Gigi Amateau, a Virginian, loves the Red Sox. This, for some of us, requires no explanation but people ask for one anyway. Gigi wears a Red Sox hat at readings and encourages attendees to offer the tribal call of Red Sox Nation ("Yankees Suck!"). She loves the Sox, she says, because they're heroes of the underdog. She loves them because they're individualists and goofballs. "They're sexy men who love each other in the dugout," she said. She also loves them because they're Boston's team. "I'm passionately in love with John Adams and that's his city," she said.
Billy Collins, who followed Gigi on stage after she disclosed her love for the Sox, could not refrain from commenting. Billy is a former poet laureate, a brilliant and surprising writer, and has probably done more than any person alive to make poetry part of mainstream American culture. But when it comes to baseball, I was dismayed to learn, Billy is an adherent the Evil Empire and just had to take some shots at the good guys.
Yankees fans, he explained, follow baseball during the baseball season and merely root for their team. Whereas you can go to Boston at Christmas, and they're still talking about baseball, specifically about the Yankees and why we hate them. "It's obsessive and unhealthy," he said.
Even if that's true, I'm sticking with Gigi and the reigning world champs. Yankees suck.