From Sea To Shining Sea

So as I was in bed last night, unable to sleep after the Red Sox game, which Boston should have won but failed to do so, I began to revisit a post I was thinking about over the weekend.

A writer on Boston.com sorta touched on the subject yesterday, but that's ok, I know that this was in my head before that.

What finally led me to write this post was comments made by the New Hampshire Fishercats manager, a AA affiliate of the Toronto Blue Jays. As you can see in a post made last night, he was unhappy the fans in Manchester, New Hampshire gave a standing ovation to Portland's Clay Buchholz, aka the ace in waiting who these same fans will be cheering for for years to come in Boston.

We as Red Sox fans have witnessed over the years some great Sox crowds on enemy fields, usually Toronto and Baltimore and Tampa Bay. But over the past few years that seems to be happening more and more.

This season I have witnessed either on telelvision or the background noise on radio some rather loud pro Sox crowd noise in cities such as Atlanta, San Diego, Oakland (another usual suspect) and even Seattle.

Some will say that its the effect of winning the World Series in 2004. But I don't buy that. Even in St. Louis that year there was a strong Sox contigent of fans.

I get around the web a lot. Over at Yanksfan vs Soxfan the Red Sox fan base appears to be stretched very wide. For those who visit there know for example SF is in the "heart" of Yankee nation. I use quotations around heart because while Yankee fans will tell you that New York City is Yankee Territory I don't buy into that, I think they are more behind the Mets and even though my friend Hennessy, a Mets fan in Queens, NY goes on and on abouit being a fan of both the Mets and Yankees, you just know most of the time the fans hate the other team.

I myself reside in Brooklyn, New York. I moved here in 2005 and while it was hard to get used to coming from Manchester, New Hampshire, I think its finally normal to me. When I first moved here Yankee fans were generally civil with my Red Sox gear, I got more comments from Jets fans over my Patriots gear. Now the tune has changed and Yankee fans get more nasty, the result of having a bad team I suppose. I even got told one day to take my ass back to Boston.

Back to the topic now. How did Red Sox nation grow so wide? It's rather simple. Boston and New England offer some of the best schools in the country. Students come here for four years and by the time they leave they have fallen in love with the Red Sox. A good example of this is Singapore Sox Fan. He is one of my favorite bloggers, because he is so inteligent and it shows in his posts, I only wish he posted more then he does.

As a result of having such a large university base around the region it exposes thousands and thousands of people to the team, they graduate and either return home, or a new home and take there love of the Sox with them.

To bring this post back around to where it started. Bill Masse should probably sit back and enjoy when his fans cheer for Red Sox minor leaguer's, after all these players will be feeling the same atmosphere when their in Toronto in a few years. Calling it a learning experience.

Red Sox nation goes beyond New England, it has no boundries. Right now the space station is the limit, one that will forever expand.