not so fast, charlie brown.

Today: a blog entry about sports. In other news, pigs have been spotted in the pattern at McGhee-Tyson.

Is it just me, or does the new dominance of the Red Sox feel wrong somehow, like Charlie Brown finally being allowed to kick that football?

Don't get me wrong--if I were a baseball fan, I'd be rooting for the Red Sox. Boston was my first port of call in this country, and my first place of residence. The only true baseball cap I own is navy blue and has a red "B" on it. After eighty-odd years of "close, but no cigar", the Red Sox deserve to collect a few World Series rings to make up for the long drought.

However, to me, it has always felt like the role of the underdog was pretty much a part of the psyche in Boston when it came to the Red Sox. In the course of eighty-six years, being the scrappy kid had become almost a matter of pride in Beantown. The Sox were Boston's Charlie Brown, and everyone opened the paper every year to watch Lucy pull that football at the last moment. Now the cheapest tickets at Fenway Park are $20, and they're sold out well in advance, where not too long ago you could show up on game day and pay less for the ticket than you did for parking. Like this editorial points out, it would be a shame if the Red Sox turned into New York Yankees with a New England accent in the next few years, with all the attendant hubris.