He that falls in love with himself will have no rivals.
- Benjamin Franklin

A few years back my wife and I spent a couple of days in Newport, Rhode Island. We stayed at a very nice hotel close to downtown. This was close to the end of the regular baseball season, the time when each game seems to count. My experience is that games prior to the All-Star Game are not taken quite as seriously. After all, “we” are playing 160+ games in a regular season, and any mishap during the first half can be compensated later – or not.

Naturally, with my wife being a wicked Red Sox fan, every night activity, such as going out to one of the many fabulous restaurants, had to be scheduled around game time. As a result, we would have a few drinks at the hotel bar around 7 pm to watch the game, and a few innings later we would resign to watch the rest of the game in our room. Well, sometimes the game starts at 8 pm when ESPN – with their painfully incompetent commentators – takes over.

Quite coincidently it turned out that during these few nights in Rhode Island the Red Sox played the hated New York Yankees at Fenway Park. Also quite coincidental, some hotel guests were from New York. One of the guys felt offended by the crowd’s cheers, for instance, when Derek Jeter swung and missed a ball, or when a Sox player walked to first base after the fourth ball. “They would never do that at Yankee Stadium,” he mumbled repeatedly, shaking his head. I felt inclined to tell him that he had never seen a game at Yankee Stadium, but a buddy of his felt the increasing tension in the room. “Hey,” he told his friend. “Remember, you are in Red Sox territory. Of course, they cheer only for the Red Sox.”

I do understand the passion New Yorkers feel for their team, but I never understood how one can live in New England and, at the same time, be a Yankees fan, unless you live in Connecticut, which I personally do not consider part of New England. Mentally they’re New Yorkers, while New England life has nothing in common with New York City. Nevertheless, my motto is, live and let live. After all, baseball is only a game. I may call them the “hated” Yankees, but I am only adopting Red Sox Nation linguistics. The rivalry between the Red Sox and the Yankees is a much needed spice for an otherwise sober game that, more than once, challenged my ability to stay awake during late night hours.

Unfortunately, the same rivalry can go too far, because some fans, regardless of whether they cheer for the Red Sox or the Yankees, just don’t get it.

On April 14, 2010 the Associated Press reported:

“NASHUA, N.H. – A New Hampshire woman convicted of running down and killing a man  with her car after he was said to have taunted her for being a New York Yankees fan has been sentenced to 20 to 40 years in prison.

Forty-five-year-old Ivonne Hernandez was convicted in December of second-degree murder in the death of 29-year-old Matthew Beaudoin in a Nashua parking lot.

Police say the dispute outside a bar started as an exchange about the Yankees and Red Sox.

Hernandez testified she was terrified because Beaudoin and others pounded on her windows when she made a comment about how many baseball World Series the Yankees had won compared to the Red Sox.”