Regional intentions (6/17/08)

With any luck, the Boston Celtics will win tonight’s National Basketball Association championship game. And they have the Red Sox to thank for that – sort of. What I mean is that cities, and regions, share a collective mindset or culture, and the attitude shift undergone by New England sports fans after the Sox win in 2004 opened the doors to tonite’s game, and to Boston’s recent run of regional successes in so many sports. We’ve had a glut of local world champions in Boston, world champions in that peculiarly American sense – champions of a sports league based in America, with no foreign teams allowed to participate, despite worldwide popularity of the sport.

For example,since last fall, four of the five professional sports played in Boston (baseball, football, ice hockey, soccer and basketball), have reached the final championship game. That sort of streak that’s unheard of in professional sports in America. While the Red Sox are the only team to have actually won their championship – in November 2007 - so far (that may change in a couple of hours!), no other American city has ever had such a run. For example, when New York City’s teams won titles in three separate sports in 1969, that streak was tainted by the fact that New York was big enough to host two teams in each of the major sports. Boston is too small for that luxury, so we have our one and only in each sport. In that sense we’ve been very fortunate. But the question arises: is this run of success any more than just a lucky streak? I think so.

The Sox’ amazing 2004 World Series win didn’t just end their interminable 86 year championship drought, it also enabled the fans of New England to believe and visualize and imagine that other championships in other sports were equally possible. And the victories began to happen, with a football Super Bowl win in 2004, reaching the Major League Soccer finals in 2005, ‘06 and ‘07, and a basketball final tonite. It’s not that our other sports teams magically sprang out of the woodwork after ’04 (the football Patriots had started their own little dynasty with a Super Bowl victory in 2001, for example). But the sense of possibility has been much more a part of the local air than it had ever been. New Englanders had been notorious for our tendency to wallow in pessimistic Calvinistic beliefs about our inadequacies and unworthiness when it comes to sports. After the Sox won, attitudes changed, and our sports fans finally released their congenitally skeptical mindset after the Sox won. I believe this cognitive restructuring (as the psychologists call it) has facilitated the region’s ability to successfully manifest its sporting dreams.

The same manifestation process operates for individuals and for groups. People tend to focus on their own doubts and worries, rather than risk disappointment if their dreams don’t come true. But that’s the crux of positive intention. The more we focus on what’s possible, and the more we fuel it with a sense of enthusiam, the more likely it is to actually happen. So now, with some positive recent history at our beck and call to assuage doubts, the individual Boston athletes and the collective fanndomof New England can all be tuned to the same positive wavelength of success.We’ve finally learned how to hold positive intentions, combined with joyful emotions, to enhance the process of pulling desired events into reality.

So here’s my call, with two hours to go before game time: Celtics 101, Lakers 84.

Addendum: The final score was 130-91, Celtics. This was the most lopsided final game in league history, and was remarkable for the fact that after three close games played in Los Angeles (it’s a best of 7 game series), this game back in the friendly confines of the Boston Garden clearly showed the power of the home court advantage. After a tentative first quarter, the home team Celts played a flawless second quarter to surge ahead for good. They were clearly propelled by the excitement of the fans – their shots were uncannily accurate, their opponents got sloppier and sloppier, and even random bad bounces of the ball seemed all to go their way. That’s often a good barometer of how the tide is turning. The momentum lies with the team that gets all the loose balls, favorable calls by the refs and has the fluke plays go their way.

The Celtics teamwork had risen to another level altogether at home, as they were now playing like a synchronized dance troupe rather than a collection of very large male jocks. This game was the most vivid example of home field magic that I’ve ever seen, more proof that joy is the difference-maker in sports (the Joy of Jocks?). Even sports columnists from out of town remarked on the beauty of the Celtics team cohesion, and found themselves rooting for excellence in the sport itself rather than for any one specific team to win or lose. That was the Platonic ideal of rooting that our researchers had been telling us about, and we were fortunate to have had a brief glimpse of what it’s like. And since sports is just a microcosm of the rest of society, it stands to reason that joy – individual and collective – can be the key to succesfully creating our own lives as well.

