World cheers on Sox
BOSTON – It’s 5 a.m. in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Most people are sleeping or rubbing their eyes as they get ready for work. Ric Glaub and his friends, however, have their game faces on.
It’s October, and the Boston Red Sox are seeking their first World Series championship since 1918. The five members of the Tashkent Red Sox Fan Club, clutching tea or coffee – or if it’s a weekend game, a bottle of Russian beer – don’t want to miss a pitch.
“We have seen the sun come up in Tashkent many times over the past couple of weeks,” Glaub, an Idaho native who developed an affection for the Red Sox while working in Boston during the 1980s, said by e-mail. “Except on weekends, and even sometimes on weekends, most of us have to begin work as soon as the games end. Most Americans working here tend to put in long hours and watching these games takes away from already limited sleep time. We can have it no other way.”
Across the United States – and across the world – Red Sox fans are intent on burying decades of heartache and praying that this year, finally, their team wins it all.
The term Red Sox Nation is more than a name – its fans are found worldwide.
“We are America’s team,” says Peter Roberts, a Red Sox fan in Anchorage, Alaska.
Ernie Paicopolos helps run the Web site www.fenwaynation.com that has received 1.3 million hits the past year. He says he gets hits from Poland and Vietnam.
Some members of Red Sox Nation are transplanted New Englanders. For others, their allegiance has been passed down through the generations, like a family heirloom. And then there are those who simply love an underdog.
Yet no matter where they are, it seems they can find their baseball soulmates, someone else who holds the same impossible hopes, and who understands the same pain – even in America’s last frontier.
Humpy’s Great Alaska Alehouse in Anchorage – 4,600 miles from the Red Sox home field – has become the home of the Far From Fenway Fan Club.
The saloon has been packed to its 250 capacity for Red Sox playoff games this season, said co-owner Bill Opinsky, a Red Sox Nation member who grew up in Alaska. Opinsky, 37, inherited his devotion from his father, who was from Scranton, Pa., but who had relatives in New England.
“There are a ton of Red Sox fans up here and they come out of the woodwork for the playoffs,” Opinsky said. “People were getting here an hour and a half in advance of the ALCS games, and it was crazy.”
Roberts is the founder of the Far From Fenway Fan Club. He came up with the idea after the 1986 World Series, which the Red Sox lost to the New York Mets in seven games. Roberts watched the games in Alaska in virtual isolation.
“I promised myself if I was ever in a situation like that again I would be with other people who cared about the Red Sox,” said Roberts, 42, who owns a bicycle rental business in Anchorage and who developed his love of the team as a kid, tuning into crackling radio broadcasts from Hartford, Conn.
“The idea is when the Red Sox make it to the World Series, you are with other people who know how important it is,” he said.
This year, the Red Sox staged the biggest comeback in playoff history, winning four straight against the New York Yankees after dropping the first three games. And now, they’re back in the World Series for the first time since 1986.
One of the toughest places to be a Sox fan is in the heart of Yankees territory. John Quinn, 42, is a writer who was born, raised and still lives in Brooklyn, N.Y. He is a regular at the Riviera Cafe in Greenwich Village, a bar that has became a haven for Red Sox fans. He learned to detest the Yankees as the son of Brooklyn Dodgers fans.
“The Yankees have all those championships, and I respect that,” he said. “But being a Red Sox fan, and meeting others, I’ve discovered that it’s like being part of a brotherhood, and Yankees fans will never understand that.”