A kinder gentler Red Sox fan...

So the Yankees lost last night. Yay.

Yes, I am obviously happy to see the Yankees get beat. I will always want to see them get beat. But just as the sadness of seeing the Sox lose the last game of the year is not nearly as sharp as it once was, seeing the Yankees get knocked out of the playoffs just does not have that same bitterly euphoric feeling either.

Just to compare, in 2001, when the Yankees lost to Arizona in The World Series, I was jumping around my living room and cheering. Now I'm just like, hey The Yankees lost. Whew.That's good.

It's just not quite the same feeling as in years past, and really, that is fine with me. I look at it as a good thing. Let's face it gettting all excited and celebrating another team's loss year after year gets kind of lame, don't you think? Admittedly, the thought of seeing the Yankees in the ALCS was a bit nauseating, not so much because of my dislike of the team, but because in my opinion, they did not deserve to be there.

(I guess you can say The Red Sox probably did not deserve to be there either, but my bias in this area over-rules logic.)

Anyway, I think the whole Sox / Yankees thing has died down several notches since The Sox won the Series, at least it has for me. The dragon has finally been slain and now we can all move on. I still want to beat the Yankees, and I still hate them, but now it's more of a 'respectful hate' (if there is such a thing) towards a long standing rival. Like how I feel when The Pats play The Jets, or The B's play The Habs. I always want my team to crush those guys into oblivion, but I can't honestly say that I 'truly hate' the Jets or Miami or The Habs or The Devils and I kind of feel that way about The Yankees now. I'm a kinder, gentler Red Sox fan.

Now that the team that I root for and the team that I always root against are out of the post season, I need to decide who to throw my support behind and I think I will pick The White Sox, just because they have not won it since 1917, and fuckin'-a, we all know how that feels, and we know how great it feels to finally win it after all those years, so I will root for The White Sox. Just imagine all the good vibes that will flow if The Other Sox can win The Series. Warm Fuzzies for everybody!