I’ll finish with a quote from one of my favorite teachers about the process of manifestation, or what the being Abraham calls “the science of deliberate creation”. A popular workshop leader and author, he talks here about the importance of fans and players being in alignment with their source in order to attain peak team performance. By “source”, he means a person’s deepest inner wisdom; he also uses the terms “upstream” and “downstream” to denote thought patterns and actions that either go against or with the natural effortless flow of energy and events.

A quotation from Abraham (from a lecture given in November 2006)
“If you were involved in a team, even as a fan of a team, if only you could come to understand that the way you feel as you are rooting for your cause is everything. It isn’t what you say, it isn’t who you say it to, it isn’t when you say it. It’s: “Is the way I feel really and truly downstream or upstream?” Because if it’s downstream, then your heart is singing, then you feel enthusiasm, then you feel enthusiasm on your way to the championship - even in the middle of the game when it doesn’t look like you’re winning.

But what happens with so many, they’re quick to take score so soon along the way. And every time they take score, and the score isn’t the way they want it to go, they turn upstream, and they have no idea how defeating in nature that is. People who are involved in sports actually understand the law of deliberate creation and the value of energy and attitude more than almost any other body of people on the planet. Because they have, through trial and error, shown themselves what their better-feeling attitude accomplishes for them personally. In other words, any athlete who is individually focused can certainly feel the power that comes into his physical apparatus when he’s going with the current of his source, as compared to when he is going against the current of his source.

The agility, the clarity, the ability to hit the ball, the ability to even connect with it, the ability to have to power to put it where he wants it to go precisely- all of that is about alignment with source, you see. And those who are involved in sports are understanding that more and more.”

The power of negative intentions (6/8/08)

I was riding high after our high-tech HeartMathematical triumph in Santa Cruz, so the Fates apparently decided that it was time for a fall. It’s actually worth going into all the gory details of what happened, because they illustrate some surprising but important principles about the power of intention. So here goes.

The first signs of a downturn came on my “day off” at the La Costa resort near San Diego, with two weeks of conferences and meetings finally behind me. I thought I’d catch up on emails and writing projects, but apparently someone else had other ideas. My laptop was totally dead, and I couldn’t even get it charged up via the outlet at my hotel room’s desk. I was pretty sure that the problem didn’t stem from when the iBook fell off the plane seat a few days ago– it was in the carry pack, and it still worked for a day or two after that mishap So after ascertaining that the hotel’s IT crew had the whole Memorial Day holiday weekend off, I made an executive decision to go to the beach, and forget about all this electronic faff. And it was a truly wonderful Monday at the beach in nearby Encinitas, at the so-called Swami’s Beach. Yes, that’s actually the name – in honor of Yogananda, the Indian guru who moved to the US almost 100 years ago to bring yoga to the West, and who donated some land near his headquarters to local beachgoers.


The Swami and the surfer – Southern California in a nutshell

I figured I’d fly home the next day, fix my laptop and get caught up with all things electronical . So I got back home on Tuesday night, but I wasn’t able to get to the local Mac store until Saturday (I got by with the hospitals Pcs until then), where one of their junior MacGurus quickly recharged my laptop’s battery. We figured out that the hospital’s powerstrip wasn’t working, and that’s why my laptop had run dry; no damage had been done by its fall in the plane. So I took my revived iBook home and went online, got caught up on some emails, and began to prepare for Monday’s upcoming bi-monthly conference call, a chance for JoS’s Big Three producers to catch up on things.

I got a little worried when I suddenly and mysteriously lost email access Saturday night and a bit more worried when we lost phone service altogether on Sunday morning. But a friendly neighbor put in a service call to Verizon Sunday noon when I discovered our loss of service. Verizon was able to get our phone line going again by 8am on Monday morning, in plenty of time for our 10am conference call. Oddly, my hospital pager had gone off at 5am in the morning, signalling that its battery had nearly run out. So I put in a new AA, figuring that I now had my back-up contact link securely in place (true confessions – I don’t have a cellphone).

