Growing up in the South without a hometown team, I never had strong loyalties to a baseball franchise. I liked players, not teams. I went to minor league games, not the big stadiums. I loved the guys I learned about from the older fans - I loved Sandy Koufax and Roberto Clemente, and as I got older, Andy Pettitte and Jim Thome.

After a decade of living in the DC area, my family finally got the Nationals, but now that I’m down here in Texas, I have to root for Zimmerman from a distance. Ah well - I’ll make it up for opening day in the new ballpark, at least.

One thing’s stayed constant through it all: I’ve always hated the Boston Red Sox.

It’s not their players - hey, Curt Schilling is cool, I’ll admit that at least, and Manny probably smells…interesting. It’s not their management - though I do think the whole “last to integrate” thing was karma. It’s their fans, and the overall media obsession with said fans and the Northeastern rivalry as a whole. And it’s only gotten worse since they actually won and suddenly all these bandwagon fans woke up and bought gear - nearly as bad as Cowboys fans in the 90s. Think ten times worse than Bill Simmons represents them to be, and a hundred times worse than the worst Patriot fan you know. Yeah. It’s bad.

With very few exceptions, the relationships I have with Red Sox fans are constantly on edge during the season. I suspect it makes it worse for them that I’m not some Yankee fan - there’s no hateful comeback that my friends can make about rooting for the tanks in Tiananmen, and I readily concede that the Nationals are going to be lovable, scrappy losers for a long time, but we expect that out of one of the smallest budgets in the Majors. They’ll be playing spoiler for a long time, just like they did to the Mets this season - and that’s fine by me. And our fans won’t be pompous jackasses, which is also fine by me.

So to recap: It’s nothing personal. I just hope the Red Sox always lose. And I hope, somewhere, that makes Jimmy Fallon cry tears of unfathomable sadness.

This brings us to this year, and to a friendly wager on the Red Sox’ prospects for the postseason with The Red Sox Republican. We have a history of these kind of wagers, and I’ve come out on top. We’ll see who takes it this time.

He takes the Sox, who at the time I wrote this were rated 3-1 by Vegas to win the World Series. I take anybody but the Sox.

I’m pretty confident. How confident? Well: I’m playing for this. He’s playing for this.

I’m counting on you, J.D. Drew. Play ball.

(Oh, and yes - remember, folks, Drew and Jimmy hugging on the field, that’s the first thing you saw when the Sox won. You saw it - you can’t unsee it!)

>> Jamey Carroll is a nice guy, but truly a terrible baseball player - the slowest of the slow white guys, they call him a defensive sub because he has no offense, and it’d be impolite to call him “trash.” But sometimes, even trash can shine. Let’s hear it for walk off sac flies, and games that make Tim Kurkjian talk funny.

>> Having moved from one city with a losing baseball franchise to another city with a losing baseball franchise, let me tell you this: I would MUCH rather be the Washington Nationals right now.  Just shockingly successful compared to the epic losing predicted, and even though they have a losing record, it’s at an extremely low cost.  As opposed to Houston.

>> Huh. The Braves are losing their national audience. Guess we won’t be able to see the last year of the Bobby Cox era.  Shame.

>> According to the folks at Football Guys, Tony Romo (he’s so hot right now) will soon benefit from being the first player Jerry Jones decided to wait on paying (anyone remember those contracts for Drew Henson and Quincy Carter?  Yowch). No word on whether Romo will represent a group of oil tycoons who make foolish purchases.