Money buys wins, not heart

ONCE UPON a time, there were Red Sox fans — our parents and grandparents.

Our forebears were the fans of a long-suffering franchise with just a handful of things to boast of: a lovely old ballpark, a fascinating cast of characters, and a rich tradition built around 86 years of heartbreak.

Our parents and grandparents had Fenway Park. They had Yawkey and Cronin, Ted and Yaz, Pudge and Piersall, Boggs and Clemens. They had Slaughter’s Dash, the Impossible Dream, Bucky Dent, Bill Buckner, the Phantom Tag, and Aaron Boone.

They also had a rival — someone to measure themselves against, a “them’’ for our “us.’’ While our Red Sox were always one player short, one strike away, the New York Yankees won championship after championship. They always spent the money; they always had the players. We envied them, we hated them, we turned up our noses at them: the gauche buying of players, the shameful ease of cheering for prohibitive favorites. Their championships were triumphs not of virtue or even luck, but rather the dividends of a well-managed corporation. Yankee fans didn’t know what it was to love, to lose, to suffer. They had no souls.