GO PHILLIES, or why I hate (most) Rays fans

I actually dislike Rays fans more than any other team’s supporters. Not the team (I really do think the better team won). Not even the fans who were there last year or the ones who were there in August when the Rays were still only getting 15K in the stands. Them I respect. But most of those people last night hadn’t lived and died with their team. Yankees fans, Mets fans (OY!) them I have no problem with. Hate the Red Sox all you want. As long as you have suffered along for your team, I understand. But I hate these we’re-winning-so-now-I’m-a-fan types. I believe — based on nothing — that they’re the ones who start riots after winning a championship.

Figured the Rays were going to win it. Glad the sox got it to 7 games. Now I can root for the Phillies. So what are ratings going to be like for this Series? Has Fox started figuring out how much it is going to have to give back to advertisers? Will Obama’s commercial before the (theoretical) game 6 outdraw the series?

Advertisement

The riches of poetry

Got an email this morning asking me if I would be willing to let someone republish one of my poems:

Hi Constantine, This past baseball season, I’ve been running a Cubs literary series at a Mexican restaurant down the street from Wrigley Field. It’s called, “Lovable Losers Literary Revue.” (www.lovablelosersliteraryrevue.com). I’m now putting together an anthology that arises out of the reading series. We’ve had a lot of great guests–Sun-Times columnist Dave Hoekstra, American Skin author Don De Grazia, mystery authors D.C. Brod and Robert Goldsborough, iconic pop band The Cleaning Ladys, WGN Radio’s Rick Kogan, WXRT’s Lin Brehmer, best-selling biographer Jonathan Eig (Jackie Robinson and Lou Gehrig books), humorist James Finn Garner (Politically Correct Bedtime Stories, etc.), Stuart Shea (with Garner, a founder of Bardball.com), and many others. They’re all contributing to the anthology. We’re looking for one or two more excellent additions before deadline and Tom Goldstein alerted me to your Cubs poem that was published in Elysian Field. I was hoping you’d grant us permission to use it in the anthology. It’s a tiny press publishing the anthology (State Street Publishing), and there’s no budget to pay contributors; instead, the press will make a donation in all the authors names to a Cubs’ charity, something that involves giving tickets to underprivileged kids.

I have made no money on my poetry and nearly none on my fiction, yet the joy it gives me is so great that I don’t really care. I was amazed when it first got published, the idea that someone read it and liked it enough to remember it makes that payment exponentially greater.

BTW, Don — any kid who follows the Cubs qualifies as underprivileged.

I must admit that I am having mixed feeling about this year’s Cubs as a result of writing 2008 (On The Impending Centennial Of The Cubs’ Futility) in 2006. I wrote it full of the confidence learned from a life of following the Cubs that they would not win. Now this year they have the best team in baseball and a brilliant manager. It is still concievable that the Cubs will not win it all. The Brewers are incredibly dangerous in a short series and the Angels are nearly as good as the Cubs. But to think that it is the beginning of September and Cubbies are odds on favorites to go to the Series. Part of my entirely self-centered heart thinks that this is yet another way in which the Cubs will thwart my dreams. I know there is a ways to go yet. I remember the collapse of ’69 all too well.

But … but …

And while my other beloveds, the Red Sox, are also good this year, I do not see them getting to the 2nd round of the playoffs. Although a Sox-Cubs series would probably have the highest baseball ratings ever.

Anyone wishing to read more of my poetry can find it at the bottom of the page marked My Writing: Samples.

A final Cub memory:

I moved to New England when I was 9 and so suffered a dual allegiance to the Cubs and the Red Sox. The last time I was at Wrigley (which is a better park than Fenway) was 1988. The Cubs vs. The Mets. The Cub starter was former Sox closer Calvin Schiraldi. In the 9th inning with the Mets up 5-3, Al Nipper (another survivor of the ’86 Red Sox) was brought on to relieve Schiraldi. I got up and headed for the exit. Someone asked me how I could leave. I shook my head and said, “I know how this one turns out.”

As I got in the car I heard Nipper giving up a 3 run homer.

Frontier Airlines makes the best of a bad (World Series) situation

The Denver-based carrier is running ads in the local papers with the slogan: “Now you know why we don’t fly to Boston.”

“It was a way for us to throw our support behind the Rockies and in a tongue-and-check way say we’ve got their back,” said Joe Hodas, a spokesman for Frontier, which sponsors the team and showed World Series games on seatback televisions during flights. When pressed, Hodas admitted that the airline stopped flying to Logan International Airport in 2002 because of gate constraints, scheduling issues, and high fuel prices, not the Red Sox. 

The Red Sox or, when your brand changes underneath you

“You can’t be lovable if you’re not losers!” — Jon Stewart on the Red Sox, 10/29/07

That is exactly what is going on with Red Sox Nation. The brand identity until three years ago was The Cursed Ones. For a while after that we were The Redeemed Ones (until The White Sox took that mantle). Now, we are The Successful Ones. The first two had significant qualities that really differentiated the brand from everyone else. They also inspired huge amounts of loyalty among consumers.

