Bucky Harris and Joe Cronin, 1935

So, one more year without baseball in Washington. Is it really such a big deal? One fan journeys to the heart of the American game to find out: A beautiful piece by Washington Post Magazine writer and Red Sox fan Bob Thompson, followed by an online discussion. An excerpt from the article:

More than the games themselves, it's the sharing of them that was and remains important. The college friend we saw yesterday, for example, told us a story about waking his sleeping 6-year-old in 1986, just before Buckner's meltdown, so the boy would be able to say he'd seen the Red Sox win the Series. ("So it's your fault!" I exclaimed, and he didn't disagree.) The people we're staying with tonight, with whom we have much more in common than just baseball, nonetheless can talk endlessly and interestingly about the nuances of individual players and games. When pressed, they're also willing to mull the broader question of what the Sox have meant to New England over the past 40 years.

The argument goes like this: In a period when a tidal wave of homogenization has surged across America, washing out regional differences, New Englanders have resisted the process more than most. They want badly to be, if not unique, at least distinguishable from the mass of their malled and supermarketed fellow citizens. Red Sox fandom has become a marker for the kind of distinctive identity they seek. For newcomers to the region, in particular, it is a bridge to the people they've come to join, a way to assert their membership in something special. (Via Bambino's Curse)

World Series, Pittsburgh, 1960