This is just a rant, take it for what it is.
The home opener is today, and I’m already sick of the Red Sox. I’m sick of wondering how many fans will be injured or killed during “celebrations” this year. I’m sick of knowing that, for the next six months (give or take), the Green Line will be essentially unusable on random days.
I’m sick of claims (whether true or not) that campaigns are won and lost by the amount and apparent sincerity of the candidate’s fealty to “the Red Sox”. I spent many an enjoyable hour schmoozing with candidates at the Billerica dump, where anybody who was serious about taking office spent every Saturday morning. I’m reasonably certain that that’s where I first met Ed Markey, way back in 1980 or 1982. Sorry, but Yawkey Way on game day is not the same.
I’m sick of a legislature that ignores problems for decades until an episode involving the Red Sox comes up. Abusive men have been abusing, beating, terrorizing, raping, and murdering women in Massachusetts for decades, long before Jennifer Martel was even a gleam in her parent’s eye. I’m glad the legislature finally, belatedly, attempted to address the problem. I’m disgusted that it apparently required a Red Sox connection to awaken Mr. DeLeo from his slumber on this issue.
I’m sick of the closest approximation we have to a newspaper being owned by Red Sox. Funny how the new Globe has so little interest in, for example, the flagrant racism of the team’s management (in apparent violation of earlier accords). I guess such racism is far less newsworthy than yet another photo-op for the team. I’m sick of meaningless front-page stories whose primary purpose seems to be burnishing the public image of the day-job of the Globe’s owner.
I’m sick of the endless boosterism and pep-talks about an event that costs a small fortune to attend, when seats are available. When I want to enjoy watching some baseball, I far prefer a Lowell Spinner’s game. Taking my family to a game is possible at $10/seat in Lowell.
Ok, end of rant.
I thoroughly sympathize, but dare not recommend your rant else we liberals get tarred as being against our local sporting franchise.
Do I think knowledge of things Red Sox should be a prerequisite for office? Not particularly.
Am I uncomfortable about the potential ramifications of John Henry’s ownership of the Globe? Sure.
Did I make the same point myself about Bob DeLeo and the Jared Remy case just a couple of days ago? Yep.
Do I agree that ticket prices are too high for many people and the Lowell Spinners are a great alternative? Definitely.
But: Do I cringe whenever liberal candidates manage to sound tone deaf and/or clueless about an institution that’s been important to many local families for over a century? Yes, I do.
Do I think that makes them seem out of touch with ordinary people and plays into every upside-down stereotype about liberals savoring caviar on Nantucket that the GOP ever has invented? I surely do.
Do I think a liberal candidate who followed the team would connect better than one who shows lack of interest or outright antipathy? Yeah, pretty much.
Do I think that the fact that so many people pay the high ticket prices is simply proof of how much Bay Staters love this team, and that politicians who don’t follow baseball should invest 15 minutes in learning a fact or two about them? Yup.
Do I think the same troubles would follow a candidate in, for example, Alabama who showed total ignorance of, or disdain for, hunting when 2/3 of her or his prospective constituents like it? Surely.
Do I think the problems with the Green Line on game days have more to with the general inadequacy of the Green Line and should not be blamed on a team that’s played 80 times a year in the same ballpark since 1912? A thousand times, yes.
Do I think that injuries happen outside bars every Saturday night, and around many concerts or protest rallies, but that none of those things should be curtailed because of it? I do.
The Green Line handled game days and nights SIGNIFICANTLY better in the late 70s than they do now. I lived near the BU West Campus in those years, and I attended frequent (as in nightly) home games during the 1975 season. In those days I could scalp a field box for, as I recall, $20. I went to pretty much every home game.
At that time, the T would stockpile trains near Kenmore just before the end of a game. There is a center holding track on Comm Ave, just past “Silber Way”, where several trains can wait. I remember walking past that area and seeing all three tracks filled with waiting trains.
There is also an underground loop at Kenmore that allows inbound trains to turn around without going all the way into Park Street. I think, though I don’t remember clearly, that that loop was also used on game nights.
When a game would end, the T would send car after car through Fenway, as fast the cars could be loaded.
Another difference, then, is that fans (other than pre-teens) did not wear the regalia that are so omnipresent today. There may have been as many fans on the trains in 1975, but they were harder to spot.
