NEW YORK I am sitting in the sumptuous, 20th-floor grand ballroomof the Yale Club, listening to grown men (and a few women) cursing'those dirty bastards from New York . . . the Yankees, the Big Dig ofoverbudgeted sports enterprises.' To this assembly, Randy Johnson is'the Big Eunuch,' George Steinbrenner is 'Furious George,' and so on.
Welcome to the biannual meeting of the Benevolent Loyal Order ofthe Honorable Ancient Redsox Diehard Sufferers (BLOHARDS) of NewYork, a Red Sox booster group recruited mainly from New York, NewJersey, and Connecticut, although I did bump into a couple from ParisFrance, not Maine. Founded 38 years ago by Jim Powers, a publishingexecutive from Uxbridge now exiled to Weston, Conn., the B-Hards usedto reune furtively in nondescript midtown bars. No longer. Now theyswagger down Fifth Avenue in full Red Sox regalia, pack 150 peopleinto their meetings, and talk of a dawning 'Red Sox millennium.'
After years of enduring Yankee rule, the tristate Bosox fans failutterly to contain their glee no, euphoria at the reversal offortune that on Sunday landed the Carmine Hose three games atop thehated Bombers in the American League East, with just 20 games left toplay. There is no sordid detail of Yankee excess they do not revelin. When Powers chortles from the podium that Yankees catcher JorgePosada paints his fingernails to help the pitcher see his signs this seems like more information than I really want to know.
The Diehard Sufferers are animated by anti-Yankees fervor, andalso by a wicked sense of humor. The group loudly boasts of its fifthcolumn activities in New York, which have so far resulted in theelection of a Medford native Michael Bloomberg as mayor, and theopening of a Boston-themed sports bar in the dark heart of the RottenApple. What other website would celebrate in a banner headline:'Manhattanites Get Home Delivery of the Globe'?
At the website, blohards.com, Amherst-born hedge fund managerPeter Collery runs the naughty Name That Yankee nickname contest thatgave us Furious George, the Big Eunuch, and Mariano 'the cLOSER'Rivera who, like Johnson, looked pretty potent in the weekend series.Collery also sells fiery red T-shirts bearing a portrait of a beret-wearing, Che Guevera-like Johnny Damon above the line: 'Resist YankeeHegemony! Wage Relentless Struggle Against the Steinbrenner Clique!Strive to Emulate Comrade Johnny!'
It now hangs in my closet next to my blasphemous 'Johnny Saves' T-shirt from last season.
The website likewise publishes a miniature travel guide fordisplaced Bostonians, called 'Lifelines.' One stop is Notaro, an EastSide Italian restaurant where the genial former Red Sox hurler JerryCasale puts in nightly appearances. Casale, who won 13 games for theSox in 1959, is in the history books, albeit not for the reasons hemight like. As a Los Angeles Angel, Casale surrendered CarlYastrzemski's first major league home run. Also, he gave up RogerMaris's homer number 24 during Maris's 61-home-run year, 1961.
About 20 blocks uptown from Notaro, I found Boston (212), the Hub-themed sports bar that is the brainchild of Buzzards Bay nativeCharles Garland. Boston (212) is a movable feast currently occupyingthe bar section of the Caffe Buon Gusto, a small Italian restaurant.In addition to pulling together crowds for Red Sox games, Garlandalso hosts alumni events for Boston College, Boston University, andDartmouth, where he attended business school.
Boston (212) knocks a dollar off drink costs for every RBIproduced by a Boston homer. On Sunday, that proved to be a shrewdbusiness decision. On Saturday, less so.
The final stop on the How-New-York-Can-Be-More-Like-Boston-Tourtook me to Harrison's Tavern on the Upper West Side, co-owned byRuben Roine, a Jamaica Plain transplant. A klatch of Boston cops wascelebrating a bachelor party, and Sox colors were everywhere. Yetwhen the Yankee bats exploded in the sixth inning on Friday night, Iheard loud cheers from the periphery of the packed bar. Roineexplained to me that he loves the Sox but observes commercialneutrality to please all of his customers: 'The color of money isgreen.'
Ah, New York.
Alex Beam is a Globe columnist. His e-dress is beam@globe.com.
