Fever Pitch

After a long drive back from Montreal, Vanessa and I decided to take it easy for the night and rent a couple of movies. We watched Fever Pitch, and Kicking and Screaming (which is the movie with Will Ferrell where he plays his sons soccer coach).

I really enjoyed Fever Pitch. I suppose there are a couple of reasons. I like sports movies, and I think that Jimmy Fallon is hilarious. But I think the main reason I enjoyed it was because I could relate to Jimmy Fallon's character a lot. In the movie he plays a 30ish year old teacher who can never hold down a relationship because he has an obsession with the Boston Red Sox. Now I realize that I am married and so while I didn't relate to him in that respect, I did relate to his sports obsession. I mean, I could watch Leafs highlights and Leaf's related programming all day. In the movie, Jimmy Fallon's room has Red Sox everything... bedsheets, pillowcases, posters, etc. I'm sure that if I was single living on my own my room would have all of these similar things for the Leafs. In the movie Fallon says something about how he loves loving something that he cannot control and that is bigger than himself. I think these are similar reasons about me loving the leafs. I love being part of Leafs Nation, a group of fans that spans across the country. I loved being at the Leafs-Habs game in Montreal and being part of the huge contingent of Leaf fans that made the long drive in order to support their team. There is no other fan base in all of hockey that comes close to Leaf fans. It was cool to watch Fever Pitch and get an insight into Red Sox Nation, a similar group of fans.

On a slight tangent, the movie also made me upset because it reminded me that the Red Sox won the World Series that year. You see, before the Sox won the World Series in '04, they had not won the championship since like 1918. They referred this streak of not winning as "the curse", since they had not won since they traded Babe Ruth to the Yankees. Since that year the Yankees had won like 26 World Series', while the Red Sox won none. It was a cool sporting tradition, and I loved cheering for the Yankees in the playoffs after the Blue Jays playoff aspirations had died. I also enjoyed that there was another sports franchise that hadn't won their championship in such a long time. I mean come on, 1918 made 1967 look like a couple of days ago.