After breakfast, I found that the DSL internet/email link was still out, so I tried calling Verizon’s tech support. Their guy led me through a lot of guided connecting and disconnecting of jacks and powerups of modems, with me having to shuttle from room to room because the battery on our cordless phone (our family’s cellphone equivalent) had run out during a day away from its charger. But to no avail. A serviceman would have to come to the house later that day, but only after our conference call. I scooted over to the Public Library and did a few quick email catchups, and got back home in plenty of time to set up for the call. Everything went well for the first 10 minutes or so of our talk, but then my ear must have inadvertently pressed too hard against the phone receiver, pushing the disconnect button and cutting me off. It was a poor design feature that I had silently cursed several times before, but had never remedied with a simple phone upgrade. So there I was, with a dead line, and no way to tell the others that I was cut off.

I know – get a cellphone! But in the meantime, I could only hope that my two partners would telepathically (if not telephonically) figure that I had gone silent because of a phone glitch, not because I was being extremely thoughtful. I wasn’t sure, though, if they’d figure out to hang up so that I could re-dial and start the con call process over again. Oh well, hopefully they could still have a fruitful call without me.

Again, events were forcing me to take a break from business, since there was nothing else to do but wait. It was warm and sunny out back, and the rhododendrons were at the height of their glory (see photo for proof). It was clearly time for some deep meditation (a process my wife sometimes confuses with a cat nap). I woke up refreshed, with a non-trivial question to ponder: “What’s the message here?”

I believe that all life events are like dreams, and have both a literal and a symbolic meaning. So I obviously had to take a look at what was going on. The common theme of all these glitches seemed to be disconnection, running out of power. Hmmm… My best guess is that I’m running a little low myself, since I haven’t had time to unwind yet after a very busy but very productive couple of weeks on the road. My deeper intent must have been to stay away from electronics for a while, and take the time to recharge my own batteries first, before I bothered to recharge my computer. I guess I felt too guily to admit that after 2 weeks in such beautiful climes, I was still in need of some downtime.

Addendum (3pm): The Verizon guy came by (I called him with the neighbor’s phone) to fix both problems - the lack of dial tone and the missing DSL access were both caused by a corroded main cable down the road. J&K did – eventually - notice my silence on the line yet had a good conference call despite (because of?) my absence . And no – I’m still not ready to get a cellphone. But I will heed that inner voice that was urging me to rest, or meditate, or whatever, even though my mind was loudly declaring that it knew better. These mixed motives had seemingly attracted a string of symbolic glitches into my life, until I finally got the message. The power of intention and the process of manifestation were still working, but they were harnessing my deeply mixed feelings, not my surface wishes. It’s a lot more fun to create you life when you’re clear about your goals and your motivations!

Heart math (5/23/08)

Today was my day to be a guinea pig, and it looks like I’ve got what it takes. I was at the HeartMath Institute in the Santa Cruz foothills of California (on the day of a raging forest fire only 20 miles away – was that an omen?) to meet with some pioneers of energy medicine. Dr. Rollin McCraty and his team are the folks who proved that a novel heart-centered meditation process has a different effect on heart rhythm and nervous system function than seemingly similar processes like muscle relaxation or mindfulness meditation. Their theory goes one step further than describing this mind/body interaction. They believe that mental focus on emotions like compassion and appreciation alters the heart’s rhythm and also creates a magnetic field that is strong enough to affect nearby living things. Because they’ve studied the mathematics of these cardiac effects, they’re called the HeartMath Institute (www.heartmath.com).

