Hi, my name is Ignacio Cifuentes and I’m a Red Sox junkie. That’s no news for you guys, if you’re here is because you are Red Sox junkies too, but here’s the twist. I’m from Chile, a country in south America, a long stripe of earth in the south east part of that continent.
Now, why is that amazing? There’s no professional baseball teams here in Chile, there’s only an amateur league mainly composed of Cubans and centroamericans who came to this country searching a better life and there’s only 30, 40 people playing there, so the question is, how a Chilean got familiarized with baseball? and the answer of that (like many things in life) has a first name and a last name that we all know and love. Pedro Martinez.
I knew a little baseball because of videogames and some movies (specially the Major League movies and Field Of Dreams). I remember that the first baseball game I ever watched was an Expos game, back in 1994, and this guy with a #45 jersey was throwing the ball. I felt a weird connection with that pitcher and from that day on I knew that baseball was going to be there for me all my life, but life works in mysterious ways and all of a sudden there was a players strike and my newfound favorite sport was no longer there on my tv.
Years passed and I saw that my only favorite player was now a Red Sox pitcher and I felt yet again a weird feeling of “belonging” like this was my true team. I started to look for info about this team. I read everything from the years in Huntington Avenue Grounds to the glorious Fenway Park years. From Cy Young to Luis Tiant, Bill Lee, Roger Clemens and Bruce Hurst. From Ted Williams (and the Teammates) to Yaz and Rice, and I read about that long championship drought the team was in but also I read that even though the team didn’t win a championship in years the Fenway Faithful still rooted for their team. And then I knew, this IS my team.
Now, thanks to twitter and internet I can share my love for the team with others that are just like me, there isn’t a lot of Red Sox fans here in Chile, as a matter of fact all I see is people with Yankee hats in the streets (but not because they are Yankee fans, it’s because the logo is so damn popular with rappers and reggeaton artists).
I don’t know if you guys realize it, but you are so lucky. You live in a country where you can turn on the TV and watch a game or watch baseball talk on ESPN. If I’m lucky I can get a 1 Red Sox game in a month. You can save a little money and you can go to a game, maybe catch a Red Sox game when the team is in your city or close to your city. I dream of Fenway. I dream of watching my team playing somewhere. I know that when I get to Fenway I’m going to cry and, quoting Bill Lee, I’m going to go on one knee and thank God for making me a Red Sox Fan. I love this team so much.
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