Red Sox Fandom
Red Sox fans were once described by Dennis Eckersley as the "ultimate manic-depressive fanbase." For all the excitement over the quality of play by the Red Sox, there is often a twinge of pessimism about the team, as the team's failures are typically blown out of proportion. Boston Globe columnist Charlie Pierce, among others, has attributed the self-perpetuating fatalism of the Nation to the intellectual legacy of the Puritans who settled Boston and instilled in the region's inhabitants a deep-seated Calvinist determinism.
The Nation has received mixed reaction from the rest of the country. In 2011, GQ magazine ranked Red Sox fans the 6th worst in the United States - and 2nd worst in Major League Baseball behind only the Philadelphia Phillies - labeling them "insufferable hypocrites" for their "whining about the Yankees' salary-driven Evil Empire" while the Red Sox maintain a significant payroll advantage over nearly every team in MLB, including a $90 million advantage over their 2007 World Series challengers, the Colorado Rockies. In 2010, Forbes magazine rated Red Sox Nation as the best fans in American sports, citing points such as road attendance and overall devotion to the team. .
Read more about this topic: Red Sox Nation
Famous quotes containing the word red:
“To-night the winds begin to rise
And roar from yonder dropping day:
The last red leaf is whirl’d away,
The rooks are blown about the skies;
The forest crack’d, the waters curl’d,
The cattle huddled on the lea;”
—Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)