A Brief Note on Boston As a World Class City

We loosed a little pride at last night's Red Sox-Yankees game, thanks to this guy's A-Rod sign.

Guys, we make a lot of noise around these parts about Boston being a top flight city. And it’s true, we are basically better than everywhere else on earth. I can think of 40 reasons why, off the top of my head. People I know from other cities tell me that, when they come to Boston, they sometimes find people here unfriendly, but I’ve always held that’s their fault for not being from here in the first place. Besides, I think that’s really a misunderstanding of the nature of Bostonians. It’s not that we’re unfriendly, it’s more that we’re inclined to leave people we don’t know alone. Once the ice gets broken with a stranger, though, in 9 cases out of 10, people here are delightful. Or, at the very least, entertaining, in a demented, Massholish sort of way.

Which brings me to this, from last night’s Red Sox-Yankees game at Fenway:

a rod looser

Yikes. That’s embarrassing. Not World Class City material, to be sure. It was nice of ESPN analysts Curt Schilling and John Kruk not to mention the misspelling (note: this presumes they were aware of the misspelling), but Twitter had some fun. The best analysis came from Bruce Arthur, a columnist for Canada’s National Post:

He’s really got a point. Think of all the Bostonians who saw this on their way into the park—and not one of them stopped this guy from looking like a fool on national TV! In another city, some kind soul would have pointed out the error so this young man could correct his sign, or at the very least, not wave it in front of the cameras. Here, we let him make an ass of himself. Which, come to think of it, may be another argument for why Boston is so great.