The HeartMath researchers have done a few individual demos to illustrate these field interactions, most famously showing that a boy in heart coherence can entrain the rhythm of his dog’s heart (heart coherence is their term for a heart rhythm that’s optimally synchronized with the nervous system). But nothing on a larger scale has ever been done, something of the sort that might validate our JoS theories about how crowd energy influences team coherence. So I proposed a test for the HeartMath people, to see whether a group of people focused on their inner sense of appreciation could affect the physiology of a test subject – namely me. I took a seat in their lab, and was hooked up to their computer system that monitored my heart rhythm. I then used my rudimentary skills in heart coherence (5 minutes of previous practice) to try and enter that magical state of coherence. I was then joined in the room by 6 other people who were highly skilled in the art of heart coherence, to see whether my rhythms became entrained via sympathetic resonance with their magnetic fields, the same way that tuning forks resonate with each other.

The kicker in this setup was that I was blindfolded and ear-plugged. That way, I wouldn’t know when the other meditators joined me in the room, and my conscious expectations and reactions wouldn’t be a factor affecting my physiology. The only change in the situation would be my exposure to their group “vibe”; any changes in my heart rhythm would result from having been “tuning forked” by the meditators. And so, with help from Chief Scientist McCraty, the room was set up to allow me to meditate in my own little cocoon of sensory isolation, surrounded (as shown in this photo) by some pretty impressive equipment for psychophysiologic monitoring (the gizmos reminded me of the infamous Monty Python scene in “The Meaning of Life”, when the hospital administrator is duly impressed his encounter with “the machine that goes ‘Bing!’ “).


As luck would have it, our experiment actually worked. Midway through my 10 minute trial meditation, I began to feel a sort of lightness in my chest. After an involuntary sigh of relief, I settled into a nice inner state of heartfelt appreciation and gratitude for way my life was unfolding. It was the state I had been striving for earlier, but it suddenly seemed much easier to enter. Amazingly enough, and unbeknownst to me, the computer monitor showed that at the very same moment, my heart rhythm (or my heart rate variability, to use the technical term), entered a state of high internal coherence, to match the rhythm of the HeartMath meditation team. The team’s pulsating magnetic field had apparently pushed me into a state of higher coherence than I could achieve by my own independent efforts, and the machines had captured this event.


The photo here shows the computer monitor, with the graph in the lower left corner showing the degree to which my heart is in a coherent pattern – a few blips at first, and then zooming up off the charts.The upper graph shows my actual heart rate, in beats per minute, throughout the 5 minute experiment. The sudden uptick just past the two and a half minute mark represents the moment when the team entered the room; I remember feeling a swish of air as they walked by, and getting nervous that “it” might now be starting. Close scrutiny of the bottom left chart shows that my upsurge in coherence begins a little over three minutes into the test; in other words, just around the time when the group would have finally settled into their own coherent groove.

Dr. McCraty and I were both blown away by the size of the effect we’d produced, because the demo clearly showed that a small group of people holding a positive intention can affect the physiology of one person in their vicinity. It seems obvious, then, that if 35,000 people are focusing positive vibes on their favorite player in a coordinated way, his performance could be lifted into the stratosphere. As Dr. McC. noted, the emotion of appreciation is the most powerful emotion to use for influencing others. It’s even more powerful than the emotion of anger, though maybe not as popular among fans. He said that fans could use appreciation to lift their teams when they’re in a slump, but they shouldn’t waste their emotional energy on booing their opponents. Booing disrupts everyones’ vibe, and brings everyone into an unsynchronized state. It’s far more beneficial to use fandom’s emotional energies to encourage their own team by showering them with love, kindness and appreciation. Come to think of it, we could all benefit from that kind of emotional outpouring.

The tipping point? (5/1/08)

I hate to sound ungrateful, but signs are cropping up everywhere that Red Sox Fever might have gone a little too far for our own good (I’m presuming to speak on behalf of all Bostonians here). Over the last year or two, I hadn’t really made much of the ever-growing list of Sox sponsorships (official jeweler of the Sox, official sports drink, etc. ) but two recent newspaper articles seem to offer proof that we’ve finally gone off the deep end.

