It's more than "just a game."

[Image from sportsofboston.com]

Here we are. Six games into the season.  I have yet to see a single one of these games, but from all accounts, I’m not missing much.  Despite the fact that Jonny Lester pitched a gem yesterday afternoon, the bats couldn’t scrape together one measly run to get him the win, while Daniel Bard walked the first man he faced, only to have that very runner come around to score on a perfectly executed suicide squeeze.

The play is aptly named, since I’m sure hordes of New Englanders (and current Red Sox Nation expatriates like myself) were ready to hurl themselves off the Tobin when they looked at the calendar and realized that we’re now a week into the season and about to head home to play the Bronx Bombers, still looking for that elusive first “W.”

My head is telling me that this is a good team, and that a six-game losing streak in June would be cause for mild concern and not the panic that bubbles in my stomach when I think about the 0-6 record that will soon be displayed upon the Fenway Park scoreboard.  My heart, on the other hand, is much less reasonable, and demanding an explanation that doesn’t seem to exist.

It’s times like these when I turn my lonely eyes to one Dustin Pedroia, and as usual, the scrappy second-baseman didn’t disappoint: “last year… it kind of took us a while to get into the flow of things. We don't want that to happen here this time. We're going to try to come out and do what we do. Have good at-bats. Carl [Crawford]'s a game-changer, Adrian [Gonzalez]'s a run-producing machine. We just need the guys who have been here to do what they normally do, and those guys will fit in well because they're such good players.”

He also mentioned how much this team needs Fenway Park right now: "We've just got to relax, man… Get back home, get our fans into it. We miss them. We want to play in front of those guys. Get the new guys a nice big ovation. It will be good. We'll be good to go."  Well, we’d like to see you all play in front of us at home, too, but don’t expect too big of an ovation if things don’t turn around in the very near future.

This is serious business – you don’t take baseball lightly in New England.  For all of the people on my abroad program poking fun and telling me to “lighten up – it’s just a game,” I have something to tell you. It’s WAY MORE than just a game to me.  It’s a huge part of my life, and I’m doing everything I can to make sure that I can make it my job when I leave college.  Telling me that I shouldn’t care so much, that it’s only a silly game, makes me realize that you just don’t get it – or me.  My devotion to the Red Sox  is hardly a secret, and anyone who dares make light of this skid or tell me I shouldn’t care so much doesn’t care enough about me to pay attention.

My devotion to the local nine borders on the religious (I’m willing to bet I know more about the Sox than many church-goers know about their religious tract of choice), and I will lead a crusade in their defense if that’s what it takes.  Hopefully the Red Sox turn things around before it comes to a holy war – after all, Jesus jumped ship for New York six years ago.

I'm not ready to jump yet...

But if the people on my program don't lay off I might just throw one of THEM off the Tobin Bridge.

Seriously.  It's not like I've made my love for the Red Sox a secret in the last eleven weeks, and I'm willing to take some good-natured jabbing, but this is totally out of hand. Everyone knows what a big part of my life this team is, and being so far away from access to them is hard enough without having to deal with the endless jokes and jabs about their poor performance.

I KNOW they've sucked, but it's NOT A JOKE TO ME.

End rant.

Help - I'm getting taunted by a Cleveland fan!

This is getting out of hand.  Don’t get me wrong; I’m confident that the Red Sox will eventually turn this thing around – they’re easily capable of rattling off a ten game winning streak, and then we’re sitting pretty at 10-4, and everything will be right with the world.

In the meantime, however, I’m in Senegal, getting taunted by a Cleveland fan (I would say Indians fan, but baseball isn’t the top of his list, really).  The sad thing is that I have no retort for him.  The Red Sox are 0-1 against the Tribe so far this year, and his half-joking threat that we’re about to get swept by the lowly Indians is still within the realm of possibility.

I’ve not been able to watch a single game, between the time difference and lack of reliable internet, and I’m honestly on the verge of blaming myself for this extensive losing streak (though I’m hardly the superstitious type).  This is just unbearable – I know 4-game losing streaks happen, even to very good teams, but it’s twice as hard to bear when it happens at the very outset of the season.

