There are very few college-age Boston sports fans that can feel my pain. They can try to empathize, but any comforting words they might have to offer are eventually unveiled as hollow and meaningless. "Hang in there," they say. "It'll get better."
Words like those are like Donald Trump serving a homeless man at a soup kitchen and saying, "Cheer up, Scruffy, everything's coming up roses." I would rather be pitied or openly mocked than have to hear some hollow encouragement.
And yet, when I tell my Red Sox-fanatic friends that I will always be dedicated to the Baltimore Orioles and plan to be buried beneath an orange and black tombstone, all they can tell me is, "Don't worry about how things are going right now. You'll be back in it soon."
"Easy for you to say," I think to myself.
Sure, it wasn't all that long ago when the chants of "1918" at Yankee Stadium could make many Sox fans cringe and try to hide beneath their seats. But the fact that their beloved franchise had gone 86 years without a world championship was mostly irrelevant to fans my age. It was just a number.
My friends didn't have to live through those years, so when Pedro Martinez was winning Cy Young Awards and Manny Ramirez's home runs routinely found I-90, it seemed only a matter of time before they would hoist a World Series banner. Aaron Freakin' Boone was certainly someone to be hated, but he wasn't Bucky Effin' Dent 2.0, a tragic manifestation of an age-old curse. To them, the miracle of 2004 was almost inevitable, and they were positively stunned when Boston couldn't pull another three-games-to-one deficit out of their rear ends in last year's ALCS against the Tampa Bay Rays.
Just as younger Red Sox fans don't really know the torture that the team has put its older supporters through, I really don't have much of a connection with the Orioles' glory days of the 1960s and '70s. I can smile and nod when my family talks about Brooks "The Human Vacuum Cleaner" Robinson at third and the genius of Earl Weaver, but I only understand winning baseball in theory.
Of course, I do have the Ravens to look forward to during the football months. They won a Super Bowl in 2001 and are generally a strong franchise with good ownership and a wizard of a general manager. But, as my friends from New England like to remind me, one Super Bowl in the past 10 years isn't nearly as good as three, especially when you throw in a few horribly embarrassing playoff performances and the comedy of errors that was quarterback Kyle Boller.
And don't get me started on the NBA. I attached myself to the Washington Wizards out of necessity, and I have slowly grown to love them. But when your team's greatest accomplishments in the past 30 years include managing to stay eight games over .500 for a season and giving upwards of $100 million to an injury-prone player who calls himself "The Hibachi," you begin to wonder how much money a certain team would charge for just one of their 17 championships.
Why do I tell you all this? Mostly to vent, but also to put my future columns into some sort of context. I know what it means to lose, and while there are plenty of cities who do it better than Baltimore, I like to think my pedigree gives me a unique perspective on sports as a whole.
So, when I bash the idea of Red Sox Bandwagon — I mean, "Nation" — or when I declare my open hatred for Dustin Pedroia, don't take it personally. When you grow up in Baltimore and most of your new friends boast about six major sports championships in eight years while easily ignoring the pain that preceded those championships, it's hard not to be just a little annoyed and (maybe) just a little jealous.
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Rory Parks is a senior double-majoring in international relations and Spanish. He can be reached at Rory.Parks@tufts.edu
