User:Patman

From SoSH

Patman (born 1972) was not one of the most feared hitters of all time. He did not played shortstop for the Red Sox from 1912 until 1928. He has, however, been a long time, devoted fan of the Boston Red Sox despite never living in or around the Boston area.

Contents 1 Nickname 2 Overall Career 3 Moment in the Sun 4 Moment in the Rain 5 Trivia 6 External Links

Nickname

The "patman" handle was given to him by one of his nephews a long time ago. It is derived from patman's real name, Patrick, and the classic Namco video game icon, Pac-Man, after Patrick's long time affection (affliction?) for video games. Patrick's nephew thought it would be clever to combine the two and it has since stuck as a handy handle for highscore tables, email addresses and messageboard user names. Patman unwittingly registered him self as "patman" with SOSH sometime during the 2004 season, not realizing that since it did not contain any witty Red Sox references he would be putting himself at a competitive disadvantage. Patman is in no way affiliated with the Batman.

Overall Career

Patman's Red Sox career began at an early age. After moving to the Northern Virginia area at age 5 he was heavily recruited to join the Red Sox by the large number of New England area relatives on his father's side of the family. Aunts, uncles and countless cousins in Providence & Pawtucket, Rhode Island and a few in Boston made Red Sox allegiance almost inevitable for the young patman.

The St. Louis Cardinals of his maternal grandmother made almost no effort to sway young patman's decision so somewhere around age 5 or so, patman joined the Red Sox Nation.

Patman is told by his parents that while still in kindergarten, he would check the baseball results page of the Washington Post every morning before school to see if the Red Sox had won the previous night.

Fond Red Sox memories from those early days include pouring through a baseball card reference book that had a 1/4 page picture of a Jim Rice card that is probably directly responsible for Jim Rice being patman's first favorite player, and making shoebox dioramas of the hometown Baltimore Orioles getting their ass kicked by the Red Sox as school projects.

Patman moved up the ladder quickly after highschool, taking a much more serious interest in things like box scores, batting average, ERA, and WHIP. Roger Clemens' 2.62 ERA in 1991 sticks with him to this day, perhaps because that was patman's first fully ESPN/USA Today's Baseball Weekly enhanced season.

Patman's Red Sox career to a hit in 1993 when he moved to Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Now without a AL club on local TV and no newspaper with any sports coverage beyond SEC football, patman was totally dependent on ESPN and USA Today to maintain his connection to the Red Sox. These were dark times indeed as patman scrabbled for every scrap of Red Sox information he could get his hands on.

Things did eventually get better with the advent of the Internet. Patman is now able to immerse himself in Red Sox culture and stay informed of team happenings thanks to SoSH and MLB.tv streams the Red Sox into his home nearly every night.

Moment in the Sun

Patman was fortunate enough to have purchesed the MLB Direct Ticket package on DirecTV in what would be Roger Clemens' final season with the Red Sox and was able to watch his 20 backwards 'K' performance against the Tigers that September.

Moment in the Rain

Patman plotted starting rotations against the calendar all summer long in 1992 and saved up for tickets to Camden Yards to see Roger Clemens pitch against the Baltimore Orioles. On the highly anticipated day of the game, patman waited through a 2 hour rain delay with his sister only to see Clemens remove himself from the game after only a handful of warm-up tosses with a straing groin before the game even started. He and his sister were treated to a signature Rick Dempsey - who had been secretly activated for the series for his Baltimore farewell - slide around the tarp before the game and a fine emergency start by Joe Hesketh.

Trivia

Some of patman's favorite players through the years include:

• Jim Rice
• Roger Clemens
• Wade Boggs
• Andre Dawson
• Scott Cooper - man, were those bad days
• Mo Vaughn
• Nomar Garciaparra
• Pedro Martinez
• Manny Ramirez
• David Ortiz
• 2004_Red_Sox - The 25, and then some.

Non-Soxes

• Greg Maddux - little known little brother of his more famous older brother, Red Sox great, Mike Maddux
• Doug Dascenzo - outfielder and relief ace for the Chicago Cubs

External Links