I know that we’re better than this.  All of the players know that they’re better than this.  However, with the exceptions of David Ortiz, Adrian Gonzalez, and Dustin Pedroia, the entire team is hitting below the Mendoza line, and the pitching rotation has been a mess.  It has to get better, because I just won’t be able to handle it getting any worse.

I’m currently typing this during class (yes, yes, I know, I’m a terrible student), and the aforementioned Cleveland fan is showing me highlights of last night’s game on his computer, and then smirking repeatedly.  Please, Red Sox, give ME something to smirk about - this can only end badly, otherwise.

Red Sox Fan in a Foreign Land [Part 2]

Back in 2008, an bitter Hank Steinbrenner took a shot at Red Sox Nation: "What a bunch of bullshit that is.  Go anywhere... and you won't see Red Sox hats and jackets, you'll see Yankee hats and jackets."  As much as I hate to say this, old Hank was right.  To a certain extent in Delhi, and to a much larger degree in Dakar, you see Yankees hats everywhere.

This wasn't completely unexpected, but I was curious as to why and how all of these people became Yankees fans (and why all of the people wearing Red Sox, Marlins, Cardinals, Mets, White Sox, A's, Braves, Rockies, and other hats came to have them).  Very few people here speak English or Spanish (French and Wolof are the official and most common languages), and to the best of my knowledge there has not been a single Senegalese Major Leaguer.

This man dd not understand why I wanted a photo with him. Then, he told me he loved me.

So when I had access to a translator for a class project (yes, I actually have to do work on this program), I decided to ask a few people.  Not a single one of the men I asked knew that the interlocked NY on their caps meant New York Yankees, all five of them thought it simply stood for New York, and, by extension, the United States.  The one man I asked with a Red Sox hat owned it because his surname started with a "B," so this phenomenon is hardly unique to the Yankees.

Some people wearing such hats wear them to look like American rap stars Jay-Z and 50 Cent, contemporaries of Senegalese cult-hero Akon, who was born in the US to Senegalese parents but spent his formative years in Dakar.  All in all, I would hazard a guess that 99% of the people in Dakar wearing MLB paraphernalia have no idea that it's a team logo, and they don't care.

However, that doesn't mean I don't get excited when I see a Boston hat (all the Yankees caps are enough to drive you insane).  Yesterday, we went to a wrestling match, and when one of the famous wrestler emerged from his car to cheers, a member of his entourage had a shiny, new, flat-brimmed Red Sox hat on (backwards, of course).  I immediately started jumping up and down in excitement (I was hardly alone - wrestling is a BIG DEAL here - people were literally fainting from excitement all over the stadium).

The sight of the Sox hat was enough to make my day, even though the match was anticlimactic (it actually ended in a tie) and I was rushed to the hospital late at night because I am apparently allergic to mangoes.  Hopefully, the Red Sox will soon start playing well enough for this kind of excitement to be justified... I think a series at Cleveland is JUST what the doctor ordered.

Everyone CALM DOWN.

So here we are, one series and three games into the 2011 season, and 3 games behind the first-place Orioles (yes, the Orioles), and people are starting to panic.

Why did we drop so much money and so many prospects for a splash in the offseason only to see the 2011 version of the Sox immediately fall into a tailspin in Texas? First of all, there are a lot of factors that go into these three losses.

(1) The Rangers are not to be taken lightly. These are not your father’s Texas Rangers: they’re under new ownership (hello, Nolan Ryan), and, lest you forget, they are the defending American League champions. Yes, they’ve lost Cliff Lee, but one player does not make or break a team.

(2) The Red Sox had a terrible spring. I understand that Spring Training is essentially meaningless, but the lackluster record and laissez faire attitude from that period seems to have carried over. Hopefully, they snap out of this funk sooner rather than later.

(3) It’s only April 4^th! I know, I know, these losses count just as much as losses in July or September, and if we lose out on the playoffs by less than three games, I will go back and eat my words, but while a three-game sweep to Texas, IN Texas, would be a cause for concern in mid-June and are the reason for outright panic at the start of the season. Say it with me, folks: SMALL. SAMPLE. SIZE.

