When I attended one of the three Cardinals-Red Sox games at Fenway Park back in June, I was walking across Brookline Avenue with my parents. It was their first trip to Boston – they still live in the tiny farm town in Illinois where I grew up – and of course they only wanted to see Fenway. We are a family who, growing up, only took vacations to where the Cardinals were playing. This is why my childhood itinerary included Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and Cincinnati. We were not a Disneyland family. Boston was a definitive step up.

Because we’re good-hearted Midwesterners, we were decked out in our Cardinals red best. (Nobody dresses dorkier than Cardinals fans. No one.) I think my mother was wearing Albert Pujols socks that had little blinking lights on them. They both looked nervous. A week before, Dad asked me, in Protective

Midwestern Father mode, if Boston fans “were gonna be jerks like the Yankees fans.” Yankee Stadium had scarred my father. When they had visited in 2003, there was a two-hour rain delay. I was showing them

around Yankee Stadium and pointed out fans in the bleachers jumping into puddles. The bleacher bums, collectively, looked at the family in the Cardinals hats and somehow, in unison, began chanting, “Darr-yl Kile! Darr-yl Kile!” They were taunting us with the name of our beloved pitcher who had just died the season before. I think Mom had to breathe into a paper bag for the rest of the game.

Dad, still a bit perplexed why his son had decided to move to the Eastern Seaboard eight years earlier, wanted to make sure Boston fans would be more welcoming. Because I live in New York City, half my friends are Red Sox fans, and they assured me: Fenway’s friendly these days; it’s too expensive for the jerks anymore. I did not find this comforting; I know a lot more rich jerks than poor ones.

But, decked out in enough red to start a gang war, we dredged across Brookline. Within 30 seconds, one guy, hat backwards, muscular, came up to us.

“High five, man!” Hey, who doesn’t like a high five? What a great way to express brotherhood! He slapped my hand and said, “Thanks for ’04, man!” I think he was trying to be clever. I smiled and laughed; he laughed too, and, noticing the terrified looks on my parents’ faces, popped me on the shoulder and said, “Just messing with you. Have a good time today.”

And that, friends, was as rough as it got. Of all the ballparks my family and I have visited together, no fanbase was more warm and welcoming than the Fenway faithful. Heck, we didn’t even get anything thrown at us when the Cardinals took an 8-0 lead off Dice-K in the second inning. They even let us take pictures from the Monster seats after the game was over; obviously, I now lie to my friends and say I sat up there the whole time.

After the game, we drank a few beers and my Dad gave a toast: “To the Cardinals, and to Boston. Why don’t you move here, Will?”

*******

This is all a long way of introducing myself to you. My name’s Will, and I founded Deadspin.com – like your regular sports page, but with witty bon mots about genitalia! – and now work for New York Magazine. I’ll be writing for the grand folks here at WEEI.com every other week until they decide that I’m not worth the trouble. When I moved to NYC from the Midwest back in 2000, it was to Become A Writer, whatever that meant. I imagined a city full of beret-wearing, clove-smoking, pseudo-intellectuals, doing shots of ether while discussing the finer points of Zen Buddhism. Then I went to a Yankees game, and saw them playing freaking Cotton-Eyed Joe at the seventh-inning stretch, and that was knocked out of me right quick. (Honestly, I left Illinois to get away from that crap.)

My search for urbane, cultured, logical sports fans – the way we Cardinals fans like to portray ourselves when we’re not sporting mullets – ultimately led me to Boston. Boston sports seem to have so much drama … even when your teams are winning. (Like, uh, now.) Even the silly dramas, like Manny, have something Shakespearean about them. They even have permanence; Boston sports fandom is steeped in lore, in tradition, in something lasting. In a way, you’re kind of Midwestern. With the volume turned up a bit, anyway.

But this is just a theory. I am not a Bostonian, and I never will be. But there’s no more fascinating sports city in America, and sometimes I wonder how easy it is to tell that when you’re so far on the inside. The Manny thing is a great example. The rest of the country saw his initial complaints and drag-assing and just figured, “Well, there he goes again, he’ll end up winning the ALCS with a three-run homer.” Boston fans knew it was different this time. The goal of this column is to look at Boston sports through an outsider’s point of view, in a hopefully amusing, enlightening way. Or we’ll at least have some genitalia jokes.

Listen: I have no idea how this is going to work, and I’m pretty certain I’m going to write something extremely ignorant and unaware, likely in every column. I promise that if I make a single chowdah joke I will give you my home address, and you will be formally invited to come over and beat me to a bloody pulp. But for less egregious offenses, I beg you to write me and let me know at wleitch@weei.com. But let’s get ‘er started here. We’re a couple weeks from the best two months of the sports season, and Boston will be right in the middle of it. As always.

Will Leitch is the author of three books, including the best-selling “God Save the Fan,” the founder of Deadspin.com. He currently serves as a contributing editor for New York Magazine and will be writing his column, “The Outsider,” on Wednesdays, every other week. Contact Will at wleitch@weei.com