Just FYI, I’ve been in Boston for 16 years and live not too far from Fenway Park (can’t be torn down fast enough; apologies to the 'Save Fenway' folks, but let's start a new tradition...and sit in a comfortable seat with a view of the Harbor...this city is the worst in the country for not taking advantage of its rare waterfront, it's embarrassing)…      

My Red Sox Fan Pedigree – don't remember seeing Tony C. the first time around... my first memory was seeing Doug Griffin turn a meaningless double play on a snowy 'blackandwhite' with bad rabbit ears at my grandfather’s house in ’72…in the late 70's, my father used to drive me and the neighborhood kids from Fall River to Fenway to catch the games, we used to drive in to the Park the long way, getting off at old Mass. Ave exit... and we always stopped at Simcos in Mattapan for a foot-long hot dog on the way back, no matter what time the game ended.

The one memory I can never forget was sitting by the Pesky pole when Dick Pole took Tony Muser's line drive off the side of his face in '75. My favorite everyday player was Freddy Lynn; my favorite clutch player and moment was Bernie Carbo (who I consider to be the original "Dirt Dog") and his tremendous, sometimes forgotten, eighth-inning home run in game six in ’75... snuck out of some family wedding with my father to listen to the '78 one-game-playoff  in our brand-spanking-new Chevy Impala, right down to the final pop-up.

I had a feeling the Sox would somehow pull out the game in Anaheim in ’86 when everyone else I was with gave up and went to play touch football in the 8th inning… then Dave Henderson hit that ball off Donnie Moore, alone in my living room, I was jumping like Hendu. Later that month, October 25, 1986, I threw a house party for Game Six, Ojeda vs. Clemens, equipped with a home made paper tissue Green Monster replica scoreboard with fish net screen… as Shea Stadium flashed “Congratulations Red Sox, 1986 World Champions” on the outfield scoreboard, I rushed to get my two bottles of Moet ready to pop at precisely the moment when the third out was caught…but in my haste to get the bubbly flowing, I inadvertently 'popped the cork' when there were two outs with no one on… I hurriedly shoved the cork back in while 50 people stared coldly back at me… I remember saying: “there’s two out, nobody on... don’t worry, nothing can go wrong.” You know the rest of the story… I’ve never blamed Buckner, the game was tied and essentially lost at that point. Blame Clemens, McNamara, deer-in-the-headlights Schiraldi, Gedman, or Stanley, but not Buckner, who if not for him, the Sox would not have even been there, he had a fabulous year in '86.

I saw Dave Stewart eat the Texas Con Man’s (apologies to Will McDonough) lunch far too many times at Fenway in the early ‘90s…went to Yankee Stadium, first time ever, for Game Two of the ’99 playoff series with New York… I wore full Boston battle gear into a little bar next to Stan’s outside the Stadium while the chant “a**HOLE” grew louder and louder behind me... I said to my friend who got us the tickets: "who are they yelling at? He answered “you"… after numerous threats and warnings, I kept my jacket and hat on the entire game, their bark was worse than their bite, but the game results were easily predictable.

On Duquette and Williams:  Duke -- while he’s not the warmest bun in the oven, I thought he had done a decent job with this team (farm club withstanding), but geezus, if I had a $160 million to spend... is he a high-class con man??… Jimy:  well, "that's history pal" (read:  Requiem for an Kind, Gentle Imbecile and Williams Firing).  I just wish the guy would have given us some respect and stopped  insulting our intelligence by ducking real questions on a daily basis. He never got it, never understood Boston or our passion for this team.  I welcome Joe Kerrigan, and look forward to getting some straight answers again. Hoping he is not Rod Rust. Praying he is not Pete Carrol.

On Clemens:  Please. I'm with Will McDonough on this one… did anyone go to any of the games when the lard ass mailed it in for four years here at $5 million per? And then went on to win two Cy Youngs in Toronto, suddenly found his fastball? Suddenly in shape? Closer to home in Texas? Be real… he was great when he was a kid... heart of a lion, but became a Fraud when he got money hungry.  I purposely sat behind the dugout during his last game at Fenway so I could lay it on him verbally for seven innings just one last time.

On Mo Vaughn:  Oh man, could you imagine paying $12 million for this guy and not having Manny instead (did I speak too soon here, Manny who?)?!?  Mo Food, whose body type made him a one way ticket for a year off like this one… Mo Money’s mouth ran him out of town, not Duquette…I still have my earplugs somewhere from when he would babble incessantly about himself and his contract after every game…the Sox had $8 million a year on the table, which was way too much at the time.  The only fault of Duquette was not trading him early on that year…

Boston is going bananas over the Red Sox this year…the Manny signing and Harrington’s last hurrah and willingness to go for it at all costs has contributed to the frenzy… along with that of course comes the morass of negativity (apologies to Ted Sarandis) that suffocates this town when everything does not go perfectly, or we see something that the manager doesn’t, etc…I contribute to it greatly myself.  But as a close friend once said to me regarding following the Red Sox:  “it’s not life and death… it’s much more important than that.”