Sox and boobs
Honestly, I don't really care too much about baseball, but it's hard not to get wrapped up in all of this when you live in the heartland of Sox country. After they beat the Yankees four straight the city just seemed so happy. Random people I passed would smile at me and yell "Go Sox!" I was really hoping for the big win this year just so I could see what would happen. Luckily Paul was adventurous enough to drag Nicole and I out to the epicenter of the madness. As we walked down to the T-Stop the moon was in full lunar eclipse and shone bright red (an omen mayhaps?). We arrived at Fenway just before the last at bat. There were crowds of people outside of the pubs watching the game through the windows. As for me, I didn't see any of the game, but it wasn't hard to tell when it was all over. Everyone started cheering, hugging and laughing. I'm sure a lot of people couldn't believe that it had finally happened. Almost immediately everyone poured out of the bars and into the streets. We followed the crowds down to a police barricaded intersection, shocked to see that there was an even larger crowd on the other side. I mean, there were THOUSANDS of people out there, I have never seen anything like it. The crowd occasionally burst into chants such as "GO SOX!" "YANKEES SUCK!" and the inevitable "SHOW YOUR TITS!" And yes, I totally saw boobs (which is almost as rare as the red sox winning the series). There were also chants of "PLEASE DON'T KILL US!", a sad reference to the Emerson student killed by riot police a week before. I wasn't happy that this was being thrown in these cops' faces, but I think the chanting actually made the crowd feel a little more comfortable about the massive police presence. As we pushed our way back through the crowd, we saw the riot squads getting ready to disperse the crowds. They were in full DNC uniforms, platic handcuffs and all. I even saw a few carrying the now infamous pepper pellet rifles. They started yelling for people to get off of the streets so we figured we'd be ok on the sidewalk. A cop approached the three of us and told us to get away and when Paul argued that we were on the sidewalk and not the street, he threatened to arrest him. Safe to say, we pretty much booked it. The thought of getting arrested by this dude was pretty terrifying. Soon the police formed lines and started corraling everyone from Fenway. We found a way back around and again ended up right in the middle of everything. I was pretty impressed with the cops' strategy for dispersing the crowd. First they drove people away from the ends, then they drove a wedge right down the middle and then they pushed outward. Man, I love pre-gunpowder military tactics. After we got our first wiff of tear gas, we decided it was time to vamoose (is that how you spell it?). At one point we were being chased down by horses! The last eventful... er... event, was this one guy decided to run around with his pants around his ankles (chicago-style as we used to call it) and then we run into him again, about half a mile away, with his pants STILL around his ankles! To me this is what typifies the Boston fan, perseverance.