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. .
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Famous quotes containing the word red:
“What art can paint or gild any object in afterlife with the glow which Nature gives to the first baubles of childhood. St. Peter’s cannot have the magical power over us that the red and gold covers of our first picture-book possessed. How the imagination cleaves to the warm glories of that tinsel even now! What entertainments make every day bright and short for the fine freshman!”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)