Tuesday, July 27, 2004

The other Fenway Park



I went to the Orioles - Red Sox game last night (Pedro and the Sox won 12-5) and I have two quick observations:
  • I forgot how many Red Sox fans there are up and down the East Coast (today's Washington Post described it as "A largely pro-Red Sox crowd of 42,113").  On the walk from the car to Camden Yards I'd guess that three out of every four fans were wearing Red Sox gear (and this is one of the few times I've been to an away Red Sox game where Boston fans didn't do anything to perpetuate the Masshole stereotype -- other than the kid wearing a shirt that said "Yankees Suck" on the front and "A-Rod Swallows" on the back -- an oh so witty play on the "Jeter Swallows" shirts).

  • It was amazing how, once the game started, the Red Sox seemed like the home team. A couple of times every inning, fans would start the "Let's go Red Sox" chant and it would take a half minute or so before O's fans could boo loud enough to be heard (or in one instance, an industrious O's fan just started yelling "1918!" -- to which I had to laugh).  But what was really funny was that every time Karim Garcia came to the plate he was booed so heavily you would have thought it was any game after game 3 of the 2003 ALCS. 

Even when the Yankees are in Boston (which is about as mixed a crowd as you'll get in Fenway), you don't see the home team summarily dismissed by the away team's fans. But in the case of Karim Garcia, it couldn't have happened to a nicer jerk.