Word: fannings
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...dropped their first ten games and Jose Santiago was launched into that nameless baseball obscurity, on the fringe of memory, tossed in the stacks of bubble gum card limbo with Pumpsy Green and Jose Tartibull. Only a die-hard, hungry Boston carnivore like me, a Red Sox fan since childhood, would remember these names--these extinguished hopes of the past...
...there is nothing potentially more explosive than teasing a fatalistic Red Sox fan--a hungry breed of sports fan, a bug-eyed baseball lunatic who in the summer months follows every pitch and grabs for every grain of hope with the tacit, suppressed knowledge in the back of his mind that around August, no matter how many home runs Jim Rice hits, or how awesome Yaz is out there in left--the cold hand of fate will sweep down from New York or Baltimore or Detroit and topple all the dominos...
Bothered only momentarily, Lee started again. "It's a vicarious thrill they get out of it," he shrugged toward the fan. "Instead of attaining that thrill first-hand, they attain it second-hand...those people are expecting things from you and if you work toward their expectations you're negating your principle in life because you're working for them and not for yourself...
There is one bright note--but let me hasten to qualify that: you need read no further unless you are a) a ballet fan; b) a ballet fan tolerant enough to overlook the lumps and warts of the Boston Ballet (well, what do you want, Balanchine?); and c) a ballet fan tolerant enough to overlook the lumps and warts of the Boston Ballet who can suspend cynicism and realism long enough to become imaginatively involved in a fairy tale. Now that I've eliminated jocks, pre-meds (sorry, that's the second snide remark this column!), and Crimson editors...
...kind of a self-respecting baseball fan, you're either a National Leaguer or an American Leaguer. No way you can have it both ways; you're partisan to either one or the other. For me, well...