Look, I understand the panic. I get it, the start of a new season is a rebirth in many ways, and no one wants their personal time of renewal to be sullied by bad experiences (and three losing scores of 12-5, 5-1, and 9-5 certainly fall into the realm of bad experiences).

But just like the triumphant graduating senior who can look back at his botched freshman year with nostalgia, I am confident that we will be able to look back on these three days and laugh, for they will not shape the entire season. Baseball is a marathon, there are 160 games still left to be played, and it’s unlikely (practically impossible, in fact), that the Red Sox will go 0-162 – though that would certainly be a memorable season, for all the wrong reasons.

It’s going to be okay, I promise… there’s a lot to look forward to: David Ortiz and Adrian Gonzalez are already RAKING; Matt Albers, Bobby Jenks, and Dennys Reyes have a collective ERA of 0.00; no one is injured yet; AND WE GO TO CLEVELAND NEXT. Things are going to look up – our starting pitching can hardly get worse, and the return to friendly Fenway on Friday should do us a world of good (even if we’re returning to play the Yanks).

It's not the 2010 Parade of Carnage, so everything will be okay.

So back away from the edge of the Tobin Bridge, Red Sox Nation… this should still be a season for the ages, and you would hate to miss out because you jumped ship in April after one lost series.

I'm missing everything!

This photo almost made me cry.

This is harder than I had initially imagined… Before I embarked on this semester abroad, I calculated just how many Red Sox games would be played during my absence, and while I understood on some level that I would really be missing a lot of baseball, I had it in my head that I would be able to keep up somehow, and maybe even watch a game here and there.

At this point, that seems pretty unlikely. My homestay here in Dakar, Senegal, does not have internet, and the games are broadcast at times when I am certainly expected to be home. Next week, I leave for Spring Break, and the resort presumably has WiFi, but most likely not enough to stream games. The one light at the end of the tunnel might be Buenos Aires. We arrive in Argentina April 17^th, and because the time difference there is just one hour (!), it’s possible that I might be able to watch the occasional Red Sox game, whether or not my Argentinian homestay has internet.

When I’m at home, the only times I wake up without knowing how he Sox did the night before are when I fall asleep watching them on the West Coast… and I just missed Opening Day (which, apparently, was not the triumphant return we had all imagined) and Game #2. Every morning when I get to someplace with internet, I immediately check the scores, but it’s not the same.

I feel like there’s a physical hole in my life: Opening Day is about renewal and new beginnings, and I missed out completely. My own personal Opening Day will be May 23^rd, when I return stateside, and you better believe the first thing I’m going to do is watch the Sox.

Let's Burst his Bubble: CJ Wilson and Opening day

Despite the fact that Texas starter CJ Wilson is seemingly unimpressed with the 2011 Boston Red Sox, I have a good feeling about today (plus, I have Wilson and Neftali Feliz on my fantasy team, so if all goes awry for the Sox, at least I'll get something out of it).

I'm a pretty big Wilson fan, but with all due respect, his comments sounded like overcompensation - perhaps for nerves? Obviously, the lefthander is an elite talent, and he's only saying what any pitcher would say. You can't expect him to publicly cower from the almighty Red Sox - that would hardly inspire his teammates to give him much run support. The fact is, the Red Sox did only make 2 additions to their lineup, but they're two of the best players in the game. Sure, the fact that both Crawford and Gonzalez are lefthanded, and Wilson has been absolute DEATH on lefties, but I still think the Sox will pull this one out.

And even if they don't? There are 161 games coming after today, and these Red Sox are built for the long haul. Assuming they can avoid another Parade of Carnage like last year, it's easy to imagine baseball in Boston well into October. It's hard not to look at the first few games of the season under a microscope: if the team goes 0-2 or 1-3, well, there goes the season. Likewise, if the team starts off hot, it's tempting to start designing those World Series rings in April.

But it's just so pretty.

The checked-in fan does neither. Yes, the games happening in April count for exactly as much as the games that will happen in late September, but they also count only as much as those lazy June afternoon games that so many of us miss while we're at work. A little perspective goes a long way in baseball.

CJ Wilson's perspective is that he needn't worry about the Sox this Opening Day - I say we give him a reality check.