So, summer is almost here again, you're thinking. And that means one and only one thing: the Red Sox. I don't care if you don't live in Boston, summer still only means one thing: the Red Sox. If this point of view seems alarming or confusing, perhaps you need to read this article, especially if you live in Boston, in which case you need some help understanding why summer means one thing only: the Red Sox.

Now, if you're already a very hard core Red Sox fan, that's ok, you probably don't have to read this article, you already know everything contained herein. Although, if you're hard core, you'll read it any way just because it's about the Red Sox. But if you're like many of your fellow Bostonians, you like the Sox, you hope they win, you'll cheer for them occasionally, and you think Nomar is really cool, maybe even hot.

I'm here to tell you that silliness ends now.

No more dabbling around the edges in Red Sox fandom, no more holding a passing interest and filling your time with lesser pursuits of money, employment, sex etc. If you ever want to have a raw emotional commitment in your life, and one that is validated by a surprising number of those around you, become an all-consumed Red Sox fan.

Consider this a list of steps to take along the journey.


Get the Love

First, and most importantly, you have to want this. You have to appreciate the Red Sox and baseball as a sport. You can't do this because your friends won't talk to you when baseball is on or because there's some cute guy who's so dreamy and wears a Red Sox cap etc. That won't do.

You have to really want this. You have to look at some real hard core Sox fans and actually envy them. If that doesn't sound like a strange thing, you're a prime candidate. Surprisingly, this is how a good number of non-Bostonians get into it: they're at a bar, they're on the street, they just can't get away from all-Sox-all-the-time. Soon they develop an interest and boom, instant Sox fan. Also, you have to have a genuine curiosity towards following a team passionately, wild mood swings, constant debate on minutiae, and afternoons of drinking.


Learn the Guys

I cannot stress this one enough. If you are to map a team's record onto your own psyche, you have to intimately know of what you speak. You can start off just by knowing how to refer to the players. One of the toughest things that burgeoning Sox fans go through is knowing whether to call a player by their first or last name, or in some cases a nickname. It's ok to occasionally resort to last names only, but you have to be prepared to use the correct name in this context: "Woooo!!! C'mon NAME!!!!!" or "Hey! NAME! Whatthefuckwasthatcmon?" and so forth. Nothing makes a green fan stand out than when they shout out something like "C'mon Martinez! Strike that guy out!"

So to do the work for you:

Johnny Damon: Johnny
Bill Mueller: "Miller" or Billy if that feels awkward
Nomar Garciaparra: Nomar, or Nomah if you're shouting it. But don't overdo the Boston accent, it's lame.
Manny Ramirez: Manny
Kevin Millar: Millar
Ellis Burks: Ellis for now, Burksie at some point later this year
David Ortiz: The hardest one, but go with Day-veed
Jason Varitek: Jason, or if it feels right: Tek
Pokey Reese: Pokey
Gabe Kapler: Kap
Brian Daubach: Daubach, or Dauber if you end up liking him a lot
Mark Bellhorn: Call him Mark Belhorn, first and last, it will be funny
Trot Nixon: Trot

As a rule, all pitchers get called by their first name. Usually because you refer to them while pleading and last names sound weird that way. Notable exceptions include Tim Wakefield as "Wake," Keith Foulke as "Foulke," And Byun-Hyung Kim as "Asshole."

And the Manager (not Coach) is named Terry Francona, and you will refer to him as Tito, I shit you not.


Buy a Hat

Well, on second thought, you really don't need a hat. Because if you buy one, it will be fresh and crisp and very blue. That won't work. Chances are that you or someone in your family has an old one that you should dig up. Nothing screams class in Boston like a very well worn Sox cap. Do not under any circumstances wear the green or pink or yellow cap. Only wear the red cap if it's actually from the 70's. Do not over-fold the brim or else you look like every other BU putz walking down Comm Ave, just a little bend will do.

If you drive a car with hubcaps that spin, you should get one of the all-white caps with the super-flat brim and hologram still on it. I don't know why, but that looks cool.


Listen to EEI
This is where things start to get dicey. Pretty much anyone can go with the above steps. Listening to WEEI 850 though is where you separate the men from the boys, or more accurately, the men from their girlfriends.

Sports radio is the first place you'll be exposed to people with rabid Red Sox knowledge. While it may seem testosterone driven at first, you'll quickly see why so many true fans swear by it. Force this one on yourself. After the first listen (usually during a commute in your car or on your headphones) you won't get it and you'll hate it. After a couple times though, you'll become familiar with the personalities, the plot lines, and even the callers.

