'St. Pete Times' Rips Red Sox Nation

The St. Petersburg Times, which is covering its hometown Tampa Bay Rays playoff series with the Boston Red Sox, takes a direct shot at fanatic "Sawx" fans with a Page One story  today that all but compares them to deranged psychopaths.

"They travel the country and take over stadiums that aren't theirs. That drunk guy who last month at the Trop had to be wrestled into submission by security guards and sheriff's deputies on the top of the dugout? Red Sox fan. And proud of it," the piece by Michael Kruse says, in part.

Although the Red Sox have won two World Series since 2004, Kruse gladly reminds readers of the team's 86 years of failure prior to that: "They can't help it," he writes of the New Englanders attachment to their team. "Their fawthahs behaved this way. Their fawthahs' fawthahs behaved this way."

He even focuses on a Red Sox fan who admits to once wetting his pants in excitement after a big win: "This was in 1999. There were 30 people at his apartment. His sister said she was so nervous she could pee her pants, and he told her that he would if the Red Sox won. Max Dougherty is a man of his word. The front of his khakis turned dark."

Perhaps this is not all unfair slamming of the Beantown faithful, whose team is in a 1-1 series tie with the Rays going into today's Game 3. Could it be retribution for an Oct. 10 piece by Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy, who took jabs at the Rays' short 11-year existence and less then-Fenway Park like stadium?

"Now they call it Tropicana Field and it is truly hideous," Shaughnessy writes. "Catwalks above. FieldTurf below. All-dirt base paths. Foul poles hanging from the ceiling like sleeping vampire bats. It's baseball's Big Top, a cable-supported dome with a fiberglass roof where chaos and cowbells rule."

If this thing goes seven games, lookout!

-Joe Strupp