A faithful few Sox fans get seats to watch TV

To gain membership in the chair club, which meets on the sidewalk outside Cardullo's Gourmet Shoppe in Harvard Square every night the Red Sox play, you have to earn your seat.

Sure, anyone is welcome to stop and watch the game on the 42-inch plasma screen nestled tastefully into the Cardullo's display window, surrounded by high-end jams and gift boxes of maple syrup, but if you want one of the eight folding chairs that make up the chair club, you have to put in some serious time on the cobblestone.

The club began five years ago, about a year after a television first went into the window, when Dennis Coveney, a 46-year-old landscaper from Cambridge, brought a chair and began hanging out every night. Soon, he says, a core group of regulars emerged, leading to an attendance-based hierarchy that gives members dibs on one of the chairs Cardullo's lets them stash above the doors. Coveney controls the chairs and says that if you want to crack the lineup, you have to put in the time, night after night.

"It took me a while to fit into this culture," said Mitch Rothenberg, who has demonstrated enough commitment to be accepted into the club this season, despite being from the Bronx. "You have to learn the rules; who to demur to. It's a lot like how it felt being a New Yorker trying to break into Boston," he said. Rothenberg has been in the Boston area since 1971 but still hears the Yankees jokes from the other chairs.

Of course, there is always a seat for a local celebrity. Coveney said that Ben Affleck and Denis Leary have sat with them in the past. On Thursday night, Ray Magliozzi, one half of the "Car Talk" brothers on NPR, was offered a chair when he made one of his occasional appearances.

"I'm not a regular by any means," said Magliozzi, whose office is directly across the street. "These guys are out here when it's freezing."

The scene evokes a bygone era, when neighbors would gather outside on their stoops and listen to ballgames together. Only the chair club has high-definition. If the game is going well, or if the home team is playing the Yankees, the crowd outside Cardullo's can swell to over 50. But Kevin DeWolf, who has been a chair club member for a couple of seasons, says only the diehards stick it out through the bad games.

On Thursday, as the ninth inning began in a one-run game against the Minnesota Twins, the sky opened up, and it began to pour in Harvard Square, scattering the dozen passersby who had stopped to watch. The regulars quietly picked up their chairs and moved them up close to the glass, under a sliver of an awning.

"I can't leave early," said DeWolf, who lives just up the street. "If something happens, then I'd feel liable."

The Sox failed to pull it out. Two batters struck out with the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth, and the regulars were dejected.

"We'll get them tomorrow," DeWolf said to Coveney as he folded up his chair. "You'll be here, right?"