Red Sox Nation Loves Vanilla Ice

So the Feather Sound boys and I went to the Rays-Sox game yesterday. Good one, Dice-K vs. Kazmir. The place was approximately 98.7 percent Boston fans, although the loyal Nation didn't have much to root for. Rays won 5-2 thanks to a prodigious blast by B.J. Upton.

Anyway, after the game, we wandered over to Ferg's, one of the great postgame sports bars in baseball. Soon after we arrived, a curious eddy of Red Sox fans started swirling on the dance floor. Clapping, nodding their heads, they form a circle; this is obviously a ritual, we think. The DJ, who has already played Fenway anthem Sweet Caroline, says the visitors have made another request. There is a buzz, a randy energy in the air...

...and then the song starts. At first I think it's Queen, but no: The Red Sox fans start whoopin' and a-hollerin for Vanilla Ice's Ice Ice Baby. Soon, the eddy produces two rugged participants, who strip off their Red Sox shirts and start prowling the parameters of the dance floor, wary of each other, gauging each other's skill, quickness. And then, with the speed of Coco Crisp, but the agility of Carlos Quintana, they start breakdancing, popping, locking, doing the Worm. Their key maneuver is the Hat Toss, in which they hurl their Red Sox hat a few feet away, pretend they can't find it, and then crabwalk to the hat, eliciting great squeals of joy from the Red Sox Nationalists. I grew up in Westford, Mass.; my preteen emotions were based solely on the performance of Red Sox slugger Jim Rice. And yet, I had never seen the crabwalk.

The Rays fans could only look on with envy, desperate for a ritual of their own. 

Comments

[sparky]

This may explain the 89 years between series wins. Yanks have Frank, Sox have Vanilla Ice.

[Ray]

Is this the "Secret of the Ooze?"

[db]

Dude, they were drunk.......and Vanilla Ice, please. Take that crap back to Boston.

[GlennS.]

In the mid-90's I heard "Rock N' Roll, Part 2" playing at a local record store, and told the clerk, "Wow, I haven't heard this song since the 70's." He just looked at me funny. I had no idea that the song had become a sports arena anthem.

More recently, I won a couple of Lightning tickets last Christmas and while we were waiting for the game to start, they were blasting a song with a great hook that I couldn't quite identify. I kept thinking it must have been some one-hit-wonder from the 80's, but who? Finally, I realized it was "Tall Cool One" by Robert Plant. Great song, but one that had totally fallen off of my radar.

Guess I should go to more sporting events.