Red Sox International
Red Sox fandom has occasionally brought me to odd places – empty sports bars on a weekday afternoon, Oakland, staring at a frozen MLB Gamecast, waiting for a ball in play to land – but nothing like the Red Sox Nation get-together at a British pub in Tokyo called The Hub after the first game.               

The party was thrown by Daigo Fujiwara, a native Tokyoite who now works for the Boston Globe and runs JapaneseBallplayers.com.  The attention to detail at the party was awesome and not something that would happen in the States.  There were name tags for everyone with a Red Sox logo on them and a "Red Sox Nation in Japan" business card with all our names on the back to take with us.

There was one Sam Adams brought in for each person to toast with to kick off the celebration.  A 90-minute highlight tape of the greatest Red Sox moments of the decade was edited together just for the event and played in the background.

The games were great, but I’ll remember the party with more clarity.  CNN was there early, looking for people like myself who made the trip from the U.S.  They were in the wrong place, as only a handful of the partygoers came from outside Japan.

Speeches were made, most of which I didn’t understand, but it didn’t matter.  After a few hours of open-bar madness, I realized I was drinking with 50 of the biggest Red Sox fans I’ve ever met, no matter how they became fans.  They were decked out in Red Sox jerseys from Vaughn to Garciaparra to Manny to Okajima.  One had on a Spiderman-like Red Sox unitard and called himself Youk.

They knew each word of Dirty Water better than I and partied like it was 2004 as the highlight tape played above us.  

When Mike Lansing helped save Hideo Nomo’s no-hitter, the place erupted as if it was seeing the play for the first time. My wife looked at my friend Evan and I like we had caught some terminal dork disease, but we were in heaven. 

When Bill Mueller knocked in Dave Roberts, with Mariano Rivera putting his arms up in disgust, the celebration began anew.

Fans of 31 teams will find this insufferable, but as a Sox fan you just haven’t lived until chanting “A-Rod Sucks” 13 time zones away.  The vast majority of fans at the party spoke little to no English, but it didn’t matter.  They spoke Red Sox. 

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