two things taken care of and out of the way, I can talk about the third thing that always happens when the Red Sox come to town, I enter full on hater mode. Let me first say that I don't hate the Red Sox. Two of my top 10 favorite baseball players of all time are on the current roster, and Boston is for all intensive purposes one of the best sports cities in the world. That being said, allow me to tell you who I do hate. I hate the thousands and thousands of 18-26 year old girls who come to Safeco six times per year, every time Boston is in town, and I hate their chin-strap sporting, Puka shell wearing boyfriends too. When did Abercrombie and Fitch start selling Red Sox gear? And where the fuck did all these "baseball fans" come from? The Mariners average home attendance this year is 32,000. When the Sox are in town it's 44+. And unless every Boston fan either owns a charter jet, or has a summer home on Mercer Island, there is some serious serious band wagonning going on. My guess is that they neither have jets, nor live on MI for the summer, which leads me to my question. What the hell?

In order to get to the bottom of this I hit the streets. I figured the best way to find out why these dumb ass holes like the Red Sox was to ask them. I was a bit weary since a crazy person doesn't know he's crazy, just as a Red Sox fan doesn't know he's a dumb ass hole, never the less this is what I found. (By the way, these interviews are all on my digital recorder, and I will try as hard as I can to allow you to hear them. Important note: THIS STUFF ACTUALLY HAPPENED!!)

Sox Fan #1: Kerri, 17, Bellevue

Me: "Why are you a Red Sox fan?"
Kerri: "Well, I started liking them because Johnny Damon is really cute, and I liked his hair. Then when he, like, moved to the Yankees, I started liking them. But I didn't want to buy all new stuff, so I switched back to the Red Sox."
Me: "Awesome."


Sox Fans #'s 2 and 3: Jesse and Allison, 22 and 21, Kirkland

Me: "Why are you guys Red Sox fans?"
Jesse: "My uncle lives in Boston, and I went to my first game ever at Fenway. Since then I've just loved them, even though it was rough. You gotta stick with your team."
Allison: "He basically made me like them. I used to like the Mariners, but now we watch all the Red Sox games when they come to town. "
Me: "You gotta hold strong, you can't change teams."
Allison: "I don't really care that much. He likes the Red Sox way more than I liked the Mariners, so it was okay."


Sox Fan #4: Britany, 24, Burien

Me: "Why do you like the Sox and not the Mariners?"
Britany: "I just always root for the underdog. And if you hate the Yankees like I do, you just automatically love the Red Sox."
Me: "But they broke the curse."
Britany: "I know but the Yankees still win way more."


Sox Fans #'s 5 and 6: Lindsay and Ben, 25 and 25, Seattle

Me: "Why do you two like the Sox?"
Lindsay: "Ben has always loved baseball. Our first date was a Mariners game like six years ago. Then we saw "Fever Pitch" and it was about us. The characters in the movie are Lindsay and Ben, isn't that weird? And Ben loves baseball."
Ben: "Yeah, it was too perfect. Since then we have loved the Red Sox."


That was about all I could take. I talked to about 15 different people in Red Sox gear, and this was the majority of the stuff that I heard. I need about three minutes to decompress, or else I will kill every person that ever says Red Sox again.

***************Three minutes of deep breaths later*********************

I'd like to say that this is extactly what I thought was going to happen, but if I did I'd be lying. We joke about fair weather fans, but I had no idea. They are worse than fair weather fans, they are retractable roof fans. These are the same people who tell both of their parents they love the other one more, in the hopes of landing better Christmas presents.

The funny part is the reasons they chose the Red Sox over any other team. If you disect their ignorant reasoning, you could prove to them that the Mariners have all the same stuff they like about the Red Sox. Hey Britany, you like underdogs? We've never won anything. The Red Sox won the World Series in 2004, and they have the second highest payroll in baseball history. I repeat, we have never won anything. We are the underdogs. Plus, look at the line in the paper for every Red Sox v. Mariners game. Guess who is picked to lose. Here's a hint. They don't have Sox in their name. And you say you hate the Yankees, huh? I wonder why. Could your hatered have started in 1995? Or perhaps 2000 or 2001 when they knocked us out of the playoff in back to back years. That's right, we hate them too. A lot. Everybody does, not just the Sox.

And as for you Allison. What happens in three months when your Red Sox boyfriend cheats on you? What do you do then? Switch back? We'll see if we take you back.

Johnny Damon? That is your reason for liking an entire team of players, that he's no longer a part of. You like him so much that you spend your hard earned money to see a team that he used to play for? The answer to that is no. You spend your parents hard earned money, Kerri from Bellevue.

The one thing we can't account for is the Fallon Factor. No one can. He is the man. By looking at the camera, telling squirely, awkward jokes, and being slightly cute he had millions of American girls staying up way past their bed times to watch SNL. And when you team that up with the incomperable Drew Barrymore, you have a duo as deadly as Manny and Pappi in Belletown. Honestly though, if you liked that movie you aren't a baseball fan. Jimmy Fallon sucks and it was awful. But so is everything that these people stand for. And we cannot combat that kind of fire power.

As I sit here in the press box at Safeco, listening to the chants of "Dice-K, Dice-K" drown any semblance of cheers for Ichiro, I can't help but wonder what we can do. I don't want to gain these peoples love by continuing to be the underdog, losing sucks. I don't want to date all of them, and then force them to love my team as Jesse did to Allison. I don't want Johnny or Jimmy. What do I want? I want loyal fans. I want fans who won't let our home stadium be filled by Red Sox. I want fans who hate the Red Sox, and the Yankees, and everybody but us. I want fans who instead of politely booing when the Red Sox fans chant "Let's go Red Sox", will over power them with chants and cheers and jokes about Manny's hair, and Julio Lugo's inability to go three seconds with out grabbing his crotch. I don't want friendly observers, I want fans!!