ONLINE
Far East Fenway Fan Club established in 2004
for Red Sox Nation baseball fans in Taiwan, China and Japan
http://business.bostonherald.com/businessNews/view.bg?articleid=173219
Boston Herald Website offers Japanese pages (news)
The Red Sox reached across the world toland the most coveted player available this offseason, and now BostonHerald Interactive is following their lead. With its recent launch of Japanese pages on its http://www.bostonherald.com/ Web site, the Herald is giving baseball fans in Japan an American perspective on superstar right-hander DaisukeMatsuzaka translated into Japanese.
Bill Gaffney, Herald Interactive's vice president of technology,production and editorial, said online users from Japan have jumped from seventh to second, surpassing Canada and the U.K., whichpreviously held the two and three spots. "This is a unique project that is trying to bring two completelydifferent cultures together," Gaffney said. "Once they get a taste ofAmerican journalism in Japan, especially on a subject that is writtenwith such emotion by our reporters, I think they'll be hooked."
email address / send comments , feedback here / reporter.bloom@gmail.com
台灣球迷尚大聲：我相信紅襪！
hedline translation: 'Red Sox fans in Taiwan shout it out: "We believe! We believe!"
Public comments and notes below, just CLICK! (please post away, but you gotta register first, easy!)
Some members of Red Sox Nation, scattered around the USA and the world, are transplanted New Englanders like Danny Bloom, an expatriate who has lived in Japan and Taiwan since 1991. He was inspired by the popularity of the Red Sox during their triumphant World Series victory in 2004 to start a website called the Far East Fenway Fan Club for fans in Taiwan, China and Japan.
Bloom grew up in Springfield, Mass., and remembers going to FenwayPark as a teenager with his brother Art to watch Ted Williams play. He developed his love for the Red Sox as a kid in the 1950s, he says, tuning into the crackling local radio broadcasts from western Massachusetts.
"Believe it or not, many of my Taiwanese friends are big fans of the Red Sox, perhaps because they like rooting for the underdog, sinceTaiwan is also a determined, spirited underdog in the international community of geopolitics, where big bully communist China, the PRC, often tries to bully Taiwan and steal its thunder and keep it from participating in international forums and sports events," says Bloom, a writer and editor who has made his home in Asia for 12 years.
"I often get asked questions like 'What is the Green Monster?' I try to explain everything in plain English, but sometimes I use a few choice words in my fractured Chinese and Japanese vocabularies," adds Bloom, who went to Tufts University in Medford. "Red Sox Nation now has fans all over the Far East, so I decided to create a website for fans to post messages and comments during regular season play and off-season as well."
http://www.taiwanho.com/people//dan/dan.jpg
Members and would-be members anywhere in Far East Asia, Near East Asia, Middle East Asia and No East Asia are welcome to leave comments, feelings, findings and facts below in the comments section. Membership is free and open to all.
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To see a real big Green Monster of a website, with over 2 million hits worldwide, go to:
http://www.fenwaynation.com
or write to: Ernie Paicopolos
Editor-In-Chief
FenwayNation
http://www.fenwaynation.com
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In addition, the Associated Press in Boston ran a very good wire service news story during the historic 2004 World Series, go Red Sox Nation forever!, that reads like this:
Red Sox Nation really does cover the nation -- and beyond
By Mark Pratt,
Associated Press News Service, Boston
October 25, 2004
BOSTON -- It's 5 a.m. in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Most people are either sleeping or groggily rubbing their eyes as they get ready for work, but Ric Glaub and his friends have their game faces on.
It's October, and the Boston Red Sox are in the playoffs, looking for the team's first World Series championship since 1918. The five members of the Tashkent Red Sox Fan Club, clutching their tea or coffee -- or if it's a weekend game, a bottle of Russian beer -- don't want to miss a pitch.
"We have seen the sun come up in Tashkent many times over the past couple of weeks," Glaub, an Idaho native who developed an affection for the Red Sox while working in Boston during the 1980s, said in an e-mail interview.
"Except on weekends, and even sometimes on weekends, most of us have to begin work as soon as the games end. Most Americans working here tend to put in long hours and watching these games takes away from already limited sleep time. We can have it no other way.
"As Red Sox fans everywhere are saying, we can sleep in November," he said.
