Pahk the cah and let's get a beeah at that bah down on the cahnah. That's wheyah the real fans ah!
Assuming the earlier paragraph got past the Cavalier Daily editors, you did read it correctly. Go ahead and say it out loud in the Chemistry Auditorium. Done? Wicked awesome. Now you sound like a Red Sox fan.
You can smell it in the air these days. It's October, the Sox are fighting for a spot in the World Series, and if you listen closely enough, you can hear everyone in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts twist open a cold Sam Adams at the same time.
Now I'm not claiming to be a completely hard-core Red Sox fan. I was born in Boston and I still have family up there, but my parents defected to Virginia before I was thoroughly infected with the Green Monster virus. That said, I've been around enough card-carrying members of the Red Sox Nation to recognize one on the street.
And that's why the past few weeks have been so great. There's nothing more entertaining than watching northern expatriates let their crazy out, cheering for guys with names like Kevin Youkilis and Coco Crisp.
So what if the Sox are down two games to one against Cleveland after getting a dismal night on the mound from Japanese hurler Daisuke Matsuzaka and no flow on offense? That's all part of the deal if you're a Fenway fanatic. Until 2004, when the team won the World Series for the first time since 1918, Sox fans would begin every season with the expectation that somehow, somewhere their team would screw up. And they were right.
But that fatalism seems to be an essential part of believing in Boston: holding back just enough pessimism so when Josh Beckett's hand is bitten off by a bear while he's out to dinner in Beantown, Red Sox fans can look at each other like they knew it was coming the whole time, swear at the baseball gods and hibernate until next season.
This attitude also creates an unshakable sense of paranoia and superstition in the mind of everyone who bleeds red and blue.
Take a close-to-home example from the fall of my first year. After manager Grady Little took the heat and was subsequently fired for squandering the Sox's chance at the World Series yet again in 2003, four of the most intense Boston fans Charlottesville had to offer -- including former Cav Daily and current Sports Illustrated writer Joe Lemire -- decided Little's demon needed to be exorcised if the team was going to advance further the next time around.
In the minds of these Fenway disciples, this would be done by soaking a baseball autographed by Little in lighter fluid for four hours and setting it on fire in the middle of the Lawn as a flaming warning to any manager stupid enough to leave Pedro Martinez on the mound for too long. Unfortunately, the fire department didn't see things quite the same way.
Flash forward to 2007 and passions are still running high. These days, the anatomy of a true Sox fan includes a pair of eyes that can pick out the strike zone with razor-sharp accuracy, a voice that is suddenly laced with more profanity than Bob Saget knew in his prime, a mouth filled with a wad of bubble gum big enough to choke a python (as a tribute to current manager Terry Francona, who seems to be washing his socks in his mouth), a disturbing lack of personal grooming and hands that are constantly reaching for a family-size tub of manic depression medication. These fans would be having a great time if their ulcers didn't hurt so much.
On the diamond, the Red Sox themselves aren't doing much to help matters. Although Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz were incredibly productive in the first game of the series against the Indians -- they reached base 10 times in 10 plate appearances -- their numbers have fallen off precipitously in the two games since. Although the Sox entered the ALCS as the favorite to win the World Series, they wouldn't be the Red Sox if they didn't give fans more than a few reasons to bite their nails down to the quick.
Luckily for the Wahoos from up "noath," the series continues Tuesday night when Boston puts its 41-year-old knuckleballer Tim Wakefield on the mound.
It will be at that time that everyone from 90-pound preteens to burly men button up their Big Papi jerseys and settle down to sweat over the fate of the Sox.
Think they're messing around? Getouttahheeyah.
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