A Red Sox Fan's Enemies List

As a good, decent, red-blooded, God-fearin’, patriotic citizen of Red Sox Nation, I’m sworn to protect her against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

The foreign ones don’t concern me. They’re easy to spot and keep a close eye on. They’re the ones with the Yankee hats and New York license plates, screwing up traffic on The Cape all summer. It’s the domestic ones I worry about.

There are those living among us, some of them card carrying members of The Nation, conspiring everyday to undermine our way of life. They’re the Stupid, the Pompous, the Phony, the Ignorant; and they subvert the common good by making all Red Sox fans look like nitwits in the eyes of the world.

What I’m proposing to do in order to protect this Great Nation, to stand beside her and guide her, is to expose these frauds once and for all. What all true Sox fans need is a good old-fashioned witch hunt. We need to bring back McCarthyism, 2005 Red Sox Edition.

History hasn’t been kind to Sen. Joseph McCarthy, but he served his country. Communism is bad. In the 1950s, communists had infiltrated the U.S. and were up to no good. Old Tail Gunner Joe found them and exposed them to the world by pioneering one of my favorite all-time inventions: the Enemies List.

Red Sox Nation in 2005 is like America in the ’50s. We’re riding high, coming off a huge victory against our biggest rival and we seem destined for great things. But we face a threat from within that can do us great harm if we don’t stop them right now. To that end, I present one Red Sox Fan’s Enemies List:

The Wavemakers- The “wave” was really cool when it first invented in 1982. So were “Members Only” jackets and The Thompson Twins. All three fell out of fashion in about six months everywhere else on Earth but at Fenway. Here the “wave” is like Ozzie Osbourne: twenty years past its prime, refusing to die, and getting stupider with each passing day.

Grumpy Old Fan- In his day, the players were better. They tried harder. They cared about winning more and loved the fans. The G.O.F. believes this, even though old timers said the same thing to him when he was a kid.

The first time a caveman used a spear to kill a mammoth I bet someone said “Back in the Cenozoic Era we didn’t need no fancy bronze tools. We killed ‘em with our bare hands. Like Ugluk of the Valley Dwellers. Now there was a mammoth killer.”

Mr. Cell-o-phone- To me and the seven ‘Stool readers who sat through the musical “Chicago,” that is a really funny name. Really.

Volumes have already been written about these simpletons who sit behind home plate and yammer on their cell phones to their buddies watching at home. Look, pinhead, there are 500 cable channels. If you want to be on TV that bad, just get your own show. They gave one to Nicole Ritchie for crissakes, they’ll give one to you.

The Literati- These guys are often identifiable by their bow ties, beards, red-rimmed glasses and cardigan sweaters with elbow patches. You’ll find them at Ivy League schools and the Boston Globe editorial pages, but not a Fenway. They don’t actually go to games. But they love to write purple prose about how baseball is a metaphor for life or how the Red Sox are Shakespearean or like the legend of “Sisyphus pushing the rock up the hill” or some such crap. Somehow, I don’t think about Greek mythology when I see Kevin Millar blowing snot rockets or Trot Nixon scratching his nuts.

The Huskies- So called because the come from Connecticut. You’ll find them in your thesaurus as a synonym for “front runner.” When the Yankees are on top, the whole Nutmeg State bows to them like the French Vichy government did for Nazi Germany. But when the Sox won the championship, they were dancing around the Eiffel Tower, all parades and champagne and “Vive le Liberte!” And you just know every one of them has, buried in a closet somewhere, a 1986 Mets Yearbook.

Buntman- This guy can trace every Red Sox defeat to Terry Francona’s failure to call for the bunt at some time in the game. His Indian name is “Yougetaguyonyougottamovehimover.” He knows less than nothing about baseball, but thinks he’ll sound smart if he screams for “small ball.” Give up the out. Move the runners into scoring position. Play for the one run. Olde Time Baseball. It’s the only point this ignoramus knows how to make, and it’s dead wrong.

Get this through: the bunt sucks. It went out with the Dead Ball Era. The Sox lead the league in runs scored every single year without bunting. Staying away from the bunt won them that little thing we call the 2004 World Series Championship. Sit down, shut up and stop calling the sports talk shows. You embarrass us all.

The Tick- This is the guy who goes to Fenway or to a sports bar by himself, then gloms on to your conversation with your friends and gives you his sad, pathetic and often drunken take on the state of the Red Sox.

I like talking baseball with people the people sitting around me at the games. It’s part of Fenway’s charm that you’re packed in with total strangers and it’s fun to interact with them. To a point. The Tick doesn’t know that point. He digs in under your skin with his pincers and doesn’t let go until he’s sucked the life’s blood, and all of the fun, out of your night.

I have history with this guy. Many years ago, The Tick sat next to my lovely wife at a Sox game. They sense weakness, and realizing that she was too nice to tell him to go pee up a rope, he proceeded to tell her his whole tedious life story.

I got involved. Words were exchanged. My precious beer got spilled. I told him I was getting him kicked out. He dropped the f-bomb and told me he was just going to watch the game. So I told him, “Then you better hope the gay bar you end up in has NESN, because you’re not watching it from here.” (No disrespect to the many gay fans of the ‘Stool. It was a heat of the moment thing. Keep reading and buying our sponsors fine products.)

But to make a long story short (too late), it got ugly from there. Suffice to say I was still there the next inning, and he wasn’t. But that night my Enemies List was born. To those of you on it, we know who you are, and we’re keeping an eye on you.