Hatred in Retrospect

More often than not, I fail to execute on some of my ideas for this little piece of Internet. Is this a source of pride for me? Certainly not. However, it is better to put ideas in the dumpster or on a back burner than it is to keep releasing albums, Duran Duran.

In any case, this entry is about sports. Sport? I do not know. I guess I'm not a sports fan in that particular sense. I am first, foremost, and only, a baseball fan. Why resort to such antiquated fandom in the days of Peyton Manning commercials and FIFA 2259? No telling. Why write a dreadfully inane blog three or so times a month? ***THIS ENTRY IS LONG AND YOU WILL MOST LIKELY GET BORED WITH IT, JUST SO YOU KNOW. I'M FLOODING THE INTERNET WITH USELESS DRIVEL***

Legitimate sports fans are made through suffering. Supporting your team through the bad times is what really bonds you to a franchise and helps you savor victory when it finally comes. By this logic, Chicago Cubs fans blah blah blah blah blah. We know the story all too well. Admittedly, I know very little about championship or even .500-plus seasons when it comes to other sports franchises. Do Atlanta Hawks fans exist? Anyone reading support the St. Louis Blues? Wikipedia tells me the Detroit Lions are still around, which was pretty shocking to me. "lol" as it goes. The point here is that somewhere in the bowels of these American cities, there are still never-say-die season ticket holders who come out year after year to yell themselves blue in the face for the hometown squad. This is loyalty. This is an unbreakable and unexplainable bond between man and team, and naturally woman and team as well. I wrote that to avoid getting heat. You see what I'm getting at here, and if not, watch a game with one of these teams in it. Someone is still out there wearing the team colors and supporting the franchise until his dying breath. Or her dying breath. Whatever. THEY'RE OUT THERE ALL RIGHT.

Consider this though: what if there were a sports team who didn't seem to have those fans? What if they seemed to sprout up like those God-forsaken magnetic yellow ribbons currently causing the paint to fade on a car on your street as you read this? You know the ones. Support our ribbons. It seems wasteful to pass judgment on individuals in a pissing contest regarding all things loyalty and history and whatnot, but let's say I've been holding it for a while. And now I can no longer hold back.

Flash back to 2003. A year like any other, right? Sure. Some of the few people who weren't chomping at the bit waiting for Peyton Manning commercials to saturate the TV airwaves were transfixed to the American League Championship Series between the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox. A grand rivalrly that spanned decades of acrimonious, polarizing competition was once again competing on a magnificent stage to prove who would take home the American League pennant and play either the beloved Chicago Cubs or those fire-sale prone Florida Marlins. The Yankees, with their limitless payroll, boisterous fans, superstar roster, and twenty-six World Series titles were more than ever living up to the "Evil Empire" appellation as they put the choke hold on the scrappy, underdog Boston Red Sox. The Yankees would eventually prevail and thankfully fall to the upstart Marlins in the World Series, who after winning lit Pro Player Stadium on fire and shot all of their players in order to slash payroll. Such as 2003, another season of heartbreak for a baseball fan and supporter of parity like myself. I sat in my dorm room, crushed after the Red Sox fell from grace, seething with contempt for Yankees fans as they again through their weight and dollars around to win a pennant. I sat out the World Series in protest. Boston's wait for a World Series would now be 86, rather than 85 years.

2004 would bring about the nearly the identical scenario, with the Yankees on the verge of achieving a FATALITY against Boston. I watched nervously again in my dorm room preparing to have my dreams cracked and crushed, trampled underfoot by a rampage from the Bronx. Yet, something happened. A Dave Roberts (nerd reference) stolen base improbably ignited a Boston comeback and in Game 4, the Red Sox turned it around and stampeded through the powerful New York squad and left the St. Louis Cardinals in the dust in four laughable games. After eighty-six years, the Boston Red Sox were on top again, and I was overjoyed. Finally, the Yankee rivals had taken over and toppled the Evil Empire. It was a good day.

What the fuck was I thinking?

Since October 2004, baseball has been stricken ill with an incurable cancer that is spreading through the sport at an incalculable rate and nothing can be done to stop it.

