Went to the disappointing Sox game last night. Can’t believe they couldn’t knock in the winning run for THREE INNINGS IN A ROW. But what knocked me out was how intense the fans were. Intense, and almost prescient, because a huge number of them left after the ninth inning with the score tied. And it was barely 9:15 at the time. Hey, we had a first grader with us, and he sat through the whole painful thing.
There’s a lot of talk about the diff between Sox fans and Cubs fans. The former are supposed to be the true baseball aficioadoes, while the latter are disinterested drunks on the company plastic, old ladies and children.
But I couldn’t believe the booing going on last night, at a team that while choking, is still in a pennant race. Isn’t there some middle ground between the heated, pointed heckling of Sox fans (a tough love thing) and the mushy adoration that Cub fans slather over their “boys”, win or lose? (Didn’t Saul Bellow mention some affection like that, “amorphous potato love” or something?)
It was just embarrassing that only about one-quarter or less of the Sox fans stuck around til the end.