You've Got to Grow the Passion

I've told my kids countless times, "It's all about passion." No matter what you do in life, you have to have passion. And as a Red Sox fan, that's a given. You can't be a Red Sox fan and not be passionate about the game, about the team. They go hand in hand like a hot dog and a bun.

Sox fans are not born. They are made. They are cultivated. In Boston, it starts the seconds after a baby leaves the womb.

Don't believe me? Ask the thousands of babies born at Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center who are given their first Red Sox caps before they're weighed and measured. Take a quick survey at Bob's or the Yawkey Way Store to see how many Red Sox rattles, bibs, t-shirts, blankets, socks, and binkies are sold each year. Search for Red Sox baby videos on YouTube. We start the indoctrination at a very early age.

My kids were no exception. My daughter Erin was three weeks old when we took her to Fenway for the first time. Patrick was a little older, five months, but hey, he was born in February, not April, so we had to wait for the season to begin. I have photos of myself at age two in a Yastremski sweatshirt holding my brother's hand. I have photos of my Dad at age eight with Ted Williams in Fenway Park. Growing Sox fans has long been a Boston tradition.

You've got to teach passion. It's about teaching your kids to love a team and being there for them through thick and thin, through 86 years of hardship as well as the World Series celebrations. It's about loving every aspect of the game and loving every aspect of the Fenway experience.

Perhaps no better example of a passionate Sox fan exists than Mike Schuster. To me, he is the ultimate Sox fan, and he's not afraid to show it. Mr. Schuster, as he professes, is Boston's #1 fan, wearing his heart on his....um....belly (not a 6-pack ab but a kegger ab, as he's pointed out.) There's no doubt that you have to have passion to put on a complete Red Sox outfit and paint your belly red, white, and blue with the Sox logo. I'm sure he'd tell you that he didn't start out as "passionate" as he is now. It was cultivated along the way.

And cultivating the passion has been one of my parental goals.

My son has a Red Sox room. Not just the walls painted green with a poster or two. No, this is a young Sox fan's dream come true. My friend, Dave Laabs, a talented wall muralist (see http://www.theairbrushshack.com/) created the view of the Green Monster from our season ticket seats in pure airbrush perfection. Add the retired numbers, signed baseball cards, framed posters, a Red Sox comforter and pillows, a stuffed Wally, several Sox hats, and a framed photo of his grandfather with Ted Williams (after he won the 1939 greater Boston Little League batting championship - my father, not Ted) complete the room. It's an environment to instill the passion or at the very least encourage it a little.

This past off-season, when Patrick's birthday rolled around, we even had the kids play "Pin the Tail on the Yankee," blindfolding them, spinning them around, and having them try to pin a devil's tail on a poster of Derek Jeter. (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsgyYln_Pzk)

All in good fun, but let's face it, growing a fan who will be dedicated to a team over the span of eighty championship-free decades takes hard work, creativity and passion as well!

It's more than simply buying your kid a Red Sox t-shirt or taking them to a game at Fenway. It's about teaching them all of the great moments in Red Sox history. It's about letting them stay up to clinch the penant or the series (or waking them up so they won't miss it.) It's about telling them about the first time you went to Fenway or the first game you remember watching on TV with your Dad. It's about letting them embrace all the wonderful things that make Sox fans the best fans in the world. It's about teaching them all the words to Sweet Caroline. It's about taking them into Fenway Park and helping them understand in an instant all the tradition, heartache and excitement that lives in the walls, on the field, and in the stands. It's about teaching them to love baseball and love the Red Sox with all their heart and all their soul.

And maybe, just maybe, if you do your job right, they'll paint their bellies some day.