How do you spell lame?

Sporting Goods

F-I-S-K P-O-L-E. So the Red Sox, who for the last couple of years have been the franchise that I've admired the most, mostly because they make good roster moves, have been treating their fans right, and never would have traded Scott Kazmir for Victor Zambrano (I'll be 80, watching every Met game, and I still don't think I'll forget this). But now the Sox have done something that I think is completely foolish. They've gone and named the left field foul pole the Fisk Pole, after Carlton Fisk and his Game 6, 1975 heroics. This is dumb.

Fisk and the memory of him are great enough that no Sox fan is ever going to forget it, even the little ones too young to have seen it. That moment will forever be replayed, discussed, memorialized, etc. It doesn't need the imprimitur of "Red Sox" officials to continue as a great moment. Look, the Sox have a great thing at Fenway, and they have the Pesky pole down the right field foul line, which, last time I checked, was an unofficial name given by players and fans a long time ago that has stuck around. What's next the Wade Boggs Green Monster or the Jason Varitek memorial on-deck circle. People, we need to stop naming things by edict. It organically became the Pesky Pole, it organically became the Green Monster. I would imagine that if those names were created during a special ceremony held before a game, nobody would ever use them. Just like nobody is ever going to call the foul pole, the Fisk Pole.

I know there are real Sox fans, not just Met fans who watched every game for three years while living in Beantown (I'm pretty sure this wasn't a nickname created by city officials, unlike The City that Reads, which was once the governmentally chosen nickname for Charm City, Baltimore), let me know if I'm completely misreading how most Sox fans feel about this.

I'm now going to go back to eating my Freedom Toast. (What?!!)

UPDATE: After posting I decided to check the Sox Blog that DarLucky so nicely linked to on the right side of this blog. Apparently I'm not misreading the feelings of Sox Fans. See here.