I sit here, past my deadline as usual, watching the Eastern Sports and Programming Network. (Now you know what ESPN stands for). I'm watching my first Boston Red Sox game today, and I couldn't be more excited. Granted, it's an exhibition game. Granted, it's against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Granted, the regular season start is marred by my 15-page paper due the night before. But that doesn't matter.
Baseball season is starting on April 3 in Baltimore. Red Sox vs. Orioles. To me and my fellow New Englanders, this is a holiday on par only with the classic springtime Massachusetts days of celebration: St. Patrick's Day, Patriots' Day and Bunker Hill Day. Though I walk around with my new "Super Bowl Champion" New England Patriots hat, I live and die by the BoSox.
This year is special too. The Red Sox and New York Yankees classic playoff duel last year proved two things: The Yankees-Red Sox feud is as timeless as any other, and Yankees fans are complete idiots, completely devoid of personality and/or the ability to think for themselves. (I already touched on this in a previous column where I attempted to refer to Yankees fans as ignorant [profanity], but my editors wisely decided that was inappropriate for a family newspaper). The past off-season intensified the feud to new heights, as the Red Sox improved their pitching and the Yankees developed a lineup that brings to mind the sluggers of 1927. The Alex Rodriguez saga made everything all the more heated.
April 16 is going to be my personal holiday. It will be game eight of the Red Sox-Yankees playoff series. It will be the renewal of the greatest rivalry in American sports. It represents everything that is great about sports. Just now, during the game, a spectator (a little girl) got hit in the head with a baseball bat. The play-by-play announcer claimed stuff like this proved how unimportant sports really were. After all, it's just a game. This sort of talk was pretty common around the time the Twin Towers crumbled. I hate it. Sports are that important. It's something that perfectly reasonable people dedicate their lives to. The outcome of a Red Sox game is enough to affect my mood for days. I am not ashamed of this. No one should be.
(By the way, how funny is it that a little girl got creamed by a baseball bat? I love stuff like that. More proof that girls should pay more attention to sports. Who needs Title IX when we could threaten girls with flying bats?)
I know this is supposed to be a humor column, and I have probably failed at my goal at making you laugh. I also know a column like this probably belongs on the Sports page, not Page 9 of "The Scene." After all, I'm supposed to be writing about campus life. But this is campus life. Look around. Almost every hat on campus is either a glorious red "B" or the cursed intersecting white "N" and "Y." This school has enough New Englanders and Long Island trash to fuel the rivalry on campus. The addition of countless honorable Red Sox sympathizers and spineless Yankee frontrunners from every part of the country makes it that much more exciting.
April 16 is marked on my Avril Lavigne calendar with a bright red circle. That day will probably mark how well I do on my finals and how well I interact with others. It sets the stage for the next six months of my life. Sad? Yes. Lame? Totally. But it's the most fun in the world, even when I am always on the losing end. Go Sox!
