Idiots Write About Sports

Dear Boston Red Sox:
I realize we have never really been on the best of terms. In fact, I think it’s safe to say that we have spent most of my adult life at odds with one another. I don’t know how things deteriorated so badly between us. Maybe it started in 1986 when John McNamara’s mismanagement cost me an easy $10 on a World Series wager with a myopic Met fan in my home room class. Or perhaps it stems from all those A’s-Red Sox games at the Coliseum where I have had the misfortunate to sit in the same vicinity as a steady progression of the drunkenest, most foul-mouthed knuckle-dragging apes to have ever disgraced your fine city. I realize the peril of small sample sizes, but based upon my experience attending games featuring you guys, I have to assume that 97 percent of your fan base is composed of intoxicated, violent sociopaths who view the Ben Affleck character from Good Will Hunting as some sort of template for a life well led — the margin of error in that figure is plus-or-minus 2 percent.
And yes, I did not join the rest of America in embracing your improbable run to last year’s championship. In fact, you could have gone another 86 years without winning a World Series, and I would have gone through life perfectly happy and fulfilled. The reason? Your fans’ embracing the ol’ woe-is-me act after failing to win the World Series year after year, despite the fact that 29 other teams suffer the same annual fate without turning Dan Shaughnessy into a multi-millionaire. And I suspected last fall that, despite finally tasting that long-anticipated postseason success, your fans would immediately resume their regularly scheduled caterwauling the second things went momentarily south. And you know what? I was right.
But I was willing to put all that behind me, Boston Red Sox. I was ready to be the bigger man. And for a while this summer, I thought we had achieved a bit of a detente. I paid a king’s ransom to finally visit your home park. I enjoyed your Sirloin Tips Sandwich. I oohed and aahed at the historic atmosphere in Fenway. And I generally had a good time, despite keeping my streak of confrontations with drunken Boston fans intact.
This particular fan was directly out of a Central Casting call for “hot-headed Southie,” and he seemed to object that I would wear an A’s cap to a game which did not actually feature any Oakland A’s. “The Red Sox are here,” he screamed at me, his breath reeking of whatever watered-down beer he had been drinking since 4 p.m. “The Pirates are here. But I don’t see no A’s.”
“I’m here as a neutral observer,” I calmly replied. “Not unlike the Swiss.”
He thought about that for a moment. “The A’s suck,” he screamed back at me.
“You may well be right,” I countered. But by that time, he had moved on to angrily confronting another fan wearing a Pirates hat and a Red Sox jacket, which is, admitedly, quite lame.
My point, Boston Red Sox, is I did not hold this latest incident against you. I did not walk away from this latest confrontation wishing that horrible misfortune would befall you. I snapped my pictures and enjoyed a baseball game and waited for the feeling to return to my legs after sitting in your imp-sized seats before heading along my merry little way. I cut you a break.
So I am surprised, Boston Red Sox, that you have opted to respond to my magnanimity with callous disregard. I speak, of course, about your recent spate of games in Anaheim, in which you have reacted to Oakland’s hour of need by dropping two games to the thrice-damned Angels while doing your level best to kick away a third. What gives, Red Sox? You don’t seem to have any problem bringing your a-game when Oakland is on the schedule. Why curl up into the fetal position at the sight of Arte Moreno’s crew?
If I were a paranoid man, Red Sox, I would suspect that you were tanking things on purpose, just to spite me. Sounds crazy? Perhaps. But I wouldn’t put it past someone like Kevin Millar to spend his off-hours ceaselessly googling his name, stumbling across this Web site, and finding all the terrible things I’ve said about you people over the years. “This guy Michaels really seems to have a bee in his bonnet regarding us,” I imagine Millar saying to the rest of you in a pregame meeting on Thursday. “Let’s play like a bunch of sick nuns just to further get his goat.” If true, Red Sox, it doesn’t speak well of your competitve nature and professionalism.
I will put this as plainly as I can: I ask very little of you most of the time. So I figure that the one time I actually want you to win a ballgame, you might be good enough to oblige. Best eek out a win today, Boston. Or I won’t be responsible for the unkind words I’ll say about you from this point forward.
— Your pal Phil