Where’s the raggedy edge of Red Sox Nation?
In anticipation of this weekend’s five-game series between the Red Sox and Yankees, John Branch has an entertaining article in the New York Times on trying to find the dividing line between Red Sox Nation and Yankee Country in my home state of Connecticut: The idea for this exercise was simple in design but complicated ...
In anticipation of this weekend's five-game series between the Red Sox and Yankees, John Branch has an entertaining article in the New York Times on trying to find the dividing line between Red Sox Nation and Yankee Country in my home state of Connecticut: The idea for this exercise was simple in design but complicated in application: Plot the length of the border between Red Sox Nation and Yankees Country, a sort of Mason-Dixon Line separating baseball?s fiercest rivals, who will play five games in the next four days in Boston. The midpoint between Fenway Park and Yankee Stadium is approximately Rocky Hill, Conn., a few miles south of Hartford and east of New Britain. Some adventurers have dared to guess where allegiances are perfectly balanced, usually pointing to a place near Route 91, anywhere from north of Hartford to New Haven in the south. But few have set out on an expedition ? Lewis and Clark meet Rand McNally ? to draw baseball?s bitterest border, to learn where it makes landfall along Long Island Sound to where it peters out in complacency in upstate New York, a serpentine span of nearly 200 miles. ?The border?s probably as wide as Connecticut,? Tom Brown, a volunteer firefighter in Old Lyme, Conn., said. But the point was to narrow the boundary until each adjacent town fell to one side or the other. The border would be a continuous line, allowing no recognized islands of hostility in enemy territory. Such bastions would be viewed as anomalies, like Union sympathizers in Tennessee. True borders, after all, are no wider than a dotted line. Polling a representative sample of people in every town would be impossible, so the method was simplified: Use a company-issued 2002 Pontiac Grand Am to traverse the highways and back roads of Connecticut, New York and Massachusetts. Roll into towns unannounced. Choose a person or group of people ? preferably those with a bead on the area, like police officers and firefighters, politicians and postal carriers, bartenders and barbers ? to be the proxy for their village. Excuse me, but is this a Yankees town or Red Sox one? When possible, irrefutable data ? a choice of baseball caps, for example, or the sale of team-logo cookies, or an office straw poll ? would be used for confirmation. I do find it interesting that the Times has the border further south than I remember from my childhood, when it ran right through the Farmington Valley. This does make me wonder if the border has shifted southwards in recent years.
In anticipation of this weekend’s five-game series between the Red Sox and Yankees, John Branch has an entertaining article in the New York Times on trying to find the dividing line between Red Sox Nation and Yankee Country in my home state of Connecticut:
The idea for this exercise was simple in design but complicated in application: Plot the length of the border between Red Sox Nation and Yankees Country, a sort of Mason-Dixon Line separating baseball?s fiercest rivals, who will play five games in the next four days in Boston. The midpoint between Fenway Park and Yankee Stadium is approximately Rocky Hill, Conn., a few miles south of Hartford and east of New Britain. Some adventurers have dared to guess where allegiances are perfectly balanced, usually pointing to a place near Route 91, anywhere from north of Hartford to New Haven in the south. But few have set out on an expedition ? Lewis and Clark meet Rand McNally ? to draw baseball?s bitterest border, to learn where it makes landfall along Long Island Sound to where it peters out in complacency in upstate New York, a serpentine span of nearly 200 miles. ?The border?s probably as wide as Connecticut,? Tom Brown, a volunteer firefighter in Old Lyme, Conn., said. But the point was to narrow the boundary until each adjacent town fell to one side or the other. The border would be a continuous line, allowing no recognized islands of hostility in enemy territory. Such bastions would be viewed as anomalies, like Union sympathizers in Tennessee. True borders, after all, are no wider than a dotted line. Polling a representative sample of people in every town would be impossible, so the method was simplified: Use a company-issued 2002 Pontiac Grand Am to traverse the highways and back roads of Connecticut, New York and Massachusetts. Roll into towns unannounced. Choose a person or group of people ? preferably those with a bead on the area, like police officers and firefighters, politicians and postal carriers, bartenders and barbers ? to be the proxy for their village. Excuse me, but is this a Yankees town or Red Sox one? When possible, irrefutable data ? a choice of baseball caps, for example, or the sale of team-logo cookies, or an office straw poll ? would be used for confirmation.
I do find it interesting that the Times has the border further south than I remember from my childhood, when it ran right through the Farmington Valley. This does make me wonder if the border has shifted southwards in recent years.
Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner
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