Why did the campus go crazy for the Red Sox, but not its own team?

Why did so many kids that have been Red Sox fans for about two weeks fight crowded common rooms and FOX’s awful commentators to take in the pageantry of sport? And why won’t those same kids, if Harvard is 9-0 this year when Yale comes to town, ever make it into The Game?

I don’t discriminate against those usually apathetic sports fans that got caught up in the revelry of Red Sox nation. My own brother, a longtime Atlanta Braves fan, flew up from Florida just to be part of the history, even though he hasn’t spent the last 50 years waiting for it.

To be honest, I’m a newcomer to the Nation myself. I adopted the Red Sox after my first summer in the city, the year I was 16, so perhaps you could even blame my own allegiances on circumstance.

But in reality, I think I am a fan of Boston simply because I’m a fan of baseball. Even as the Red Sox—a team built around slow sluggers that can’t bunt—eschew many of the most elegant aspects of the game, they are still today’s single best symbol of the national pastime.

And in the end, that’s why I love them—for the pageantry, the history, the euphoria, and the way they can bring people together.

Sports are my drug of choice, and I’m addicted. And Wednesday night, you were, too.

So I guess my question is this: why indulge yourself only once a century?

—Staff writer Lande A. Spottswood can be reached at spottsw@fas.harvard.edu. Her column appears on alternate Fridays.