After the heartbreaking end to the 2003 baseball season, I decided that, during the following season, I was going to make a movie about being a lifelong Sox fan in the one county in New England where Boston Red Sox games aren't shown on TV. It would show me desperately trying to tune in the radio over static, as well as the Baltimore Orioles games (?) on the adjacent station to the Hartford station that airs the Sox. It would also show what I deal with living amongst Yankee fans and Yankee media in the New York-Metro area (Fairfield County, Connecticut.) I even planned to start my little documentary on New Year's day 2004, wearing my "Cowboy Up" shirt (glad I didn't end up immortalizing that), with a blanket of snow out the window behind me.

Laziness set in, and before I knew it, spring training was around the corner. I hadn't filmed anything.

Then I was tipped off to these things called "blogs." As with anything else that crops up in this culture, I was wary at first. In fact, I'm surprised I didn't start a blog about how stupid blogs are. But I realized it was a way to get my thoughts down, with the added motivation that a person could actually read them. Instant publication. I wouldn't have to worry about writing too much, like on message boards. And most importantly, it was free.

My first influence was Bambino's Curse, which was written by a really intelligent dude, Ed Cossette, in Virginia. Good stuff, but he took himself a little too seriously sometimes. And inexplicably ended his blog after the 2004 World Series. (In fact, it was East Coast Agony's extreme hatred of Cossette that made me realize that nothing was sacred on this here internet, and my own blog loosened up a bit from there.) Then I found Joy of Sox, a dream website for me, as it then combined left-wing political talk with Red Sox talk, and I decided I needed to get my own space going.

At first my blog was all text, without links or even an option for the reader to comment. It took a really long time before I got my first e-mail about the site. Just getting a few readers over a period of months was very encouraging. "I only started this five months ago and four people have written to me!"

Eventually came the comments, the links, the pictures, the drawings, the audio, and the video. And the friends and the enemies. In May 2005, I finally left Connecticut for New York City. I love New York, it's the Yankees I hate. I've had a ten-game plan at Fenway since the '04 season, and I buy a bunch of other games as well. I get to Fenway by taking the train from New York to New Haven, grabbing one of my parents' cars, and driving up to Boston, where my girlfriend, another die-hard, lives. I also travel to see the Sox in various other cities each year. Whenever I see them, I'm armed with a camera or cameras, for posting pics here.

So this blog is my movie, which continues to roll to this day. I'm glad that after my first three seasons of blogging, I have a record of my feelings throughout what would become a World Championship season, a post-World Championship season, and a non-playoff season in a no longer "cursed"-world.

To sum up. Me: 31-year old, fourth-generation Sox fan guy. Brought up to hate the Yankees. Know more about their history than most Yankee "fans," having grown up following them on TV, rooting against them while rooting for the Sox on radio. All my friends growing up were Yanks or Mets fans except one, Pat, who still goes to games with me at Fenway.

This blog's main goal is to make people laugh. Second goal: to make people learn something about the Red Sox and/or Yankees that they may not have known. Third goal: to show people pictures and videos from my adventures, baseball-related and otherwise. I'd like to stress "otherwise," since I'm going to be putting up a lot of random videos from my decades-long collection of junk. Oh, and the final goal is to have people react to whatever I do here. The comment section is free for all, female or male, baseball fan or not. Some sites, and especially message boards, give off the feeling like they're some exclusive club. (They often are.) I don't want anyone to feel weird commenting here just because they never have before. This isn't a country club. Just walk in and speak your mind. I only ask that if you have some personal issue with me, or you want to threaten to kill me, talk smack about my mom or girlfriend, at least have the courtesy of sending it in a personal e-mail to me, instead of posting it in the comments section: Two2067@aol.com. If you disagree with me, I'd be happy to debate you right here on the blog. Just be somewhat mature about it, please.

Terms to know:

"Dunbar" = Yankees

"Eh, no Peg" = No

"Terrible job!" = (Terrible job if you need "terrible job" defined for you.)

Thanks for reading,

Jere S.
New York, NY
October 21st (!), 2006

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