Growing up in Connecticut?s Fairfield County I was just a short drive down the Merritt Parkway from New York City. That meant you liked one of two baseball teams ? either the Mets or the Yankees. Entering my teen years, I chose to follow the Bronx Bombers, because they were winning and I was able to watch all their games on television. Of course that meant I was required to despise the Mets, because you could only like one New York baseball team. I was surrounded by fans of both the Yankees and Mets throughout my childhood, aside from a neighbor of mine who followed the distant Boston Red Sox. The Yankee-Met rivalry culminated during the 2000 Subway Series, which the Yankees took and cemented themselves as The Big Apple?s best team. The Yankees have held firm as New York?s premier team, but the Mets seem set to make a run at the Yankee?s this fall. The Mets have the largest lead of any division leader, and although it?s only May, the struggles of the perennial champion Atlanta Braves seem to be swinging things in the Mets? favor. But that?s not the story I?m here to tell you. I?m here to tell you about my journey as a Yankee fan in Red Sox Nation. I?m here to tell you about my role in a rivalry that seemed to explode upon my arrival in Boston territory, and one that has lead me to forever despise Massachusetts?s beloved Sawks. It all started in my junior year of high school. After one visit to Dudley, Massachusetts and Nichols College I was sold. I was so set on going to Nichols it was the only school I even applied to, which went against what every guidance counselor in the country will tell you. By the Thanksgiving of my senior year, I was accepted and headed to Massachusetts for college, while most of my friends were still sending out applications. I was unaware of the new world I was about to enter. All that I knew about the Boston Red Sox was what I learned from my good friend Tom. I knew they had some of the best fans in the country, and those fans were bitter over not winning a World Series in eighty-some years. And they hated my Yankees with a passion. As a Yankee fan I didn?t understand all the hatred. I understood being upset over not winning since 1918, but why blame everything on my Yankees? I know all about ?The Curse? and all the times they broke the Red Sox?s hearts, but why hold a grudge for decades on end? I thought it was all a little ridiculous. My friend Tom, who I have known most of my life, hated the Yankees. He teased me throughout our childhood, but I never had any comebacks. I had nothing against the Red Sox, what had they ever done to me? But, in the fall of 2003 when I packed my bags and headed off to Red Sox Nation, my whole outlook on baseball changed forever. Within minutes of arriving on campus evidence of what was about to come was all around me. Every other student I saw had a Red Sox hat or t-shirt on. If they weren?t wearing a Boston shirt then they had on a ?Yankees Suck? shirt or my personal favorite ?I root for two teams: The Red Sox and whoever is playing The Yankees!? Certainly they weren?t serious? Once the majority of my belongings were unpacked, I began hanging up the half dozen posters I bought especially for my first dorm room. I hung up posters of scantily-clad women and Led Zeppelin before getting to my sports collection. I unveiled my Jermaine O?Neal, Donovan McNabb, and Jorge Posada posters, all of which caused my new roommate to sigh in disappointment. It was one thing for me to not like his beloved Celtics, Patriots, or Red Sox but to like the Yankees? I instantly became worried that being a Yankee fan had caused my roommate to immediately label me as the single worst roommate in history. He ended up being pretty cool about it, and we had fun taking jabs at each other every time the Yankees and Sox played. He became the exception. Sporting Yankee apparel around campus caused me to garner dirty looks and death stares. I felt like I was wearing an anarchist t-shirt in the Vatican. Professors gave me a hard time, and I was called countless names by fellow students. It didn?t take me long to realize these people were definitely bitter and miserable. I mean to love your team is one thing, but all the extra effort they were putting into hating another team was mind-boggling. Things got even wilder when the Yankees and Red Sox met in the 2003 ALCS. The games took on a whole new intensity. I could feel the entire campus celebrate every Boston hit, and boo every New York run. As the series