I do wonder what Boston’s classical music scene would be like if every concert-goer dressed up as their favorite violinist or horn player, complete with tux and tails.
I get your legitimate complaints about crowd control, drunk obnoxious people, crime, and transit but they can cross apply to any team. The complaints about the way ‘kids dress these days’ makes you sound like an old fogey.
But this young fogey actually wore black tie to the Opera and apparently that’s frowned upon these days. My roommate wore top hat and tails and got his picture in the Trib though, so maybe it’s not.
When an entire car is packed with “drunk obnoxious people” yelling, falling, sometimes fighting — all in full Red Sox regalia, yeah it bothers me. I would feel the same if it was a carload of rowdies in military uniform, or wearing the same corporate T-shirts.
I’m not making an aesthetic judgement about the clothing, I’m making a criticism of the behavior that so often accompanies such mobs. Like it or not, a common uniform — much like gang colors — does unify the group. That’s what the “uni” in “uniform” means.
It isn’t that wearing team colors makes people obnoxious — it’s that so many of the obnoxious people on a crowded Green Line car are wearing the team colors.
For what it’s worth, if I lived in Alabama I’d probably make a similar flame about hunting.
I don’t think you’re sick of the Red Sox. You’re sick of sports fascism.
It’s the sort of group think that surrounds the teams, and we’ve have a LOT more of it in the last decade since the teams started winning (again). You’re sick of the Red Sox being injected into public debates. In the case of the Green Line, the Sox just exaggerate its existing problems.
Sports should be fun, and enjoyed (or ignored) without being taking seriously. But they are covered differently — as big business and as cultural institutions. So the perspective is skewed, and it’s exhausting.
Go Sox! But vive la difference, and let’s keep our heads about it, I agree.
That ignorance of the holy schedule has lost you lost my vote forever.
Back in the good old days, when Smoky Joe Wood has pitching for the Red Sox and backed by an outfield of Tris Speaker, Duffy Lewis, and Harry Hooper, an American League ticket cost 25 cents. That was *half* the price of a National League ticket, and that goes a fair way to explaining why the American League survived. (The Braves lost 101 games that season.)
Those fifty cent tickets, allowing for inflation, cost around $40 today. So today’s tickets cost a bit more, but tickets were really expensive even then.
I hadn’t done the math, but I hear from elders in the family you could still go to a game in the 1950s for 50 cents.
At the bleachers in 96′ or 97 ‘with summer camp. It baked in the middle of August but at least we were there. Of course my childhood hero was Roger Clemens so maybe Tom does have a point.
If I recall correctly, in the sixties, bleacher seats were $1. In the seventies, I’m thinking $2. I remember politicians would send bus loads of us kids. We got to go to the game, they transported us, and we got hoodsies, popcorn, hot dogs and everything. A favorite childhood memory.
Just last week had to explain what they were to my fiancée.
I remember that too. In 1980 a field box near the dugout was still $6.50. I have a stub from 1985, infield box seats for $8.
In 1993 a grandstand seat was only $10. A year later they were getting $14 for the grandstand, which jumped to $20 in 1997, $28 in 2000 and way beyond in the few years after that. Now it’s over $50.
I’m happy to see the team do well, but wouldn’t it be nice if the average income went up 5 times in 20 years? The real value of the minimum wage actually has gone down.
My office used to buy bleacher tickets 96-97 and we’d go as a group. $8
Overall I think Fenway prices tripled in less than 10 years.
Maybe even more than tripled in some cases. Infield grandstands, as I recall, were like $4 in 1985, $10 in ’93, $14 in ’94, $20 by ’97, $24 in 99, $28 in ’00, and then $40 by 2001 or 2002.
Different stadium, different team, but I remember in the 70s (probably early 70s) that the Tigers had an easy $1 / $2 / $3 / $4 pricing system, ranging from the bleachers to the box seats. I just checked on tickets at Comerica for a trip this summer and it looks like I can get a halfway decent seat for about $50.
I paid $115 to see Detroit play at Citi (Mets) last year – just beyond the base on the first base side. I could rationalize that as I was there by myself.