All this plus it's a great way to get breaking news. You'll be listening to a surprisingly good debate about the merits of legs vs. arms in the outfield and suddenly you'll hear that a Yankee got arrested or that a big trade just went down. And you'll find that out on sports radio long before you hear it elsewhere.

Back to the testosterone. If you're a female who wants to be a hard core fan, EEI can seem particularly daunting. But you would be shocked at the number of women who get over the stupid comments on the air and actively follow the arguments. All that plus nothing makes men more impressed than when a very cute girl (not some Braintree gum-chewer) launches into how stupid host Pete Shepherd was today because of his irrational desire for more bunting etc.

Of course, there is a step above this where you can hate sports radio because they don't know as much about baseball as you do. Admittedly I occasionally fall into this category.


Waste Your Workday on the Internet

Once you've become comfortable with the debating of relative merits of pretty much all things baseball, and practiced some with your friends down at the bar, you're ready to get on to the internet. This is where you really start to see some fandom at it's best and worst.

Start off just by having a daily schedule of reading material on various web sites. I personally start my day in the sports section of The Boston Globe. From there you can go to The Boston Herald if you want a differing view, although that sort of thing is a little over the top. Obviously ESPN is a good stop for news and opinion too.

Once you become familiar with the various media outlets, start forming opinions on the writers themselves. As a handy guide, you should love the Globe's Gordon Edes because he breaks all the inside info. You should hate the Globe's Dan Shaughnessy because he started the now-unaccepted theory of the Curse of the Bambino, combined with the fact that it seems like he writes for the toothless old drunk Irish guys in a bar in Southie who lament old long-forgotten players. You should like Peter Gammons of ESPN.com because he's a Boston fan at heart, but his weird, almost sexual fetishizing of young players should make you uncomfortable. Finally, you should form an undying allegiance to the Sports Guy on ESPN, Bill Simmons, perhaps the best sports writer around today. The best blend of humor and sports ever seen.

But wait! There's more! With the internet, you have far more information at your disposal than just mere media. At the top of the "other" pile is the Sons of Sam Horn discussion board, or SoSH. This is where the truly insane Red Sox fans discuss the most mundane of topics, like deep-minor league prospects and wild-assed trades that could never happen (though by page 17 of the thread, you start to think they could). This board is by far and away the standard of Red Sox Nation, it doesn't get any better than this. Membership is controlled however, so you can read but never post. There is an arcane membership process though if you're knowledgeable enough to attempt it. Of special note here is that occasionally a member of the Red Sox will chime in with their thoughts. Curt Schilling and John Henry (the owner) have both been known to jump into the fray.

Other web sites of interest include Boston Dirt Dogs, a somewhat amateurish site that has a hit-or-miss sense of humor but is always a great place to stop by once or twice, if just to watch Red Sox fans hyperventilate over every news item.


Extend Your Knowledge

Now that you're so smart about the Red Sox, it's time to give you some really scary knowledge.

First of all, you'll always want to know how much money players are making. This isn't because you want to be jealous or to go sleep with them and claim child support, but because when July comes along, you'll be talking about trades, and money and contract length are always big subjects in that discussion. Have you ever wanted a web site that simply lists every players' current contract info: how long they are signed, how much they are paid, and how many options they hold? Well, someone made that site, I don't know who it was, but they will save your ass when you're arguing with the hosts on EEI while rebutting on SoSH and your ESPN trade ticker is heating up. Go to Dugout Dollars and you'll see.

Next, you'll have to start familiarizing yourself with something called sabermetrics. This is a term based on the acronym SABR: Society for American Baseball Research. Brief background: sabermetrics came about in the 1970's when a bunch of real geeks (not just the baseball kind) got together and tried to apply some honest-to-goodness hard math to baseball statistics. Why? Well as you may or may not know, baseball statistics are a pretty fluky field. You try to judge a hitter on something like batting average or home runs and you're not really thinking about how often the actually get on base, or how often they score and/or cause others to score and so on.

Well what the burgeoning field of sabermetrics has done is to go through the old tired and true stats: BA, HR, RBI, SB, ERA, K, W, , etc., and just thrown them right the hell out. This was done because these stats didn't accurately reflect how "good" a player was, or would become. Out of their ashes arose the new stats, or New Stats if you will, factoring in all the inter-related pieces that make up the dynamics of play on the field. If you're a scientist, or remember science, a lot of this is like controlling variables in a study, making sure that each result is based on its cause, and that other results haven't affected it along the way.

Right, so.