advanced to the now infamous seventh game I felt as though the entire college might implode. We all know what happened next, Grady Little left Boston ace Pedro Martinez in too long and the Yankees roared back and won on Aaron Boone?s walk-off home run. That was it. Boston would never forgive Little or Boone ever again. I actually told my friends not to worry as Boone walked to the plate. He wasn?t anything to worry about. Boone was probably the ninth best hitter in a nine man line-up. The rest is history. The campus was torn apart in rage, and the next day it looked as though everyone on campus had lost their best friend. The school could have made a fortune if it sold prescriptions of Zoloft on campus that day, but instead people just mopped around and drank themselves to sleep. Red Sox Nation awoke a week later when my Yankees fell to the Marlins in the World Series. Kids actually celebrated as though the Sox had finally won a title, just because my Yankees had not. It would only get worse next season. In the fall of 2004 the Yankees and Red Sox seemed destined for another ALCS battle, and baseball fans around the Northeast wouldn?t be disappointed. Red Sox fans sat shell-shocked as the Yankees took a three games to zero lead in the series. It was over! No team in the history of professional sports had ever come back from a 3-0 deficit. So how could the Red Sox, a team that has screwed up every chance they?ve ever had at winning a title, do it? Each night, as I watched the series with my friends, I got more and more nervous. Just finish them off already! Mariano Rivera, our fearless closer, was just a handful of outs away in Game Four. Then again in Game Five. I went into Game Six thinking as though it was New York?s Game Seven. My Yankees couldn?t allow the Sox the satisfaction of pushing the series to seven games. Two wins and a bloody sock later, the Sox had made history. The entire campus seemed to file out of the dorms at the conclusion of Game Seven. I can still see the massive crowd of people jumping in unison screaming at the top of their lungs. I was heckled for a good month after the notorious collapse. After a while I began to feel as though I had lost those four straight games to the Red Sox, not the two dozen millionaire major league players who were vacationing on some tropical island. I think that?s when it became personal for me. That?s when I felt the agony of defeat at the hands of the Red Sox, instead of the triumph I was used to. I doubt that I would have formed the same hatred for Boston if I hadn?t been stuck in the middle of Red Sox Nation, but it grew quickly nonetheless. Soon after the Red Sox ended the curse and won the 2004 World Series I purchased my first piece of anti-Red Sox apparel. I bought a ?Boston Sucks? shirt for twenty dollars. I wasn?t proud that I was stooping to the level of Red Sox fans, but I had to do something. Besides, my ?Boston Sucks? shirt was nothing compared to what I?ve seen Boston fans wear. Some fans are so obsessed with thinking up ways to make fun of Derek Jeter it won?t be long before they actually run out of insults. I?ve seen shirts saying, ?Jeter Drinks Wine Coolers?. I think they?re getting pretty close. Last fall both the Sox and Yankees failed to get out of the Divisional Playoffs, which meant we?d all have to wait at least a year before another Red Sox-Yankee battle in October. But that doesn?t mean the hatred has stopped. A few weeks ago a girl I have known since I arrived at Nichols in the fall of 2003 approached me and said, ?I thought you were cool?? I responded, ?Um?ok,? and then realized I was wearing my Yankees hat. ?I didn?t know you liked the Yankees!? she shouted. In three quick years I went from a Yankee fan to an obsessive Yankee follower, who also loves to watch the Red Sox lose. I?ve lost a bet and worn a Red Sox hat and shirt for a day, scarred my hand from punching a rug, yes a rug, while watching the Yankees crumble in the 2004 ACLS, and fought with friends, classmates, professors, and my girlfriends? entire family over the Red Sox-Yankee rivalry. And while a huge part of me wishes I had never stepped into Red Sox Nation, part of me is grateful. Those obsessively bitter Yankee-hating lunatics from Massachusetts may not know how to pronounce the letter ?r,? but they sure do know how to love a team. Living in Red Sox Nation may have caused me an endless amount of grief, but it?s made me a stronger person and a better Yankee fan because of it. Go Yankees!