The Boston Red Sox and their fans are destroying the sport from the inside out, and no one even seems to be batting (super pun intended) an eyelash. Consider this: seven, eight, nine years ago, how many Red Sox fans did you know? A few maybe? One or two? None? Yeah, that's what I thought. Maybe your uncle in Rhode Island. Sure. Fine.

While this is a trivial matter for most, it is of threat level midnight importance to me. I hardly have the stamina to proselytize enough on my exponentially expanding hatred for Red Sox Nation. What a stupid name, to start of with; the notion that Red Sox fans are peppered all over the American landscape and can invade American League cities at the drop of a hat, ruining the atmosphere for the hometeam crowd. When your bandwagon has the space, let 'em on, right? Where were these people when the Red Sox were in the thick of playoff competition in the 1990s? Asleep? Setting up sleeper cells inside other NFL teams to establish a cheating network for the Patriots? I sure didn't know about them, and I keep tabs on this sort of thing. Now they're everywhere. People who don't even watch baseball are goddamn Red Sox fans. It makes me want to vomit up my stomach.

As I said before, I don't have the stamina for this sort of thing. It throws me into fits of blind rage. I am unable to establish any sort of outline at which to dispatch reasons why the Red Sox and their cobbled nation, unfit to even deserve capitalization, are polluting Major League Baseball. I would chalk it off as arrogance, but that is perfunctory at best. Is it that Red Sox fans believe the players on their team are better than anyone else's? That might be it.

Ask a Red Sox fan who the best pitcher in baseball is right now.

"JOSH BECKETT WITH HIS WICKED CURVE!" Wha? Johan Santana much?

What about the best first baseman?

"YOOOOOOOOOOUK." No, you retard. Albert Pujols? Justin Morneau? Mark Teixiera? Ever heard of them?

It slays me. Red Sox fans will think Dustin Pedroia is the next Roberto Alomar when players like Chase Utley take the field every day.

Red Sox fans are also the only fans I have encountered who will actually talk about how much they "hate" this player or that player on their team. What is that nonsense? If the guy's on your team, you support him! What kind of fan encourages dissension in a team sport? Unforgivable.

There are more than two teams out there, Red Sox Nation. You can't spend the whole season looking forward to the series games between your team and the Yankees. Other teams play too. What happens when you play the Mariners? The Orioles? The Tigers? Do you pretend they're the Yankees? What? You tell me.

What about the pink hats? Since when did this become a staple? It's perfectly fine for women to enjoy baseball. In fact, I wish more did and fewer gave me dirty looks when I get excited to watch the playoffs. Yet, Red Sox Nation has embraced these sickening articles of headgear in order to bait more women to pack in the Fenway Park dumpster/bandbox/"field" in order to watch David Ortiz walk from the dugout to the batter's box four times.

Amongst all of this wreckage that used to be a worthwhile sports franchise, I ask myself, and I ask you, if you're still reading: what has provoked the mutation of Red Sox nation and given them this abominable sense of entitlement? Each year their swagger goes greater as they demand more crappy Dropkick Murphys songs about Boston, more Jonathan Papelbon Riverdancing (fucking shoot me), more weight gain and hair growth by Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz, more hating of the Yankees and cheering like they've won the lottery when the Yankees lose, no matter what team they're playing. What other group of fans so passionately roots against a team? Are you with me?

This disease of Red Sox bandwagon fandom has to be taken behind the shed and shot multiple times, until the last gasping "Yooooouk!" cheer is kicked clean out of its lungs. No longer are the Red Sox the underdogs. Their payroll has bloated to that of the Yankees, and they too will not hesitate to buy talent for their needs. Their gimmicks are, as expected, the opposite of New York's: haggard, dirty, and weathered compared to the Yankees' reserved, clean-cut, and opulent. These are trite, predictable, and transparent. Worthless smoke and mirrors to fashion a paper-thin facade for Boston's true goal: Yankee-level dominance of baseball. Admittedly, I can't say I blame them: who wouldn't want to have 26 World Series titles? It took the Yankees a long time to earn these, though. Red Sox "nation" wants them now.

I hope that doesn't happen. I hope you've been convinced. Join me in this scatterbrained crusade to stop the new Evil Empire.

Why? Because I am a bitter, jaded, immature, and selfish Cleveland Indians fan. The pieces have all fallen into place.