Here are the headlines: “Sox-Yankee rivalry cited in New Hampshire fatality”, and “Final reward: Loved ones’ ashes find their way into ballpark soil”. Which one is more troubling? You decide.

Item #1: A 41 year old New Hampshire woman was recently arrested after driving her car into a crowd of Red Sox fans who had begun shouting “Yankees suck!” after spotting a Yankees bumper sticker on her car. There was alcohol involved, as well as an earlier argument outside a nightclub, but the baseball jeering seemed to be the last straw that triggered her to drive her car into the cluster of fans, killing a 29 year-old man. Not much commentary is needed on this tragedy; as the lawyers say, res ipse loquitor (the thing speaks for itself).
www.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/articles/2008/05/06/
sox_yankee_rivalry_cited_in_nh_fatality/


Item#2: A few years ago, the Sox gave a local family permission to scatter their son’s ashes around home plate, as a tribute to his devotion to the team. But the Sox have had to discontinue the practice because of the high volume of similar requests they continue to get. Yet even that regulation hasn’t stopped determined family members. Lou Gorman, the Sox’s former GM, was recently quoted as saying: “Many times you go out there after a game and you’ll see ashes on the grounds. I went out there last year twice, and twice I saw it on the warning track…It’s almost like a burial ground of Red Sox Nation.” So in the minds of many, Fenway Park is holy ground, sanctified territory – it’s hard to get more devoted than that. I’m sure these diehard (!) fans wouldn’t appreciate Bill Lee’s reminder to me last summer that Fenway Park is built on reclaimed swampland, and its location has zero intrinsic magic.
www.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/articles/2008/05/04/final_reward/

And another thing: To finish off this little rant, consider another Red Sox oddity that was revealed on a stroll through Boston’s Arnold Arboretum during last week’s Mother’s Day/Lilac Sunday festivities. One of the Morris Dance troupes did a performance that included a bat-thwacking dance arrangement to the tune of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”. There’s nothing wrong, in itself, with setting a 16th century British dance performance to a 20th century American sports song, but in the context of these other absurdities, it just felt like more proof that we’ve finally reached the tipping point.This’ll sound like heresy, but maybe it’s time for the collective membership of Red Sox Nation to get a life.

Marathon Monday

Today (4/21/08) was the 105th annual running of the Boston Marathon, America’s oldest and largest annual such event. 21,963 (fool)hardy souls ran the full 26 miles and 385 yards up and down hills and valleys, fighting warm weather (61 degrees) and a headwind (5 mph) but spurred on by the cheers of an estimated 1,000,000 admirers who lined the route from suburban Hopkinton to the finish line in downtown Boston. A good time was had by all (the fans, anyway), and it was historic stuff for track devotees, but what, you may ask, does it have to do with the Joy of Sox?

Only this – crowd emotions at most sporting events are typically split between two competing teams, the hometown fans cheering for their local favorites, opposed by supporters of the visiting team. The ratio between the two sides can vary anywhere from 50/50 at a typical High School football game to 95/5 at home games of wildly favored pro teams (like the Red Sox, where visiting fans would have hundreds, if not thousands, of miles to travel). And that’s been one explanation for the difficulty researchers have had in getting solid results with random number generators at sporting events: the emotional field of the audience is split, and high levels of coherence can’t be obtained because the competing vibes cancel each other out. So it would be nice to be able to take measurements at a sporting event where everyone is rooting for the same person or people. And that’s where the Marathon comes in.


That’s because marathon crowds everywhere, not just in Boston, are so uninhibitedly supportive of the runners. Their admiration, and bewilderment, is expressed by a torrent of cheers, whoops, and, today (courtesy of Saturn autos), cowbells for all. Even the slowpokes, the runners who have been reduced to a walk, or whose wobbles suggest that dropping out is imminent - they all get huge doses of fan support, as well as whatever invisible energy comes with that. So what would the RNG output be like in a setting where all the fans are “on”, all the time, and for the same cause? We’re about to find out, because today’s files are already en route to Scott the Stats Guy, who has completed his move to Florida and is once again ready to crunch some serious numbers for us.