Across the United States and across the world, Red Sox fans are pushing decades of heartache into the deepest recesses of their minds and praying that this is the year they finally get to celebrate winning it all.
The term Red Sox Nation, often used to describe the team's fans, is more than just a name. It reflects that Red Sox fans are to be found in all corners of the United States and beyond.
"We are America's team," says Peter Roberts, a Red Sox fan in Anchorage, Alaska.
Ernie Paicopolos, an Andover, Mass., resident who helps run the www.fenwaynation.com Web site that has received 1.3 million hits in the past year, says he gets hits from far-flung places, including Taiwan, Tokyo, Poland and Vietnam.
Some members of Red Sox Nation are transplanted New Englanders. Some had their allegiance handed down to them by past generations, like a precious family heirloom. Some can just relate to an underdog team that has been trying for so long to reach the pinnacle.
"I am a Red Sox fan, a Cubs fan, a (University of South Carolina) Gamecocks fan, and I was a Republican in the South before it was cool, so I love misery," said Sen. John Courson, a state senator from South Carolina who has been a Sox fan since the 1967 Impossible Dream season.
Yet no matter where they are it seems, they can find their baseball soulmates, someone else who holds the same impossible hopes, and who understands the same excruciating pain -- even in America's Last Frontier of Alaska!
Humpy's Great Alaska Alehouse in Anchorage -- 4,600 miles away from the Red Sox home field -- has become the home of the Far From Fenway Fan Club.
Opinsky, 37, inherited his devotion to the team from his father, who was from Scranton, Pennsylvania, but who had relatives in New England. There seems to be an extraordinary amount of Red Sox fans in the area, Opinsky said.
"There are a ton of Red Sox fans up here and they come out of the woodwork for the playoffs," Opinsky said. "People were getting here an hour and a half in advance of the ALCS games, and it was crazy. I was amazed."
Roberts, the founder of the Far From Fenway Fan Club, first came up with the idea after the 1986 World Series, which the Red Sox lost to the New York Mets in seven games. Roberts watched the games in Alaska in virtual isolation. He had no one with whom to share his disappointment when the ball rolled through Bill Buckner's legs in Game 6, when the Red Sox blew a 3-0 lead before losing Game 7.
"I promised myself if I was ever in a situation like that again I would be with other people who cared about the Red Sox," said Roberts, 42, who owns a bicycle rental business in Anchorage and who developed his love of the team as a kid, tuning into crackly radio broadcasts out of Hartford, Conn.
"The idea is when the Red Sox make it to the World Series, you are with other people who know how important it is," he said.
This year, there's more hope than usual. After all, the Sox staged the biggest comeback ever recorded in playoff history, winning four straight against the rival New York Yankees who had taken a 3-0 lead in the best-of-seven ALCS.
And now, they're back in the World Series for the first time since 1986. [And they won it, 4-0, too!]
One of the toughest places to be a Sox fan is in the heart of Yankee territory. John Quinn, 42, is a writer who was born, raised, and still lives in Brooklyn, N.Y. He is a regular at the Riviera Cafe in Greenwich Village, a bar that has became a haven for Red Sox fans.
He learned to detest the New York Yankees as the son of Brooklyn Dodgers fans. The Dodgers left for the west coast in 1957 and his family pledged its baseball allegiance to the Mets in 1962, but Quinn's support for the Mets soured in 1977 when they traded pitching great Tom Seaver to the Cincinnati Reds.
Despite the heartbreak, despite the ribbing he gets from Yankees fans, he's stuck with the Red Sox.
"The Yankees have all those championships, and I respect that, but being a Red Sox fan, and meeting others, I've discovered that it's like being part of a brotherhood, and Yankees fans will never understand that," he said.
© Copyright 2004 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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from the New York Times, a few moments after the series was over.
BOSTON WINS SERIES, 4-0
Sox Win World Series to End Storied 'Curse'
Red Sox Erase 86 Years of Futility in 4 Games
The Boston Red Sox, the team that perfected heartbreak, silenced the Cardinals today, 3-0, in Game 4, to win their first World Series since 1918. 1918! 86 years! We believe!
ST. LOUIS, Oct. 27, 2004 - This series win was for the believers. For Ted Williams and Yaz and all the others who spent a career beneath a boulder that kept rolling down a hill. This was an exorcism of 86 years of anguish.
