Red Sox Nation

When you relocate from one country to another you expect to experience all kinds of jarring culture changes. But when you move just over 200 miles in the same country? Surely not.

I like to follow baseball. We used to live near New York City so it was kind of natural to follow the fortunes of the New York Yankees and to go and watch the occasional game at Yankee Stadium. Yankee fans can be passionate about their team. They expect them to make the playoffs every year and they usually do. They expect them to win the Worlds Series, and they've done that more than any other team too.

I now live near Boston. Boston Red Sox fans are different, very different. They are not just passionate about their own team; most of them hate the Yankees too. Kind of illogical as, in these days of free agency, top players can and do move from one team to another. So this year's hero of the Red Sox can be playing for the Yankees next year. But historically the Yankees have usually been the obstacle preventing the Red Sox from progressing to high honors. So Red Sox fans have this huge inferiority complex about the Yankees.

I knew all this, but this week I saw the most amazing display of the twisted culture of Red Sox Nation that I truly believe I may have moved to a different country. I took my 16-month-old story granddaughter to story time at the local library. There were three other cute little girls there too. Not as cute as my granddaughter of course. She's in a class all of her own. She even has my hair.


Now one of these sweet little girls, no more than 18 months old was wearing a pink T-shirt with a slogan on the front saying "YANKEES STINK". Can you believe it? What kind of twisted mind has such a venomous hatred for another sports team that she labels her baby daughter with a slogan expressing her own loathing? Doesn't that go beyond sports mania into the realms of obsession, paranoia or other mental illness?

We're not in New Jersey any more, Toto.