Ended up taking the train to the downtown office this morning, where I came to find myself seated across the way from some old cocksucker (think Kenny Rogers, but less of that 'gambler' vibe). We're both occupying the aisle seat, with the window seat empty. At the next stop, a decrepit old black guy (think of an old black guy) gets on the train and just goes to town on me with the eye-raping. Various people have been eye-raping me on the metro for a few weeks now, so I'm starting to take less of an issue with it, but at a certain point it seems like you should react in some way. After a few minutes, my thought is that old black guy wants my seat, and although I've come enjoy the attempted ocular penetration, I slide over to the window side where I'm obscured from his view by ticket-checking-fatty (you see, we have the "honor-system" on our metro, which means that they employ fat chicks to do random spot checks). Non-gambling-Kenny stays put.
The next thing I know old-black-guy comes over and asks Kenny if he can take a seat next to him, Kenny yields, and somehow, as if brought together by fate, five seconds later they're discussing the evils of the Yankees organization. Cue up the music, nothing brings the races together like unilateral hate. They go on for about three or four minutes discussing why the Yankees are an abomination to the sport, why it's unfair, etc. They hit all the basics people fall back on when they're backpedaling for excuses - whiny, idealistic shit. Now, I'm a man known to sport a Yankees cap once and a while, and I take a colossal amount of shit for it, even out here, thousands of miles away. The interesting fact about that, I've found, is that roughly half the time a guy starts in on you with the "I'm an angry Red-Sox fan and you are my Yankee target" shtick, he's also going to make a few awkward passes at you through the duration. Anyway, I'm getting off course here, I'm trying to get to the point that Boston fans are sally-ass bitches who are addicted to self-loathing and losing. What does it say about a man who chooses to align himself behind a known loser, not just an under-dog, but a sure-fire loser?
The end of Kenny and old-black-guy's conversation gave me some clues. After a minute or two of silence, Kenny blurts out "The Red-Sox are such an embarrasment", to which old-black-guy agrees and mentions some of the finer nuances which make them such an embarrassment, along with more speculation as to how the Yankees effected that. That was the very first moment of their conversation when either of them were being realistic about the issue at hand (In case you forgot, we're talking about the Red-Sox sucking), and it took so much anti-Yankee propaganda from each of them, for one of them to be comfortable enough to 'fess up to the truth.. the dirty secret they all share. Now I think we've figured it out. Boston fans ascribe their own loserdom to the fact that they cannot succeed, that there is some insurmountable force stopping winning from being a possiblity (mind you, this will evolve over time.. Sox fans had different reasons for their chosen team sucking 20 years ago). To deal with this, they project all of their self loathing, fears and inadequacies on to the one team with the most diametrically different ethos, the team that knows it can, and does, and will, win. In the end, a lot of Yankee fans have to shoulder the burden of hearing Boston fans cry about how their pussies hurt, while deflecting comments that you're somehow evil if you're a Yankees fan. Most of the time it just makes me sad to talk to one of them... they're so much like fat people that say they want to be thin, yet don't believe they deserve to be thin, and just get fatter as a result, or, say Catholics. Actually, I'd be interested to know how many Sox fans are Catholic, as there seem to be many similarities in mindset... if anyone can dig that up, that'd be cool.
To my friends who are Sox fans, those of you enjoying this rain-out with another day of stewing, pacing, and self loathing - maybe some day you'll throw off the shackles of your mind and join me as a fan of the greatest baseball team in the universe (Cue Imperial Death March). All you gotta do is believe.
"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."
- Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
"Baseball is ninety percent mental and the other half is physical." - Yogi Berra