I have lived outside of NE for most of my adult life. Nothing could be further from the truth.
If you don't know who the Boston Red Sox, or the difference between the Red and White Sox, then you sir are no fan of Major League Baseball.
Now, madam, don't get too upset over this.
I have NEVER said the Boston Red Sox are NOT a good baseball team, with a colorful history.
My late brothers were all baseball fanatics--not just fans, but fanatics--but my interest is purely in the cultural and sociological characteristics of baseball upon the public, or popular, perception.
It was a curiosity sparked during the late 1970s, early 1980s, when, out of thin air, the Atlanta Braves suddenly became the most popular baseball team in the Upper Great Plains states. Everybody knew everything about the Atlanta Braves.
Even though young at the time, this appeal of the Atlanta Braves mystified me greatly, because nobody had paid attention to the Atlanta Braves before. Diehard baseball fans who actually attended games usually were fans of the Kansas City Royals or Chicago White Sox. Baseball permeated the radio airwaves, and the most interest seemed to be with the New York Yankees, the Lost Angeles Dodgers, the St. Louis Cardinals.
Another reason that made this popularity of the Atlanta Braves mystifying was that, historically, the Upper Great Plains states have never had much commercial, financial, or cultural ties with the Deep South.
Then I finally figured it out. The late 1970s, early 1980s, was when cable television began booming in the Upper Great Plains states, and that television station in Atlanta, owned by Jane Fonda's ex-husband, rode in on the crest of that wave. Every cable supplier carried that Atlanta station, and that Atlanta station carried the games of the Atlanta Braves, non-stop.
It got pretty boring, always the Atlanta Braves.
But then about ten years later, when cable television had further expanded, interest in the Atlanta Braves, at least in the Upper Great Plains states, dropped like a lead ball. My intuition had been correct; the Atlanta Braves were "popular" not because they were good (which they sometimes were, sometimes weren't), but simply because they were "marketed."
Nowadays, it's back to normal; out of 1.5 million people in Nebraska, one would be hard-pressed to find more than six, or more than half a dozen, fans of the Atlanta Braves. Everybody's back to being fans of traditional baseball powers.
I lived for a couple of years in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and then in Fairlawn, New Jersey, which are reasonably close to Boston, but to tell you the truth, madam, and I don't mean this meanly, I don't ever recall meeting a single baseball fan or expert from either city, who paid much attention to the Boston Red Sox, or who was more than just dimly, distantly, aware there was such a team.
This is NOT to say the Boston Red Sox are NOT a good team, with lots of color and history in them. This is however to say that as a national phenomenon, while the Boston Red Sox have influenced popular culture more than, say, the Minnesota Twins or the Kansas City Royals, the Boston Red Sox are far from being as well-known nationally, and as widely liked and disliked, as the New York Yankees.