On Wednesday night, Babe Ruth gave up. From Bangor to Brattleboro, Nashua to Nantucket, Waterbury to Woonsocket, from Taiwan to Tokyo, from Beijing to Shanghai, the fans of this Boston team can finally say it: the Boston Red Sox are the world champions. Nothing will ever be quite the same.
The Red Sox won the World Series on Wednesday for the first time since 1918, breaking the life sentence they incurred when they sold Ruth to the Yankees two years later. The Red Sox, the franchise that perfected heartbreak, won the title with one of the most dominating performances in World Series history, silencing the St. Louis Cardinals, 3-0, in Game 4 to sweep a series in which they never trailed.
They swept the Series after they had trailed the Yankees by 3-0 in the American League Championship Series.
The new question in Boston will not be when the Red Sox will ever win the World Series. [Next year? 2005?] It might be how many statues to erect at Fanueil Hall. There were many heroes of this World Series, with the starting pitchers standing tallest.
================
from the Internet
BOSTON WINS WORLD SERIES AFTER 86 YEARS!...
The last time they won the World Series... the first World War was about to end... Lucky Lindy was a teenager dreaming of flying across the ocean... John Kennedy was an infant... penicillin didn't exist...TV didn't exist... radio was just starting...
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from the UNITED DAILY EVENING NEWS in Taiwan, October 27, 2004
台灣球迷尚大聲：我相信紅襪！
美國 AMERICA 職棒總冠軍賽紅襪隊勢如破竹四連勝取得冠軍，
台灣球迷王雲慶上午邊看球賽並祭出全部
「法寶」為紅襪加油。
記者林秀明／攝影
【''王雲慶''】Wang Yun-ching reporting from Boston, Mass, USA
波士頓 Boston , pronounced "BOH-SOO-TONE"
當九局下紅雀隊最後一名打者倫特利亞出局的那一刻，我努力讓眼眶裡的淚水不要流出來，三十幾歲的男人看比賽看到哭似乎是有一點丟臉，但是我相信此時此刻在波士頓有成千上萬的球迷淚水已經決堤，紅襪隊今晚要凱旋，波士頓今晚將不夜。
八十多年來千百萬紅襪子民心中壓抑的、酸楚的、失望的、悲傷的感情在這一刻通通化成喜悅的淚水，放肆地在每個人的臉頰上流著。
前一天晚上特別把多年來收藏的紅襪隊的紀念品一一整理出來，在今天一大早抱到公司；把它們整整齊齊的擺放在電視機前，陪著看比賽，陪著等那一刻的來臨。
在這樣的時刻裡，一個紅襪迷心裡想的，就是盡其可能的用任何方法從上最遙遠的角落為紅襪隊祝福：半夜裡在聽不到收音機的情況下硬是打Call-in到紅襪隊的電台跟他們說『在台灣的紅襪迷相信紅襪』，在週末看比賽時寫了滿滿一張傳真給在波士頓的同事們，告訴他們『在台灣的我仍然執著』。
牆上掛著的是1975年Fisk的頭版報紙，還有Ted Williams親筆簽名的裱框照片，當年從紅襪轉播電台搶來在1995年用過的皺皺的加油海報，還有在波士頓八年間看過的每一場比賽的每一張票根。而其中我最珍惜的，是一撮Fenway Park的泥土：握著已經風乾的沙土在手中，在電視畫面在已經變得模糊的同時，不知不覺中沙土已經又變成濕潤的泥土。
我們贏了，我們哭了，這是八十多年以來第一滴喜悅的淚水，這是八十多年以來第一滴安慰的淚水。Ted Williams曾經在1946年從聖路易回波士頓的火車上放聲大哭，58年後的今夜，紅襪隊在狂喜慶賀奪冠的同時，不會忘記這支球隊背負的歷史，和許多老前輩為了一枚戒指的等待與付出。Williams他老人家在天有靈，一定也會流下感動的淚水的。
此時的波士頓，應該要飄著上天感動的細雨；現在的我，只想跳上飛機回到那裡，去親吻Fenway Park的土地。
(作者王雲慶現為聯盟國際組組長，曾在波士頓住了八年多，綽號「波士頓」，是紅襪死忠球迷)。
【2004/10/28 聯合晚報】
posted by dan | 7:37 PM
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