Granted this is based on second hand experience, but it sounds like Tom wants a more suburban sports complex that is isolated from the rest of the city that people drive to rather than take public transit to. From what I’ve been told that’s what Philly and Detroit basically have. The downside is it clogs traffic, the upside I guess is all the sporting fans are isolated into a ‘sports zone’ of the city. LA has that too. I for one am happy we can take the train right to our favorite teams (even the Pats if we wanted to) and we still have an old school neighborhood ballpark.
in a real neighborhood too. I don’t think Tom wants the Sox in the suburbs as much as he’d like the Green Line to run better. Like, as he said, it used to. (An aside – if a Green Line car’s packed to the gills with people and lurching around at a snail’s pace, I don’t much care if the people on it are wearing Red Sox jerseys or three-piece suits and evening gowns.)
In New York things seem to have gone the opposite direction. I remember going to Yankee Stadium on the subway was always hell (Yankee Stadium itself is hell for a different reason). Then one day I came out and there was a brand new empty D train waiting at the station after the game, followed by another one or two. A 40-minute wait in a jammed station reduced to about 3 minutes.
Philly’s sports venues are all packed together, in the city but well south of downtown, near massive parking lots and the highways. But the subway goes there. Detroit’s a little different. The baseball and football stadiums (stadia?) are pretty much right downtown now, and the Red Wings at Joe Louis Arena not far away. But as the Motor City practically nobody takes transit. There are some bus lines there. A decent example of an essentially suburban sports complex is Kansas City. I prefer to have these things in the city myself.
Comerica Park (baseball) and Ford Field (football) are certainly not in a suburban location. They are both just east of Woodward Ave., which is one of Detroit’s main drags (probably THE main drag – that is where all of the parades go) and inside three freeways that roughly define “downtown”. But they are clustered, together and the new hockey rink (Joe Louis is on the river) is slated to go nearby, across I-75 on the other side of Woodward.
The only public transit nearby is bus service. The “People Mover” only gets as close as Grand Circus Park, a little ways down Woodward. But don’t mistake any of this as public transit on a Boston scale. That doesn’t exist in Detroit. People drive to the games (and for any other reason they need to be downtown).
It and Philly are within city limits but have a more suburban character since they resemble park and go stadiums of the 60s and 70s in terms of how they are laid out and are part of exclusive sports/entertainment zones.
Right, and I prefer that in Boston even visitors will be exposed to our city if they are seeing their team play the Sox. They will spend more money in city, take cleaner transit than drive, and really get inside of a neighborhood or two in the city. My Michigan friends pop in and pop out, ditto friends from Philly suburbs and Southern NJ.
Just saying.
And what is interesting about it is how well DeVito fits into it. I enjoyed the first season, and was leery of his arrival, but he is just another member of a great ensemble cast. Always hilarious.
binge watch the first season.
with the houses across the river with the white Christmas lights all year long.
I feel bad for people that weren’t townies who move here and feel like they can never belong since they don’t understand our quirks. He’s been here longer than I’ve been on Earth, but as I’ve discussed with Robert Winters on other occasions, he can’t say he’s from here. This oddly placed singling out of the Red Sox fits the pattern.
All fans are obnoxious, spend enough time (as I have in Chicago) around fans of teams you don’t particularly care for and you would feel the same way. All major sporting organizations are capitalist vultures who leech off the taxpayer. And all sporting events can cause traffic problems, crime problems, and the like. It’s part and parcel to living in a sports town and living in a major city.
To me I miss the Red Sox every day, I don’t get to watch them that much out here (unless they play the Yankees), but I also see how biased the hometown papers are, how obnoxious local news sports coverage can be, and how awful the parades and celebrations are when teams win-when it’s not my team. (I was biking on Mackinac Island during the Hawks parade and have no regrets). When it’s my team I embrace the double standards.
But otherwise I will echo Fenway’s comments and just urge Tom to click past NESN, stop reading the Globe since it was a poor provincial paper before Henry bought it out, and let the rest of us have our fun.
n/t
Something that is probably worthwhile to be sick about is the top story on the front page of the Globe today – about how the grounds crew was able to get the field into shape. Really? That’s the most important story of the day?
They might have run that before Henry bought the paper.
Everything was pretty good up to that point. Up to that time, they were over-achievers, lovable losers. That year they were the dirt dogs, and it didn’t seem like a phony promotion — like the beards. But then they won the World Series after 86 years, and suddenly every reason to root for them seemed to dry up. I’m still trying to figure out why. Maybe it was because the ownership seemed to kick everyone out the door because they wanted to remake the team as a commercialized parody of itself.
