FanPost

Confessions of a Newb

Hi guys. I just figured I'd talk a little about myself since I feel like explaining why I, a soccer player and former baseball hater, now spend most of my time online looking at baseball pages (particularly this one) and watching every pitch of most games.

I arrived in Boston for college at Northeastern University on September 3, 2005. By September 4th, I realized I either had to pretend and like the Sox or actively pursue an interest in a baseball team to shield myself from the hoards of Massholes with whom I was now living. Every Red Sox home game, I could hear the cheers from Fenway Park about a quarter mile away. Deciding that I needed to assert my Californian identity, I chose the only baseball team whose World Series win I had actually watched: the Angels.

Mind you, I didn't become a fan in 2002. I wish it had started that long ago. Rather, I bought the only Angels cap I could find and started watching the Angels run to the ALCS in 2005. During the off-season (after a post-season which was thankfully short for the Sox), I started looking up stats, memorizing players, all that jazz.

10 games into the 2006 season, I was pretty good at telling who was at the plate by the way they were standing, didn't like Jeff Weaver, and had figured out that wearing an Angels cap was infinitely less dangerous than wearing a Yankees one in Boston. However, in LA, as I would later learn, that situation substantially changes.

I had the joy of attending that first Freeway Series blowout game. Wearing my red Angels shirt and hat in a sea of blue, having 2,000 drunk Dodger fans yelling "Angels suck!" into my face led to my closest foray into the world of arrest. I stood up, turned around and faced the crowd, and took off my hat with my arms raised in the air. While, at first, only insults were thrown, eventually full $15 souvenir cups of Coke were smashing into the seats around me, prompting a man in a Percival jersey and several of his large friends to run up into the stands and start a melee which left 10-15 people ejected. If you were at the game and heard/saw a disturbance in the upper deck, well, that was me. Security soon approached me and claimed that I would be ejected if I continued to "incite violence" for the "safety of others." I proceeded to tell said security guard that I, in fact, was not the one hurling beverages at fans, but I was ignored. I faced a similar barrage of expensive liquid upon my exit through the tunnel, but at that point, the dans were so drunk they wouldn't hit me if they tried.

That was the turning point in my short baseball life, one that turned me from a casual fan into an avid one.

Anyways, now I'm here, mostly sure of what I'm doing, having legitimate conversations about Nomar Garciaparra with my Dodger-fan friends, knowing more about stats than batting average, and occassionally even complaining about Steve Physioc and Rex Hudler. Oh, and for a while there, I felt the pain of a Cubs fan.

Regardless, the Angels have one more fan actually from the town that bears their namesake. I'm sure the Red Sox will do just fine without me.

This FanPost is authored by an independent fan. Tell us what you think and how you feel.

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