Originally published at my site. You can comment here or there.

The Boston Red Sox are back in the World Series, and oh yeah, that makes me squee. I’ve got a good feeling that they’re going to win it, too — yeah, I know the Rockies have won 21 of their last 22 games, but A) they’ll have been off for more than a week by the time game one comes around, and 2) those guys are all newbies to the World Series stage, while the Sox have plenty of veterans who’ve been through this kind of thing before. Also, the Rockies will be more likely to have a case of Just Happy To Be Here syndrome than the Sox will.

There, justifications done. Red Sox in five.

While by no means a bandwagon-jumping Sox fan, I did come sign on to Red Sox Nation fairly late; growing up in Florida, I didn’t really have a favorite baseball team. Our regional team was the Braves, but holy hell were they wretched during my formative years. Once I started dating and eventually married a Massachusetter… Massachusettian… Bostonian, I took on her genetically-bred love for the Red Sox; going to our first game at Fenway in ‘99 (against the Kansas City Royals; Sox won) just cemented my love. My suffering certainly never was near the intense levels of agony that so many lifelong Boston fans endured, but I can appreciate what they went through for all those years.

And now to be looking at winning two championships in four years? It’ll be interesting to see how the next generation of Red Sox fans look at themselves and their team ten or twenty years from now, how kids who grew up with a Sox team who won with some consistency deal with the inevitable down periods (Same goes for kids growing up Patriots fans right now — how will they react the next time the Pats go 3-13?) They’re going to have a fundamentally different relationship with their team from what their parents have. I just hope these proto-fans don’t end up adopting that obnoxious sense of entitlement that Yankees fans exude, that sense that they deserve to win the Series ever year. I’d like to hope that their parents will remind them where they came from, teach them to appreciate the good times when they happen because you never know when an 86-year championship-free stretch will come along.