What happened to those things where everyone would meet at a pre-determined time and location, and yell "fart" at the same time or whatever? People acted like that was gonna be the next big thing. I guess people realized just how utterly pointless it was.

Anyway, Pat & I went to Fenway last night, on what happened to be Connecticut Day. Being from Connecticut got us nothing, as we might have expected. The guy who sang the anthem was from the town we grew up in, but that was about it.

I must admit, I realized last night how naive I'd been about the CT/Mass "rivalry." (I've heard the term "Mass-hole" before, but I've never actually used it as far as I can remember, and I don't even know if they have a nickname for us.)

But the first time they annouced it was Connecticut Day, a couple right behind us said, "Boooooo." I turned around and said, "Hey come on, this is the one day we get." They laughed. Then up at our seats, the public address guy again said something about CT Day, and the couple in front of started flippin' out, like, "What?? I paid for this??" They were genuinely pissed. I said, loud enough so they could hear, "Man, everybody hates our state."

They turned around, and the girl said, "Oh god, I went to school in Connecticut, I HATED it." And the guy chimed in with, "It's all yankee fans!"

So I said, "Well that's what WE hate about it." The girl replied, "Well I give YOU credit, then."

Now keep in mind, the closest point in Mass to my house is at least an hour and a half away, so I just wasn't aware that we are some kind of evil to the Mass folks. (On the other hand, I live five minutes from the New York state border, so I'm always getting pissed at New York drivers, and their no right-on-red policy they seem to love so much over there.) I just figured at a Sox game, all of New England would come together as one, but I was way off. If it was Maine Day, I wouldn't have booed Maine!

Alright, there are things I don't like about Mass, again, mostly driving related. (I'll begin and end at "rotaries.") But still, at Fenway, I say we're all New Englanders.

I also think that these anti-CT fans were probably caught off-guard, not knowing that the team has a day for every state in New England, which would account for their exasperation over the whole thing.

And I did see a lot of CT relayed T-shirts.

And I do realize that CT is a pretty bland state, we have no accent, no cool cities, we don't even have the Whalers anymore. And I'm not a UConn fan, either. But still, we are part of New England.

The game was great. Pedro was on. Nomar hit a dong that Pat predicted, saying "I've got a sense!" right before the blast. And Manny hit one off the top of the Coke bottles. And we said hi to Joe Castiglione.

And tonight's game almost caused much misery, but ended well. I can't say enough about Bill Mueller. We're in this race. Magic Number is in the mid-80s, but I'm not gonna say the exact number.