At today’s race, I set up shop near the halfway point, where the leaders usually arrive in a pack of 10 or so, pursued by a steady trickle of dozens of high level runners, soon followed by a true flood of thousasnds of everyday runners that stretches for miles. But I didn’t pick just any spot – I chose a setting that is legendary for its powerful cheers. For I had plunked down my laptop by the main entrance to Wellesley College, an all-girls school that is almost as famous for its cheering prowess as for its academic rigor (and for an alumna who is favored to win the Democratic presidential primary in Pennsylvania tomorrow).

I was not disappointed. As the photos above and below show, it was possible to set up the equipment so that RNGs would be generated right in the thick of things. I didn’t cushion the computer on a foam pad this time, which is too bad – skeptics will say that the crowd noise was so loud that it might have shaken the computers and altered the data. The only reason I was able to survive the full 30 minute recording segment was because I had two very high quality foam earplugs stuck way up into my Eustachian tubes. Otherwise, my ears would still be ringing. I enjoyed the show, and felt the stirrings of a mild case of spring fever in the process. Plenty of witty signs, many with a similar theme: “Kiss me, I’m a senior”, “I’ve never been kissed by a runner”, “Quick kisses here”, and “Kiss me, girls. This is Wellesley”. Plenty of takers, too. So I know the runners got a good buzz from the Wellesley college co-eds. We’ll find out soon enough whether the computer did, too.  

Opening Day, 2008

First off, I wasn’t there, so what I’m about to say is based only on second-hand experience – TV news reports, stories in the newspapers, etc. But unless I miss my guess, today’s 2008 home opener set a record for heart-expanding joyfulness when the first pitch to start the game was thrown out by none other than… But first, let me set the stage.

In the off-season following last year’s Series Victory, I (and other Sox observers) had become a little concerned about the behavior of Sox fans. Apparently we’d become more aggressive in our celebrations than fans from other cities, and we were starting to rub folks the wrong way in other towns throughout the league. We crow about our two recent championships, about our team’s apparel being the #1 seller, about the start of our very own dynasty. In other words, we’re not being very gracious winners.

The emotion behind this self-satisfaction isn’t hard to fathom – we’d been down so long, and down-trodden by others for so many years, that we felt a strong urge to tread down on someone else. It was the whole pecking order thing, with the abused now becoming the abuser. And that behavior bothered me, not only because of my British roots (well, not really roots, but having a British wife has exposed me to good sportsmanship and respect for the game in a way that Americans don’t really get), but also because it went against the core message of “Joy of Sox”.

What our scientists have shown is that a more powerful energy field is generated by harmonious emotions of appreciation and joy than by discordant ones like anger and revenge. So if we Sox fans want to do well by our team and serve them up with a more potent force field, we should be showing more of those higher level emotions – our cheer should be “Sox rock!”, rather than “Yankees suck!”. OK, fair enough, but what does this have to do with opening day today.

Turns out that the inspired choice for throwing out today’s first pitch was Bill Buckner, a Hall of Fame player whose stellar career was marred by one play – he let a groundball get through his legs in the 1986 World Series, allowing the NY Mets beat the Sox when the Sox were one pitch away from winning the whole thing. He was such a convenient lightning rod for fans’ frustrations that he was literally run out of town. He moved to Idaho to escape from the constant media references to that one play, and had not made a public appearance in Boston for 18 years. However, today the fans had a chance to shower him with acceptance, forgiveness, love, gratitude – all those warm fuzzies dissolved old enmities and frustrations, and would have sent my RNG computer into the stratosphere if I had only been able to go to the game.