…although mostly I would tend to be pretty tolerant of whatever generally harmless pastime makes life worth living for anyone.
What bothers me about enforced Red Sox fandom is that it seems to be a symptom of badly attenuated community. It seems like a desperate attempt to paper over the lack of a common civic identity among the citizens of Massachusetts. Basically, absent a tragedy like the Marathon bombing, there isn’t that much that the various socioeconomic classes, neighborhoods, and regions seem to have in common. But I’m not a native so maybe I’m idealizing what it was like back in the day.
I couldn’t care less about them for the most part and don’t feel persecuted on account of that attitude.
Based on at least a few of the highly up-voted comments here, you just disqualified yourself from elective office in this state.
That’s what I take “enforced” to mean.
I grew up in DC, where the passion for the Redskins — good years and bad — is also intense. Still, I don’t think campaigns live or die based on whether a candidate shows up at wherever the now play. I don’t think anybody would argue that declaring disinterest in the Redskins would be seen as hurting the progressive cause.
I’m all for for the rah-rah-go-team stuff for those who care. I’d like them to leave it at the ballpark. It kind of reminds me of the way certain religious traditions seem to have trouble distinguishing what they can and can’t do inside their places of worship from what happens in the rest of the world.
In any case, I join you in not caring. I guess each of us should give our aspirations for high office in this state 🙂
I think it’s enough to avoid a Schilling-is-a-Yankees-fan gaffe. I’ve lived here all my life so I don’t have divided loyalties either and I did turn on the last few minutes of the last WS game in 2004 just so I could say I saw it happen. Overall I think voters actually have more respect for honesty than phonyism.
Thank you Christopher, it is maybe not so bad as I think if someone can actually admit to its relative nonimportance on his list of priorities.
David Bernstein is a political reporter and he makes it very obvious that he is a Red Sox fan. He recently asked all the candidates running for office to predict the outcome of the Red Sox season and got most/all of them to respond (I wasn’t keeping track exactly of who answered the call).
Now I would counter that this blog is a better source of real political intelligence than chez Bernstein, and we know that two of its sponsors are active participants in the local opera scene. What if they assumed that everyone in Massachusetts was interested in that and asked all the candidates to make predictions about the 2014-15 repertoire for Boston Lyric Opera? And what if all of them were pretending to be vitally interested in whether we would be listening to Cosi fan tutte or Carmen or The Rake’s Progress or A Little Night Music?
Well we all know that that scenario would be crazy. So, enforced Red Sox fandom (at least for politicians) – QED.
I’ll admit, I don’t get it. I start watching in September if doing paperwork and want some background. I like them well enough, and hey someone has to win so why not the Sox? But it’s among the least corrosive allegiances common to the area. For example, there’s about as much cultural hype for Easter as for the Red Sox, and at least I’m pretty sure the 2013 World Series happened exactly as described. And I have a better shot getting elected without talkin’ Sawx than not talkin’ Gawd. And a lot more of my tax money goes into the fertility symbol, er Easter egg, roll than went into the Red Sox’s visit to the White House.
Not that Easter bothers me that much either, I just don’t get excited about things I don’t like. Just ignore ’em. It’s part of living heah.
I don’t think team fandom comes up at all in most political contests. And I do think it’s petty of Bernstein to waste time on it that could be spent on substantive discussion. I have no idea how big a fan Nikki Tsongas or Ed Markey are, for instance, nor do I care. If either of them, or any candidate for elective office so much as mentioned being an atheist, however, their political career would end immediately.
Belief in God is absolutely mandatory for a politician in this country. It mostly has to be some flavor of Judeo-Christian God, too. No Pagans, or Wiccans, or the like. Once in a while a Buddhist might get into some lower-level office, and I’d bet that there are a lot of stealth Scientologists in office, but no atheists, ever.
If pressed, people who discriminate against atheists will usually assert that you can’t have any moral code without belief in God. This is, of course, nonsense. The religious take it as an article of faith though, and react to any challenge to the idea as if it were an attack on their religion. Freedom of religion for most does not include freedom from religion. The discrimination doesn’t just affect politicians, either. It crops up in employment, in housing, and in almost any area that people think they have a right to do it. If you don’t believe it, it’s because you’re part of the dominant group, so it’s never happened to you, and because you probably think you don’t know any atheists. Mostly, atheists don’t proclaim their beliefs, because it’s easier not to, and because they don’t think it’s central to their identity, the way religious people do.
