Congratulations, Red Sox Fans

Whether you're a diehard or a bandwagoner, a proletarian at BU, bourgeoisie at Harvard, or the odd gray between of upper-middle-class New England Violet-Bloods at Boston College or Tufts; whether you hate the Yankees or just the evil-somehow-vaguely-republican-empire they represent; whether a vote for the Sox is, to you, a vote for Kerry; if resent your parents and their money and your Phillips-Andover education and you swear that that Dominican guy thought of you as black or latino or whatever he was for just a split second as you high-fived in the bleacher seats at Fenway (your friends took the box behind the plate); if you tried to climb the Monster and fell 100 feet to parapalegia; if you rioted at Smith or Amherst or UMass, where most of the locals haven't heard of baseball; if you spotted that worn-out Sox cap at the "vintage" clothing shop and knew right away that it'd make the perfect accompaniment to your hemp necklace at the WTO protest; whether you're a thirty-something Hollywood leading man who rode into glory on your best friend's talent and J-Lo's ass, a man responsible for the propogation of more bad script than penmanship week in third grade; contrarians and Phish fans everywhere; misunderstood, misillusioned, misanthropes; angst-junkies, Ragers against all kinds of Machines; part-time workers of the world, from Brookline to New Haven to Providence, from all four corners of the Abercrombie empire, WASPs and WASCs unite! O, ye martyrs from all walks of privilege, you are the chest-strapped suicide bombers of this great country, the persecuted, the ignored, the uncolored; for a moment that bar in Cambridge was the hill on Golgotha, it was the compound in Waco, it was a temple to the Sultan of Swat from whom you turned your eyes 85 years ago, and who has now, in his infinite power and mercy, finally forgiven you. It inspired you so much, you even slid your Vodka and Red Bull a few more inches down the bartop, cautiously kept your hand in your wallet pocket, and let that 20 year-old son of an Irish cop from Southie slide in and get a better view of the postgame. So it is you, Boston Red Sox fan, that I offer my praise and supplication. Congratulations. Now you're unique, just like everybody else.

-Foster