On Edgar Renteria, fire, brimstone, peanuts and Cracker Jacks

The Red Sox have quickly parted ways with shortstop Edgar Renteria. The move comes one year after he was signed with no small fanfare. A league-leading 30 errors did him in with the Fenway faithful, and all are glad he can move on, and avoid the boo birds waiting for miscues in 2006. He said the fans were more demanding than fans at his previous team, the Cardinals, but that he came to appreciate them. He seemed less enamored of the grounds’ crew.

The Globe of Boston is not too available to web linking so it is hard now to read the paper’s fairly stellar sports columnists who cover such events. I thought I’d give you a fair sampling of Bob Ryan, who wrote on Edgar’s leaving for the Braves. Ryan hit on something that I had difficulty grasping when I got here 32 years ago. That is: Why are these people so uptight?

Ryan explains why, in this comparison of St. Louis and Boston:

“They love their baseball in St. Louis, for sure, but they love it in a far different way than we do. They are, at heart, forgiving Midwesterners, not aggressive New Englanders, for whom baseball is not so much a pleasurable pastime as it is a family curse. Get this: The people in St. Louis actually go to the ballpark to have a good time, not to get in touch with their inner Cotton Mather."