Red Sox Give Fans Something They Can Worry About

It is late in the season, the Angels are driving toward a division title. They trail the visiting Red Sox by a run. It’s rally time at the Big A.

Up on the stadium message board, the clapping hands come to life. They are animated cartoon hands, almost surrealistic, unconnected to any body or soul. Accompanied by organ music, the hands begin to clap a rally beat.

The Anaheim Stadium fans pick up their cue and join in.

In the press box, a Boston writer stares at the scene in amazement.

“I’ll tell you this,” the writer would say later, with a mixture of pride and indignation, “they’d never have clapping hands in Boston. The Sox fans would say, ‘(Bleep) you! We know when to cheer.’ ”

There are many other differences between Boston’s Red Sox fans and Anaheim’s Angels fans. In fact, the two groups are about as different as baseball fans can be on the same planet.

You know all about Angels fans, embodying the Southern California stereotypes, which are often exaggerated but true nonetheless. Angels fans are quiet, easygoing and early leaving.

What are Red Sox fans?

The ones who show up regularly at Fenway Park are, as a group, loyal, knowledgeable, intense, hungry, enthusiastic, snobbish, proud, rude and white.

Forget about maple syrup, baked beans, clam chowder, the Patriots, the Kennedys, Old Ironsides, Old North Church and Old Red Auerbach. In New England, the Red Sox are No. 1 in the hearts and minds of the citizens.

In New England, nothing is as universally worried over, hated, debated, feared and fiercely loved as the Boston Red Sox.

“It’s a little more intense here,” said Rick Burleson Monday afternoon at Fenway Park. Burleson played for the Sox for seven seasons before becoming an Angel. He was loved in Boston; still is.

“The average fan here sees a lot more games. In Anaheim, it seems if there’s nothing else to do, they go to an Angels game. Here, in the summertime, the thing to do is to come watch the Red Sox. Fans here expect more. It’s more difficult to play here. They take it more personal when you lose.

“But when you’re winning, there’s no better fan than here at Fenway. They live and die with you.”

Mostly die, of course, because that’s mostly what the Sox do every Fall.

“The crowds are there, but they have a show-me attitude,” Boston Globe columnist Bob Ryan said a few weeks ago. “They’ve been burned before. There’s a cynicism; they don’t fully believe in this team yet.”

Or, as another Globe writer, Dan Shaughnessy, said, referring to the team’s sorry Fall history: “What’s more deflating than losing the playoffs? If you lose in the World Series, you can maintain your dignity and nobility. Lose in the playoffs, you’re dead meat.”

Still, through thin and thinner, the fans have maintained their support. Dennis (Oil Can) Boyd, the Sox pitcher who went though a personal crisis at midseason, said Monday: “It takes more than a lot of rigmarole to turn the fans against you.”

There is even evidence that the fans’ show-me posture is giving way to a thrill-me attitude as the Angels invade Fenway. Despite the Sox’s embarrassing end-of-season nose dive--swept four games by the hated Yankees--the Boston fans are heating up as the weather cools down.

After Sunday’s game, thousands began forming a long line on the sidewalk around the old ballpark, to wait for tickets that would go on sale Monday at noon.

They waited through the night, drinking beer, lighting fires in trash cans to ward off the ugly chill, playing loud music and talking Sox.

These were the hard-core fans, the blue-collar types. But, making a cursory walking inspection of maybe 3,000 of the waiting fans, I saw one black face.

“Black people don’t go to the ballpark,” Bob Ryan said. “It’s a white ballclub, and the fans are white. The average middle-class black guy is not comfortable going to Fenway.”

The Fenway crowd has a personality all its own. It’s not as noisy, or violence-prone, as a New York crowd. But the Fenway folk can be abusive and cutting to the home and visiting players alike.

The bleacher fans can be very rowdy, although they have been kept in check this season by the burly football-player-type security guards.

In keeping with Boston tradition, the fans can be rude.

“Everyone (visiting Boston) expects rudeness, and that’s what we’re good at,” said Shaughnessy, referring to the city in general and the ballpark’s clientele in particular.

The city’s charming rudeness is typified by the Red Sox’ crusty, veteran clubhouse attendant, Vinnie Orlando, who calls Lou Gehrig a sissy and who scolds visiting sportswriters for drinking coffee and loitering in the Sox’s hallowed clubhouse.

And did I mention the snobbism? Another local character trait, especially among Red Sox fans.

“All literary men are Red Sox fans,” the late John Cheever once said.

Certainly the converse is not true, but the Sox are the darlings of the well-read and the well-written. In a recent Globe special section, the praises of the Red Sox were eloquently and shamelessly sung by such literary giants as George F. Will, John Updike, Stephen King and David Halberstam.

But it’s not just the literary big shots and society’s Back Bay bluebloods who are snobbish in their support of the team. Even the not-so-literate and the illiterate fans are full of themselves, Sox-wise.

They are smug in the knowledge they are the world’s best baseball fans, and that their team is the most noble, and their cause the most just.

They have waited since 1918 for a World Series championship, and they figure they are long overdue.

Tonight, they will be here, crammed into a tiny antique ballpark, living and dying, in standing room only, with the Red Sox.