As the (hated) Yankees can attest success also inspires huge amounts of loyalty, but it’s taking some getting used to here in the Nation. It’s not a bad thing to get used to — but it is different.

Before this year, wearing the Red Sox logo generally got you a certain amount of sympathy and even respect in ballparks outside of New York. Other fans recognized you as someone devoted to the sport. Someone who stuck to your team no matter what and — let’s be honest — someone who rooted for a team that always made the other teams look better. It’s easy to sympathize with fans of a team like that — they’re not a threat. This explains why people outside of St. Louis are so fond of Cubs fans. (Outside of the Midwest, most people don’t realize the antipathy between the Cards and the Cubs. A friend once said that a game between those two teams would sell out even if it was held on Christmas Day during a blizzard. That sums it up.)

Now Sox fans — and their seem to be a lot of them everywhere — are going to have to get used to being reviled. So far the team hasn’t employed any True Villains in the sports marketing sense. Sure Schilling is a blowhard, but he blows just as hard against his own team as he does the opposition.

Stephen (Smarter Than Me) Baker, puts it well:

Hey Red Sox fans. Many of us used to love your team. And now that they’re fabulous, they’re a lot less fun. You may find that it’s lonely at the top. I never thought I’d say this, but I may end up pulling next year for those underdog Yankees.

The real problem will be not the team, but the fans. All this winning is stripping Sox fans of the shreds of humility that used to makes us so much easier to tolerate. We are in danger of collectively turning into what New Hampshire residents like to call Massholes.

Oh, how quickly we forget our four score decades of wandering in the wilderness. Well, if that’s the price of success all I can say is WAIT TILL THIS YEAR!

(BTW: Someone pointed out that the Red Sox didn’t become known as the Red Sox until 1908. Last time the Cubs won a World Series? 1908. Coincidence? I think not. So therefor the Cubs won’t win a Series again until the Sox change their name back to the Americans. While the logic is spurious, consider that I have 99 years of evidence to support it.)

Stephen Baker is smart and I am dumb

Friday I haughtily derided Mr. Baker (a reporter for BusinessWeek) for wondering IF Royce Clayton had been paid for discussing the Taco Bell promotion in the World Series:

Yeah, if that was a coincidence then pass the tiara because I’m Princess Marie of Roumania.

Well, I wear a size 7 and 7/8 tiara. Quoth the Globe:

It’s Clayton who seems the big loser here – shilling for Taco Bell without getting a dime.

Mr. Baker took a skeptical view of things and was right. I took the cynical view and was wrong. That’s pretty much always the case.

BTW, I’m writing this during the 2nd inning of game 4 and I can say without cynicism or any chance of being wrong that there’s no way my prediction of the Rockies in 6 can come true.

Whatever the outcome of tonight’s duel it’s been a good day for the area’s sports teams. The New England Cheaters demolished Washington 52-7. I loathe the Washington football team with a passion and love to see them humiliated. This isn’t that enjoyable type of sport hatred like I feel for the Yankees. This is an actual feeling of moral disgust. That there is a team with that nickname never ceases to appall me. I am not sure how any reasonable news outlet justifies printing the team’s name. The only thing that could have made today’s victory better is if the Sox Jacoby Ellsbury, who is of Navajo descent, could have helped. Well at least he got to beat Cleveland and it’s mascot.

Dumb question of the day: Is Taco Bell playing players to shill during the game?

Only possible answer: Yes.

I’m just hoping that BusinessWeek’s Stephen Baker didn’t write the headline for this blog post. He’s smarter than that. (Of course he didn’t predict the Rockies in 6, so look who’s talking.)

But what got me was that Royce Clayton, the Red Sox player wearing a Fox mike, “happened” to go up to the guy who stole the base and tell him about the promotion, and what his stolen base meant. This left me wondering if this back-up shortstop is being paid by Fox to promote Taco Bell, and if the Red Sox and Major League Baseball are on board with that.

Yeah, if that was a coincidence then pass the tiara because I’m Princess Marie of Roumania. The only thing more painful than the Clayton-Ellsbury moment was the “interview” with the COO for Taco Bell. Dude, get a spokesman. And some dental work.

Kudos to Baker for including this …

And they must not have liked it when commentator Tim McCarver welcomed us back to the game by saying, “From shilling to Schilling.”

Rockies in 6, said the Red Sox fan

If I hadn’t been a Sox fan for the last 36 years I, too, would be rooting for the Rockies. They’re the scrappy, talented underdogs. As my buddy and Spokesmate Tim Susman put it: They’re what the Sox were before the Sox became the Yankees.

Also, the Rockies have frickin’ amazing hitting and far fewer holes when batting than My Team. We’ve got more experienced pitching and some of it is better. Additionally, the Rockies have fate and the fact that they’re too young too know any better on their side.

Go Sox, but I’m expecting the Rockies.

PS: never, ever use fate or destiny as a deciding factor when picking a winner. As a Sox fan I speak with experience on this.