My virulent anti-Red Soxism has faded in the past few years, and I’ve become more tolerant of the passionate Red Sox fans who devote their lives to following, worshipping, and spreading the gospel of a baseball team. Maybe it’s them. They’ve twice secured their illusive World Series victory, thus destroying their self-identification as underdogs as well as the notion that they were somehow engaged in a spiritual or moral struggle akin to the Civil Rights movement. Or, maybe it’s me. Long gone are the days when my commute bisects Fenway Park, forcing me to endure the close company of sweaty, drunk Red Sox fans in a slow-moving trolley. Plus, over the years I’ve met a handful of fellow baseball anti-fans who commiserate with my belief that baseball is a boring, prolonged sport and that the Red Sox devotion is a diversion for uncreative sheeple… an opiate for the asses.
So I no longer audibly sigh when a meeting at work is delayed so co-workers can exchange inconsequential Red Sox-related banter. I no longer resent when the top story in the local news involves a baseball player trade. I no longer cluck disapprovingly when I see Red Sox fans indoctrinating their young children into the over-priced, over-rated experience that is a trip to Fenway Park.
I read in today’s Boston Globe about the officially licensed Red Sox casket. That’s right, now the most die-hard Red Sox fans can be buried in a coffin emblazoned with the Red Sox logo.
It’s tacky, it’s bizarre, it’s arguably blasphemous, it’s the first skid on a slippery slope to brand and advertisement-infused caskets, but honestly, I don’t care. If it makes someone feel better about death to know that they’ll be eternally tucked away in a Red Sox coffin, or if a doting family wants the deceased’s devotion to the Red Sox to be the talk of the funeral, then who am I to judge? Freaking crazies.
