"If we can get the fans to make enough noise when that marquee says make noise...," says sign-carryin', pan-whackin' Yankee fan Freddie Sez.

This is and always has been (since electronic scoreboards first appeared, anyway) the fundamental difference between how Red Sox fans and Yankee fans view a baseball game:

The scoreboard tells Yankee fans when to cheer.

This is something I've known all my life, but I don't think it's a very well-known fact. When people in the midwest are watching a Yankees game on TV, they probably don't realize that the crowd is being told when to cheer with hand-clap graphics, "make noise" signs, or bull-charge noises. Either that, or, they do realize it, because a lot of other stadiums do it, too--and so what they don't realize is that at Fenway Park, none of this has ever been done.

And I'm sure some people who have never been around here might think when I say "never" that I mean "well, of course, they have the occasional 'noise meter' or a rhythmic sound pumped in or that 'everybody clap your hands' song, sure, all stadiums do that stuff." And to that I say, first of all, it's a park, not a stadium, and second of all, no, we have literally NONE of that crap to tell us when to cheer during the game. Ever. This is something I've thought about, like, every day of my life, but I don't feel like I mention it on my blog enough. So watch for this to be drilled into your head in '09!