To see a video clip of his prolonged standing ovation, go to: www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/04/09/bill-buckners-fenway-park_n_95844.html

One TV network’s post-game poll of 500 fans showed that 82% had forgiven Buckner; his news interview made it clear that his beef was not with the fans but with the Boston media, a notoriously vindictive lot. I haven’t seen the results of the media’s forgiveness poll yet (and I’m not holding my breath!). So here’s my prediction – the last remaining ghost of negativity has been exorcised, and the Sox fans are ready to generate an unprecedented wave of positive emotions that will life the team to yet another successful year.

But the real test of our emotional maturity will come next week, against the Yankees – it’s not as important that the Sox win as whether the fans let the inevitable “Yankees suck” chants die out quickly, or whether they get all their emotional juice from razzing an adversary who’s having a down year. Are we bullies, or winners with class? We’ll soon find out.

While Fenway Park gently sleeps...

Actually, not so gently. They’re doing some major repair work on Fenway during the off-season, with cranes and hammers going at it for two 10-hour shifts, 7 days a week. I mention this because that hubbub might have an impact on the offseason computer recordings we’re making at Fenway. Or not.

The Joy of Sox theory is that Fenway magic is real and measurable, and is part and parcel of the Park itself. During the regular season, we documented that invisible energy exists during games, but we haven’t yet been able to show that any afterglow lingers when the park is empty. That would have to happen in order for Fenway to qualify as a true “sacred space”. But at least we now have the technique to make these measurements, and so our RNG laptop is back on the scene, generating random numbers just as rapidly in March as it did back in September.


It’s hard to predict what we’ll find. On the one hand, you’d figure that all that construction work would disrupt any subtle vibrations stored at Fenway. On the other had, if these vibes are real, they might exist at a non-physical level of reality, and shouldn’t be affected by a few loud noises and boisterous construction workers. But your guess is as good as mine. Hopefully our analysis will show that there’s still some magic at Fenway in the offseason, maybe not as much as during a game, but more than at some other nearby public space (I might set it up at the McDonalds across the street, as a comparison).

If it’s true, then we can actually monitor the waking-up process of the stadium, as Fenway recovers from its winter hyibernation and the vibes come alive over the next few months. As Spring Training gears up in Florida and people begin to think about baseball again, perhaps they unconsciously begin to reconnect with Fenway. There may be some delays in doing the statistical analysis, though, as Scott the stats guy is in the process of relocating from Colorado to Florida. But when the data is ready, you’ll be the first to know.

And here’s one other quick, but key, update. There’s no offseason for Joy of Sox, and recently we added on Karen Webb as Producer. She’s an experienced documentarian, and a mover and shaker, with great ideas on how to move this project to completion. She runs Pinch Hit Productions LLC (yes, she’s also a Sox fanatic!), and you’ll be hearing a lot more about her – including a new look for our website, and some tantalizing leads to some big names (we’re now only one degree of separation away from hitting a home run with our proposed celebrity narrator). But that’s all for now, with plenty more to come.

Parade photo #4

I'm pretty sure this sign is in poor taste, but maybe these girls really are just innocent young high school kids who aren't into double entendres. For the uninitiated, Sox fielder Jacoby Ellsbury is Native American/Navajo.

Parade photo #3

Here's a creative sign. It refers to the nationwide marketing ploy by Taco Bell, giving anyone in America a free taco that afternoon, thanks to Jacoby Ellsbury scoring for the Sox during a designated inning in the last game. Archnemesis A-Rod presumably has the free time to go get one now. For more on Ellsbury, see Parade Photo #4

Parade photo #2

This was as close as I could get to the action. It was obstructed view all the way.

Parade photos

This just in - photos of the World Series victory parade!!

Actually, I took these photos 6 weeks ago, but I've only now figured out how to insert photos into a blog post. In fact, I can only manage to get one photo per post, so there will be a series of 4 posts here.

These images from the parade were taken at City Hall Plaza. A good crowd, some fun signs, and some obstructed views of the players themselves. Overall impression - the local high schools must have reported a lot of absentees that day!