We will never have true religious freedom until it’s OK for people to be free to not believe in God without being stigmatized for it. Good luck to us with that.
For our electeds I usually have to look it up if I really wanted to know their religious background because it’s not something that comes up. The Kennedys are known as Catholics I think largely because JFK broke that barrier to the White House and his father cultivated Vatican influence. For many it’s more background than fervent belief. I do know some athiests, especially here and have encountered them at DK where if anything they seem overrepresented relative to the entire population. Are there really examples of discrimination against athiests in employment (except in obvious cases when the employer is a religious institution) or housing? I especially can’t imagine it coming up in the latter. Here is a list of athiests is politics, which interestingly includes Barney Frank who I thought was Jewish, but maybe that’s his ethnic heritage rather than religious practice. Hawaii is represented in the Senate by one Jew and one Buddhist, and in the House by a Buddhist and a Hindu.
It doesn’t come up…it is presumed. It is presumed that politicians go to a house of worship at some point, so thoroughly that there has been one, count ’em, one sitting Congressperson who declared that s/he did not have a religion since World War II. So much that in a country of thousands of elected positions, there’s a whopping 30 names nationwide on that list you mentioned. Thirty! And most of those only owned up to atheism when they retired.
Sports interest test are presented as human interest “color” for a politician, whereas religious interest is presented as essential to the fabric of their being. When someplace without a large proportion of Hindus elects a Hindu Congressperson, I’ll be interested. It remains a litmus test, one far more damaging that watching people chase spheres around lawns.
As for Hawaii, there is still a decided Christian advantage in the demographics, with Hinduism and Buddhism in the single digits.
Frank came out as a “pot-smoking atheist” only a after retirement on Bill Maher’s show. That said while Pete Stark was the lone atheist in the chamber for awhile, there are now ten listed as unaffiliated including the first openly bisexual Rep. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) and openly gay Rep. Marc Pocan (D-WI) and Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI). Gary Johnson called himself an agnostic leaning Presbyterian but I’m not sure if that was the case while he was Governor. Otherwise no Republicans as far as I know.
I wonder if the openly gay members who are not religious figured there was little electoral risk since they already lost religious leaning voters or if they are open about their sexuality might as well be open with their faith. A Unitarian friend of mine who grew up in Madison remembers Baldwin going to First UU with her partner when he attended it, but otherwise I don’t know. This same friend of mine attends University UU in Hyde Park which Cook County President Toni Preckwinkle is listed as a member, but is an “Easter and Christmas Unitarian” according to my friend.
Personally I feel the Founders were wise enough to include
no religious test for high office and I’d happily vote for anyone who I felt was qualified and shared my views on the issues. Considering the vast majority of my friends are not religious (in Chicago as well not just Cambridge) I suspect we will see more in the future. It’s definitely a double standard though. Conservatives can bash other faiths all they want but even in more secular Europe which has elected atheists to higher offices, the officials always have to say they respect the religious. An outspoken intolerant atheist like a Dawkins would never get elected and we obviously can’t say that about a similarly intolerant Christian (one need only look at the House majority to see that). As a sidenote, the three Republicans at my old job were all atheists.
…but then again, I’m not much a fan of intolerant Christians. Of course in a perfect world the term intolerant plus any religious designation would be an oxymoron since atheists could say it’s not for me, but whatever floats your boat and those who are religious would focus on the love, humanity, and compassion toward all which is at the heart of the teachings of all great religions.
Can you name one current statewide or Congressional office-holder who has identified as being an atheist? Note that seven state constitutions explicitly bar atheists from holding any public office. Some prohibit them from testifying in court. The justification for that – that atheists are not competent judges of truth – is freighted with irony.
Here’s an article explaining many of the other ways that atheists are commonly discriminated against, even though it’s illegal. Again, if you don’t see it, it’s because it’s not happening to you.
More than 48 hours have passed, and no one has supplied the name of a current atheist in a non-local elected position. I take that as evidence that there are none, and support for my assertion that religious belief is mandatory.
It does not make me happy to be right about this.