Let's give a concrete example. Take batting average (BA). BA is just a simple calculation of dividing total number of hits by total number of at bats. The problem is that when you talk about "at bats," you're not counting the times when a runner got on base by a walk or an error or some other reason. Anyone can agree on the fact that a runner getting on base is good, regardless of how he got there. Sabermetrics folks realized this and started trumpeting something called "on base percentage" or OBP. This is based on dividing total hits, walks, reached on errors etc by the total "old" at bats plus, walks, reached on errors etc. In the end this gives you a figure showing how often the guy just gets on the damn base, who cares how he got there.

What does something like this mean? Well you can look at a player like Nomar, who hits at a very good .330 BA or so and is regarded as a great hitter. But then you look at his OBP and it's only around .360. Most "good" OBP hitters will have an OBP of around .400. The sneaky thing here is that a player who has a low BA isn't valued that much, even if he has a high OBP (and subsequently gets on base a heck of a lot), and someone like Nomar is highly valued, even though he only tends to get on base through hits, and gets on base less overall than the hitter with the lower BA.

It's this sort of thing that sabermetrics has brought to the game: rooting around in the old numbers and coming up with new ones that really show how good and effective a player is. It tosses out things like "he's a good hitter" and "that guy has some real work ethic" and replaces it with hard analysis based on arcane math and statistical analysis.

This goes really deep and you end up with some very strange statistics like OPS (OBP + slugging percentage, a good feel for overall ability to hit), Isolated Power (which removes singles and walks and shows how good a doubles/triples/HR hitter he is), WHIP (how many walks and hits a pitcher gives up per inning), Zone Rating (a stat for fielding of all things). It goes on and on, most sabermeticians come up with their own formulas and pump out volumes on every player, analyzing every possible permutation of performance.

We could go on and on about this, but it's best that you look into it more if you're interested (or post a comment here asking for a whole article). Just suffice to say that you'll be hearing a lot about some of these stats this year and be happy that the Red Sox hired Bill James, the father of sabermetrics, as an advisor.


Form Volatile Opinions

At this point you should be so well informed and so up-to-date on every Red Sox angle that you can be perfectly confident that you know more than anyone else. You also should likely be pretty heavily into expressing your feelings when out with friends watching the Sox game.

This should lead you to start making wild predictions and assertions. No true Red Sox fan should ever go one full season without believing both sides of an argument. For instance, you should probably start the season loving one player and end it by hating him, and vice versa. You can justify this with some New Stats, some infobit from EEI, and drop in the name of a hot minor leaguer just to seal the deal. Usually your friends will think you're an idiot, but they're probably cautious of you because you know so much and you might just be right. My own personal example of this relates to Nomar. I used to love the guy. Now I spend a good portion of my waking hours researching data to back up my (often drunk) claims that "I am so sick of Nomar's shit!"

Saying this sort of thing gets me dirty looks at bars and among friends, but I don't get a whole lot of disagreement due to the fact that I have a good portion of stats to back me up regarding his production on certain counts and his inability to hit when runners are on base. Time and again someone will say "Hey, Nomar's up, you hate this guy, what's he gonna do?" and I'll look at the bases, if they're empty I reply "He'll get a hit." And he does. If there is anyone on I say "Popup." And he does.

People back away from me in awe. You too can experience this feeling. It's lonely, but it's powerful.

You should also decide that the Sox are going to win it all or loose horribly at seemingly random times. You should decide someone is washed up or on the way back when no one else has expressed such an opinion. You also do not need to always have details for your argument, sometimes wild emotional judgment is best, especially in Boston.


Be Better than All That

Finally, keep your head above the fray. Be better that the masses who simply yell "You bum!" or "Yankees suck!" because they see everyone else do it. You shouldn't boo players for bad performances unless they are jerks and do it far too often. The Yankees do not suck. Let me repeat that, the Yankees do not suck. If you are at a game against the Yankees, go ahead and chant it. But really, at a Baltimore game in April?

You, as a hard core Red Sox fan, an emissary of Red Sox Nation, should try to raise the level of debate. Yeah, go ahead and drink and yell and pull your hair out, but put some thought into it. Don't be a bone-head. God put the most entertaining team in the most entertaining sport in the world right here in Boston, learn it.

Be gracious to fans from other cities. Learn about their players and talk about them. Nothing makes an out-of-towner happier than finding a Sox fan who might know something about the misery of why exactly Cleveland is sucking etc. Even if you meet someone from New York, come at them with something better than "Jeter is a fag." Talk about why Jeter is a bad player and why the Yanks have no chance by using stats and knowledge.

Then when they look stunned and taken aback, you punch them in the neck.