Living in the Northeast, it's no secret that when it comes to professional baseball, NY Yankee and Boston Red Sox fans have a very low tolerance for one another. The players could care less for the most part, much as the media tries to get them entangled in the drama outside the diamond. They're pros; they just want to keep their goofs to a minimum, get a nice contract, and as people I imagine they enjoy winning more than losing. But heated rivalry? That's for the sports writers, and gullible fans.

I won't take my kids to a Yankee game at Fenway because the fans on both sides are just out of control. I don't find the chant "Yankees Suck! Yankees Suck! " especially endearing. I much prefer "Let's Go, Red Sox".

A couple days ago at a bar in new Hampshire (Red Sox country, for the uninitiated), some of the patrons got into a 'friendly' debate in the parking lot, and one of them wound up dead. Seems there was a female Yankees fan down behind enemy lines. 43 years old, sporting her team's logo, and getting harassed as she was leaving to the tune of that first chant I just mentioned. By a crowd of ... I don't know how many. So, she did what must have seemed logical to her at the time, she got in her SUV and decided to play a little chicken with the crowd of Yankee haters.

Playing chicken while intoxicated goes against every warning label you'll ever find on a car. She sped towards the crowd, rapidly covering the 200 feet of open parking lot, and then failed to either swerve or hit the brakes. She killed a 29 year old Sox fan, who, it was reported, heroically pushed his girlfriend out of harm's way just at the critical moment.

In the past there have been beatings, muggings, stabbings too I think, when a fan of one team finds themselves isolated among a gang of fans from the other. And there's no excuse for any of it. To let yourself get so caught up in this rivalry between professional teams (with interchangable players, mind you) that you ignore the red flag that pops up when you find yourself part of a gang that is clearly terrorizing an individual is just plain wrong. And when the balance of power changed, and the victim finds herself armed with a 2 and a 1/2 ton weapon, blazing across the pavement for a good 7-10 seconds, with no voice of reason to be heard ...  I think it's clear that enough is enough. 

The time to reign ourselves in as sports fans and get back to simply enjoying the game is well past due. I hope others are able to come to this same conclusion soon. Then maybe it will be safe to start bringing our kids back to the ballparks. Face it, they were really built with kids in mind, in the first place. Here's hoping ...