Another board that I post to has been harassing and haranguing the Yankees and their fans for the past week. And I have to admit; I've risen to the occasion once or twice in their defence. Now part of this ALC series power was that there has rarely ever been such an acrimonious rivalry in professional sports as Yanks vs. Bosox. There is pure venom that comes from some of the otherwise nicest people you'd ever know. And living in NJ while working on the Hudson River, I've always been a Yankee fan.
And there are stories that I've grown up with and lived with bring this alive for me. Stories that are from on and off the baseball diamond. Like the time my best friends brother and his friend stopped at a restaurant coming back from dropping their sister off at school at Boston College. And Bucky Dent hit that homerun. Everyone knows about the homerun. No one knows the story that that their waitress, as they watched Bucky Dent, threw the drinks they'd ordered in their faces. Or that 8 guys from the bar dragged them into a parking lot for a beating. Or that when the cops came, they threatened to arrest the victims if they didn't get in their car and drive away.
Sure, that was '77...a lifetime ago. Couldn't happen now, right? So this spring, my wife plans for us a New Hampshire vacation. We go, she, my two sons, and I, to have fun. On day two, we went to Canon Mountain to see where "The Old Man of the Mountain" had just fallen.
http://www.cannonmt.com/cansumr.htm
We were very respectful. We knew that people were grieving for its loss and we were diplomat's diplomats about being sensitive about their loss. One person was an older woman who was at the top of the Aerial Tramway at the food concession. She was nice to everyone, including us, and I'd tipped her tip jar well. Then I took my one year-old's jacket off. He was dressed in a pretend Baby’s R Us baseball uniform with wooden bocks where any team logo would be. The older woman, who we had been nice to, suddenly turned on us and said, "If those are Yankee Pinstripes, I'll Rip Those Clothes Right Off Him!!!" It sounds ludicrous, but she was deadly serious...and there was something very Stephen King about the whole thing. I remembered how the cop was to my best friend's brother, so I just gathered my wife and my son and we left the mountain.
Later that vacation, we went to a seafood restaurant and there was a baseball game playing. When our food came, I found the staff had spit on our food. We hadn't done Anything to them, other than not maybe not pronounce Cod as
Cah'd. I pointed it out to the waitress and then gathered my family & left again. There were other incidents, like wrong directions given at gas stations, but you get the idea.
When we got home, someone in my office give me two tickets to a Yankees-Redsox game. I took my 6-year-old son. The tickets were in a section that had mostly visitors (Red-Sox fans) in it. The whole time these 'fans' were cursing, singing four letter word versions of baseball songs, getting drunk, and generally acting like Asses. I tried to reason with them, saying, "C'mon, I got a Kid here. Nice language", but that just drew laughing and louder singing. My sweet son turned to me and said "They're not very nice, Daddy."
Given all this, I have to say that I'm biased. I Hate the Bosox...and about the Only thing I hate more are their fans. So when one of their fans posted the following in a "Yankees Suck" thread on the other board, I was unhappy.
Quote:
My favourite part of the whole Yankees-Red Sox rivalry is that Bostonians cheer "Yankees Suck!" during non-baseball events.
Nothing like getting into the heads of your enemies.
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I admit I lost my temper. And then I posted the following:
Quote:
...And there's nothing like sending the Bean-Town Rats scurrying back up interstate 95 in One Big Massive Traffic Jam of Shame!!!
Back, you Un-Dead of Baseball Fandom!!! Get Back!!! Get Back to your Crypts, back to your Faneuil Hall, back to your Bickford's Pancake Houses From Hell!!! The portal to the World Series has been guarded successfully against you Fog-Spawned Lobster-Munchers for yet another year.
Be Gone, Foul Creatures!!!
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As silly as this sounds, the World Series seems anti-climactic to me now.
So, do you think I've been playing NWN too long?
