I am legitimately curious where everyone on the board is now a days. My fandom has definitely changed over the last 20 years.
I’m mostly a 5, but trending towards 4Number 4 with a good dose of number five sprinkled around.
#2 I agree with TR. In my youth I was a hard core member of The Nation, not anymore. I want to like the players and the team. Their stories, the teams arc of their seasonal story are interesting to me. Weirdly, I am also much more interested in the 40 man, its composition, then I am the actual win / loss record. Just entertain me.I am legitimately curious where everyone on the board is now a days. My fandom has definitely changed over the last 20 years.
Stole my answer.Yeah none of these really works for me becaue my answer would probably be... I care that it appears the team is trying to win, whether that is the players playing hard, the front office making moves to improve the team, or yes, the ownership showing that they care about winning.
Sadly, it’s likely you’ll be able to find affordable tickets on the secondary market this season. They were there last season as well. But yeah, the good baseball thing was lacking.I grew up a Sox fan and will probably always remain one. I have followed the team since the 1970s, when I was a kid growing up in Central Mass. That said, I want two things out of the fan experience: Good baseball and reasonably priced tickets. Last season, there was no guarantee of the former, and the latter is out the window. So I'll probably go see the New Hampshire Fisher Cats, the Portland Sea Dogs or the WooSox this coming summer, and listen to the MLB club on the radio.
This is me as well. Show me you care and I will follow. The difference in winning vs losing for me is I will probably watch a few more games instead of listening to the radio call. I love listening to baseball so I do that most of the time.Yeah none of these really works for me becaue my answer would probably be... I care that it appears the team is trying to win, whether that is the players playing hard, the front office making moves to improve the team, or yes, the ownership showing that they care about winning.
I laughed out loud. Perfect.I enjoy the Fenway experience and I appreciate the affordable student tickets.
Same. I chose that I don't have time for them if they're not committed.Yeah none of these really works for me becaue my answer would probably be... I care that it appears the team is trying to win, whether that is the players playing hard, the front office making moves to improve the team, or yes, the ownership showing that they care about winning.
Very well said, RR. I enjoyed reading your post as well as any this off season. Thank you for reminding me of the best of what this board can offer.None of the above.
Rationally, I know baseball is a complete waste of my time. I'm watching (nominally) rich adult men play a child's game.
But I simply enjoy watching the Sox regardless. Some of it is my history and habit of doing so, and some is simply the rhythm and ritual of the game itself.
It's a bit foreign to me that people only tune in for the winning part; that they'd really just rather not watch a crisply played game where fate or fortune simply does not favor their chosen team. I honestly don't get that. I sort of get the hero worship thing, but not exclusively. Pedro was great. But I'm also very much there to be surprised, to see the Navas and Bernardinos and Wakefields come out of nowhere. I am old enough to remember when possibility was exciting, when it wasn't shameful to root for an underdog team; but things change. Perhaps baseball is one of the things I don't wish to change as much or as quickly.
Perhaps that's why I only follow baseball and don't really watch other sports. They're all silly. But baseball is my kind of silly. It is such a mix of individual contests, tactics, and strategy, and it abounds with stories and oddities and quirks.
I used to enjoy discussing and analyzing the game here, but although there are still some notable exceptions, in general the board has been a storm of anger and grievance and negativity and sit-com one-liners lately. Like every post is some kind of entry in a shadow war over issues that, frankly, nobody here is going to affect.
But it's become a bit more fundamental than that. At this point, I don't believe I could really explain to many people here how much I love the game, in all it's silliness and particularity. And it's difficult to want to interact with people who constantly complain, or who feel I'm contemptible because I'll be watching the team, even if they're not going to win.
This is me. Getting pissed ended when Johnny Damon hit a grand slam home run in game 7 of the 2004 ALCS. After that, it is all gravy. Stupidity bugs me (missing a cutoff man, base running errors) but Boston is still good enough for me to care. If they lost 90 games consistently I would probably feel differently.. How should I vote?
Fantastic post.You know what? I want an ownership and front office that cares as much as I do--or at least provides the illusion that they care.
I don't think that's a huge ask. The Red Sox have given us a lot over the years: ups, downs, championships, near misses, awesome displays of athletic achievements, wonderful bonehead moments that remind us that these are normal human men, characters and charlatans. If you meet a Red Sox fan in a strange land, you can spend hours talking to him or her about what they've seen. That's a gift.
But at the same time, we've given the Red Sox a lot too. We've given them our money, our attention and time and most of all, we've given them ourselves and our optimism. The latter is a giant present in a world that increasingly routinely punishes optimism.
The only thing that we ask is for the Red Sox to try. Try to get players better than we watched last year. Try to do their best to ensure a fun summer. No one is expecting a championship every year, but everyone is expecting that no stone has been left unturned trying to field a competing team. Ownership owes us that for optimism and I don't think that they've lived up to their side of the bargain for five years.
What does this mean? It means I'm going to follow the Sox again this year, like I have every single year since 1986. But I'm not giving these motherfuckers my optimism or trust. They blew that.
I'm not sure how this existential ephifany corresponds to one of the eight choices above though.
This is pretty much where I am at. As I have gotten older, my love has tilted more toward a love of "the game" as opposed to "the team". Don't get me wrong, I am still first and foremost a Red Sox fan, and will root for them against any other team in the league, but I have also become more a fan of watching the fun players around the league. I realized at some point that I haven't watched and appreciated Mike Trout nearly enough, and it is sad to me that I probably missed out on his peak, so I am trying to watch Shohei and Julio Rodriguez and (puke) Gunnar Henderson as much as I can.None of the above.
Rationally, I know baseball is a complete waste of my time. I'm watching (nominally) rich adult men play a child's game.
But I simply enjoy watching the Sox regardless. Some of it is my history and habit of doing so, and some is simply the rhythm and ritual of the game itself.
It's a bit foreign to me that people only tune in for the winning part; that they'd really just rather not watch a crisply played game where fate or fortune simply does not favor their chosen team. I honestly don't get that. I sort of get the hero worship thing, but not exclusively. Pedro was great. But I'm also very much there to be surprised, to see the Navas and Bernardinos and Wakefields come out of nowhere. I am old enough to remember when possibility was exciting, when it wasn't shameful to root for an underdog team; but things change. Perhaps baseball is one of the things I don't wish to change as much or as quickly.
Perhaps that's why I only follow baseball and don't really watch other sports. They're all silly. But baseball is my kind of silly. It is such a mix of individual contests, tactics, and strategy, and it abounds with stories and oddities and quirks.
I used to enjoy discussing and analyzing the game here, but although there are still some notable exceptions, in general the board has been a storm of anger and grievance and negativity and sit-com one-liners lately. Like every post is some kind of entry in a shadow war over issues that, frankly, nobody here is going to affect.
But it's become a bit more fundamental than that. At this point, I don't believe I could really explain to many people here how much I love the game, in all it's silliness and particularity. And it's difficult to want to interact with people who constantly complain, or who feel I'm contemptible because I'll be watching the team, even if they're not going to win.