Red Lenses

After yet another extended period of silence, I am back to remark on something fairly frivolous.

I'm going to Camden Yards tomorrow night to see the Red Sox in their first trip to Baltimore to play the Orioles this season. The Orioles are still hovering around the .500 mark, as they have often done in May, so their fans' enthusiasm for this young season remains for now. At the same time, I expect to see a lot of fans wearing red and to get abuse heaped on my fellow travellers, though we're more than able to give back as good as we get, so to speak.

It's sort of part of the range of sports fandom and there's certainly a range of how other people see you and your team (excluding the permanent haters - Yankee fans for the Red Sox; Michigan fans for Ohio State etc.) that depends on how they do. And with success comes bandwagon fans, and also more people who want to see your boys taken down a notch or two. And the more fans your team has, the more times you're going to just cringe when you hear (or hear about) what other people in your fan base say or do.

I know that I'm lucky to a be a lifelong Red Sox fan, since I've experienced every part of that cycle, and fans of many teams have not. It might come at the price of seeing more of your brethren make asses of themselves in public, and at other people sneering at your T-shirt, but you have to take the bitter with the sweet sometimes.