MaxTalks

Last month I got on a crowded Green line train and made my way to Fenway Park for the first time. Built in 1912 and demolished hopefully sometime soon, the Boston Red Sox have been playing there since a time when doctors gave out lobotomies like they were lollipops.

The game was great. That is, provided you are a fan of the St. Louis Cardinals who won the match 9-1. The losing wasn’t the worst part though, it was the boredom. Baseball has been coined “America’s pastime”, but from what I saw it should be called America’s naptime. Two and a half hours in, my interest levels had dropped so low I felt like I was in a used car commercial (take your time with that one), but then everything changed.

Ten rows back, a cacophony of woos and woops sprung out. Everyone’s attention was focused on a man holding up a Timberland boot up to his face. What was I seeing? That is NOT where boots go. At the height of my confusion, the unthinkable happened – the man threw his head back and began drinking from that very shoe. I asked my friend Dawid if what I was seeing was real, and he said, “Yes. People do that at these games all the time.”

I was quite disgusted by the act. How could you drink from the same place where socks get stinky? I turned around to watch the baseball game, but after 5 minutes a realization dawned on me: that man drinking alcohol from a boot was the most entertaining thing I’d seen in the past hour. So what if it’s one of the grossest thing I’ve ever seen? If I cheered loud enough, I could pressure even more people to drink from a boot for my entertainment, and that’s exactly what I did. Go Sox.