Boston Red Sox

"YANKEES SUCK! YANKEES SUCK!"

A century of MLB history condensed into one image.
A century of MLB history condensed into one image.
How Yankees fans view Sox fans
How Yankees fans view Sox fans

Just The Facts

  1. The Red Sox were, until 2004, on a eight-decade World Series losing streak.
  2. The hated rivals of the Red Sox are the New York Yankees, which have the highest payroll in the AL and are the Evil Empire.
  3. The Red Sox have the second highest payroll in the AL, making them the scrappy underdog.
  4. Weirdly, the Cubs have a bigger payroll than the Sox.

A brief history of the Boston Red Sox

1918: Last World Series win for almost ninety fucking years. Bellyaching about this begins immediately after the 1919 season.

1946: Hope is briefly raised. Then crushed.

1967: Beaten by the Cardinals.

1975: Nothing Sox fans want to talk about happens this year.

1986: Bill Buckner causes a wave of suicides across the North East.

2004: Curse Reversed, Sox Fans Officially Become Tiresome

2007: Sox Fans get even more tiresome.

2008: Manny "Whiny Bitch" Ramirez gets traded just in time.

Sox Vs. Yankees: The Endless Rivalry

Until about 1996, the Sox and the Yankees had a fairly friendly rivalry. This was because from about 1920 to 1960, everybody loved the Yankees, and from about 1960 to about 1996, the fans could commiserate because their teams both won a lot and still managed to suck pretty hard.

Around 1996, a lot of things happened to cement that into a bitter, vile hatred fans of each share for the other. First, with the death of Ali Ramirez, the Yankees certified that being an obnoxious dipshit (i.e. a "Bleacher Creature") was A-OK as far as they were concerned. Secondly, it was right around this time that the Yankees went on what even Sox fans will admit was an epic winning streak (although, as they'll gladly point out, for about fifteen years beforehand the closest the Yankees got to the Series was selling peanuts).

Cross longtime assholes with a winning streak, which means lots of bandwagon fans and padawans in the way of the drunken idiot sports fan, and you get more douchebags in your fanbase than Summer's Eve.

As a result, in the Northeast, it will always be about the Sox versus the Yankees. It doesn't matter what happens, anywhere. Patriots fans will chant "YANKEES SUCK!" at games where the opposing team isn't even from New York.

2004 Playoffs OR Sodomy In Baseball Form

To be fair, the Yankees and their fans had every right to be confident they were going to be back on top. After all, they'd won the first three games of the playoffs. One more and their spot, and therefore the World Series, was assured. After all, the Sox were losers and would always be losers! Let's start selling Series tickets and playoff champion shirts now! Yes, they really did that.

Games 4, 5, 6, and 7 of those playoffs was an illustration of the phrase "pride before the fall" on an epic scale. Or it was a bitchslapping on an epic scale. Whatever it was, it was definitely on an epic scale, because the Yankees lost so hard the Phillies looked good by comparison, and remember this was before they actually won a Series themselves.
It wasn't just that the Sox won, it's that the Sox won four straight, by a huge margin, a couple of those wins in Yankee Stadium, knocking the Yankees out of the playoffs and also making the team the butt of every joke about choking for a year. And then the Sox won the World Series, depriving Yankees fans of their "1918!" chant and letting Sox fans add that extra little touch of gloat to the fan rallying cry of "YANKEES SUCK!"
Instead, Yankees fans started latching onto the phrase "Consistency!", which was a bad choice after their team failed to be consistent, but it was all they had. After all, this had to just be an anomaly! There's no way the Sox could win ANOTHER Series before the turn of the next century!

2007

Consistency, bitches.

Current State of the Rivalry

The Yankees and the Sox have essentially switched places. Now, Yankees fans, the ones that didn't start quietly rooting for the Red Sox once they got into the Series, search for obscure reasons like ghosts for their team's failure to win a Series in what's coming up on a decade now, including tossing grass seed around at Fenway Park hoping to create a Yankees "home field advantage" and Sox fans have become insufferable about their team's superiority. Amusingly, some Yankees fans now whine that the Sox should be called the Evil Empire.

Fenway Park and Its (Idiotic) Traditions

Fenway Park is notable as one of the nation's oldest baseball stadiums, and also the one with the most ass-numbing seats in American history, all of which were removed from Tom Yawkey's secret torture chamber and have not been repaired since they were first installed. Among its other notable features are an enormous green wall called the Green Monster, which they decided to turn into a mascot that looks like a Muppet covered in Astroturf, and being located on one of the least convenient stops in the entire Boston public transit system. It's also a very, very short walk from Boston's Fenway, the city's gay district. Before you ask, no, Derek Jeter and A-Rod have never been seen going there. Together.

Towards the end of the game, a tradition was started where they'd blare "Sweet Caroline" over the PA system and fans would chant "So Good! So Good!". There's never been a good explanation for why they do this, since Neil Diamond isn't from Boston and the song isn't about Boston, aside from the fact that people ten beers in trying to sing Neil Diamond is hilarious. And at least it spares us from having to listen to whatever obscure song the Dropkicks dug up and shat out a single of, or "Dirty Water".
One tradition that is at least sportsmanlike is that Sox fans, having long memories, will applaud a player from a rival team if he used to be on the Sox. Unless he's Johnny Damon, the fucking traitor.

Red Sox Nation

The preferred name of Red Sox fans, and like any nation, it contains multitudes…which all call each other bandwagon-jumpers and hate each other.
For a long, long time, the only way you were a Red Sox fan was if you were born in New England, moved to New England at an early age, or lived in Boston for any length of time, because, as noted, they weren't that good. It became a mark of pride, a badge of where you were from. Then, of course, the Sox had to go and win, making the entire nation and some Japanese people love them and essentially ruining everything.
Anybody who has ever followed a band knows this story: the old fans hate the new fans, the new fans hate the newer fans, and everybody hates furries. The blood on the streets from the riots over the 2004 World Series had barely dried before the old fans labeled the new fans "Pink Hats", after the neon pink baseball caps that are, er, official team merchandise, and illustrate that traditionally male-dominated industries really have no idea how to sell a product to women. The Pink Hats have essentially responded "So what?!" and then mistakenly started a "Who's Your Daddy?" chant.

The Red Sox and Steroids

It has been alleged that David "Big Papi" Ortiz and Manny "Whiny Bitch" Ramirez both were taking steroids during the 2004 and 2007 seasons.

Which kind of sucks because it was cheating, but then again, A-Rod, Giambi, and Clemens were all doing 'roids and still got their asses handed to them, so in the end, it's kind of a wash.