How I Learned to Stop Caring and Delete My MySpace Account (Hopefully)

Usually I hold a considerable amount of contempt for individuals who like to apply a scorched-earth policy to their personal histories, regarding everything even the most recent past as a blunder or mistake or ill-conceived trend of the times. And why not? Without the trial and error of life, everything would have this fantastical, cinematic quality about it that would smack of implausibility, recalling little else than an episode of Grey's Anatomy. You know, the one where they play that Snow Patrol song at the end. Wait, that's every episode of Grey's Anatomy.

Every.

last.

episode.

But you know, there are those occasions, those minor swatches in the tapestry of time that sometimes don't warrant forgiveness on our parts, allowing us to scream "THIS IS SPAAAARRMYYYYEARRRFFGGGHHHHH!!!1111!1111ONEONONE!!111!11" as we kick them down a greenscreen pit.

MySpace.

"But it's so great!"

"It really helps me stay connected with my friends."

"I never update my account. I just keep it to stalk people about once a month."

I've heard it all, and two weeks ago, I decided to put the old profile to rest. Why? MySpace is really like the mall in your hometown. It's full of people you don't want to see and pray to every last deity on the books that you can avoid for the rest of your natural life. However, old habits are hard to kick, and you still log on to MySpace just like you make that trip to the mall, warts and all. But couldn't you pick up that hoodie somewhere else? Did you really need to slog through all that rabble to get a fresh pair of steps? Shopping shouldn't eviscerate your soul, and neither should using the Internet or specifically a social networking site. I never want to see some of these people again. It's really nothing personal. But somehow it completely personal. I respect your privacy though. I sought to delete my account to stop stalking you and your boyfriend/husband/mom/pet/favorite post pop punk hardcore electro duo band from your high school. Only because you stopped stalking my favorite post-hardcore acoustic dub sextet from my high school.

I had grown tired of the nauseating format of MySpace, with the endless permutations of colors and fonts and Panic! at the Cartel American Rejects Like Girls songs that invaded your audio space with every hesitant click of the mouse. As if MySpace had become Russian Roulette for mall punk bands. Do I want to read this person's profile that bad? Do I really want to be forced to listen to what they're listening to, even for a few fleeting moments? Does the site lag on purpose so I have to listen to this garbage? Should using a social networking site really feel like hiding from the monsters under your bed?

What's worse is that the monsters kept multiplying. Constantly, my inbox would be flooded with a deluge of friend requests, comments, and other such wasteful bits and bytes, littering the Internet like styrofoam coffee cups and weathered Doritos bags from back when Doritos had one flavor. Perhaps you recall. In any case, it got a little bit too much. You know how you can only stuff so many marshmallows in your mouth before you turn into an oral Gatling gun. KAPOW KAPOW KAPOW KAPOW KAPOW.

I thought of these things and decided to delete my account.

That was two weeks ago.

And then, I stopped getting emails. Suddenly, my computer ran smoothly. Attractive women started smiling at me at work and on the street. I was informed I no longer owed any money for student loans, and Publisher's Clearing House gave my mom ten million dollars though she never did any of those sweepstakes things to begin with, so I was now able to get that rhinoplasty I'd always wanted. Last week, life was great.

Until I started getting more emails.

Friend invite. Message. Group invite. Friend invite. Message. Group invite.

I thought I had deleted my account.

No, I will not accept your friend request, amateur porn stars and former childhood neighbors. I deleted my account. MySpace is worthless. Follow my lead.

Yet they kept coming. So today, I decided to revisit MySpace and see what the trouble was, and it turns out, I didn't delete my account after all.

I blame myself for a lack of good judgment and follow-through. I trolled down to my profile, like the police did looking for Bruce Willis in the Fifth Element and discovered my profile page to be riddled with adds and chain messages and all the trash of pre-Giuliani New York City. Just not that cool. So this time, I meant business, and went through the motion to delete my account. I received this message:

Account Cancellation Scheduled

The account registered to the following email address has been scheduled for cancellation:

roliver@rmc.edu

NOTE: Please allow 48 hours for cancellation to take effect. Thank you.

You'll never let this end, will you, Tom?