My awakening as a Sox fan

By Scot Lehigh, Globe Columnist, 10/22/2003

SOME PEOPLE are born to Red Sox fandom, some achieve Red Sox fandom, and some have Red Sox fandom thrust upon them.

The American League Championship Series thrust it upon me. After all, who could resist the allure after watching the character Boston displayed while the Red Sox battled the Yankees?

Now, being a confirmed fan has changed the way I think about sports.

Back when I was just an occasional observer of baseball, I would have said the Sox did pretty well to get as far as they did. And that, though it's hard to lose a heart-breaker, it's silly to wallow about in the stagnant pool of your own pathos.

But now that I'm a real fan, I realize that losing the seventh game of the pennant race was the worst tragedy to befall a metropolis since Atlantis slid beneath the waves. In fact, I doubt I could have survived the weekend without the handy tips in the papers about how fans and their families should handle the trauma.

Acknowledge the pain. Talk to others. Get a good night's sleep.

Myself, I'd have preferred to join our brainy cohort of college fans in tipping over a car or two, but on the whole I haven't seen such important advice since the day the great blackout struck and Mayor Bloomberg advised New York City dwellers that if they got thirsty in the evening heat, they should take a drink of water.

Back before I was a rabid fan, I might have said that Grady Little made a reasonable call, sticking with Pedro Martinez even after he got in trouble in the eighth. Pedro, after all, was still throwing hard. Harder than he had been at game's start, if radar is to be believed.

Ha! As a confirmed fan, I'd smack my former self in the head for even thinking that sort of heresy, for I now know that true fans have 20-20 foresight, a prescience more accurate than radar. And that each and every one of them knew that Pedro's arm had gone limper than overcooked pasta. And, further, that certain doom loomed if he wasn't pulled immediately.

Before my conversion to fandom, I might even have credited Little with building a real team spirit and going a long way with a shaky bullpen.

Imagine the naivete! Now I realize that the man is a complete freaking imbecile, whose lamentable existence on God's green earth will be remembered only because of the pathetic incompetence of his eighth-inning idiocy.

I spent the weekend absorbing all the reasons that Little must be fired.

At first I agreed, but I've since come to think that a mere firing is far too good for a sin of this enormity. So I'm proposing that the Red Sox hang Little in a cage off the Green Monster next season, there to be pelted with eggs and tomatoes during the seventh-inning stretch as an object lesson to future managers about the danger of making a decision that doesn't work out.

Still, enraged though I am, you won't hear me say anything bad about Pedro himself. Admittedly, there was a time I wondered a little about the maturity of a man who seemed to spend a good part of the season sulking. But Pedro won this new fan's heart during the dustup that made Game 3 everything a true fan could hope for. When Don Zimmer lost his head and came charging, Pedro, instead of sidestepping the seething septuagenarian, tossed him smartly to the ground. And then, after Zimmer demonstrated just what contemptibly soft and sentiment stuff he was built of by apologizing to the fans, Pedro made it clear he wouldn't be doing anything so lacking in dignity as saying he was sorry. He is, in other words, an inspiring example for those of us who know that baseball is not just a game but a matter of honor.

Once upon a time, I might have said the best response to the Yankees' victory was to offer congratulations to a team that refused to say die.

But when you come to understand what's at stake in this legendary rivalry, you know that the only appropriate way to honor the victors is to give voice to the evocatively ironic chant "Yankees Suck" at every opportunity.

As a new fan, the only thing that's bothering me is that I'm a Patriots supporter, too, and that's created some cognitive dissonance. Take Sunday, for example. When the Patriots-Dolphin game went into overtime, there was a controversy about the coin toss that gave Miami first possession.

But queried later, Tom Brady shrugged it off, telling reporters he'd prefer to talk about actual football.

No complaints. No denunciations. No second-guessing.

Can we Fenway fanatics really tolerate a Patriots QB who clearly isn't a Red Sox fan?

Scot Lehigh's e-mail address is lehigh@globe.com.