| Ryan White |
 | 1 Comments |  | 29 Read | Jun 27, 2007 |
Hey everyone sorry for the delay, a softball injury prevented me from typing for a few weeks. If you must know I did dislocate a finger sliding headfirst in a Sunday Slo-pitch softball game, then popped it back in and played the rest of the game and I spend my life critiquing hypermasculinity in sports go figure. Anyway this is going to be a bit shorter than some of my previous posts, but what I hope to get is a few comments and ideas about where to go with my dissertation research on Red Sox Nation, then keep you all updated as the process continues.
Anyway, right now baseball is almost in full swing and the Red Sox are dominating the AL East, perhaps the second worst division in all of baseball, and their fans are completely pleased with themselves making it a perfect time to take a 15 day road trip to Boston, go to 8 games, follow people around, and take notes on their activities. I hope that during the process I can post notes on my observations and make critical comments to which others can argue on or with me about. For at least a few of the games I hope to set up camp at Boston Beerworks (the Blueberry Brew is ridiculous!), and get a sense of the crowd for the day. Also, for at least one game, I plan on donning the dreaded pink hat and, possibly, a Yankee hat, to see how that gets received at/around Fenway and in and around Boston.
Furthermore, as of right now I have interviews lined up with Howard Bryant, author of Shut Out: A Story of Race and Baseball in Boston and columnist for the Washington Post, Dan Shaughnessy, author of The Curse of the Bambino, and Dr. John Bracey, a Professor and activist at UMass-Amherst for several years including during the post-1986 World Series race riots that happened on campus. I have already spoken with Dr. Stephen Mosher, from Ithaca College, about what ESPN now terms the Nationâ?, and gained valuable insight as to how different constituents within the group experience the team. Per their agreement (which is far from guaranteed), I hope to post a transcript and/or video from our meetings. There are several hoops to jump through for this to work not the least of which is getting the video uploaded from my camera but I think it might be interesting for people to see how the Sox are received in the academic and media communities. Other than that, so far, the most difficult issue I have had to encounter is that for some people in Boston the Red Sox are all they have, and my job is to tell them how socially regressive rooting for that team is.
I guess to finish, if any of my readers have any suggestions for where to go, who to meet, interview, where to people watch, etc. I would welcome your comments. I look forward to updating you next week!
P.S. Brewers, Brewers...come on turn up the heat.
1 Responses to 'Red Sox Nation Research Preview'
Justin says on Wednesday, June 27th at 1:00am
Just for the record, I wore my Red Sox Hat to Yankee stadium and within two innings, my girlfriend Rachel, also a Redsox fan, was so annoyed with all the Yankees fans yelling at me, she finally asked me to take it off. So much for Yankee fans being so much more civilized then Sox fans.
