Daniel Rubin: Enough already! A fan defects

The braying started just before Broad and Pattison, some clown in a backward Boston ball cap and an over-stuffed Big Papi jersey chanting on the subway:

World Series champs! World Series champs!

"This isn't the Green Line, pal," I found myself muttering, advising him he was about to arrive in South Philly, not Kenmore Square.

A Phillies fan next to me tried to be helpful as well:

"If you guys win, you be careful on the subway ride back."

The Boston fan simply flashed the V sign.

"Two World Series rings," he bellowed, as if he'd earned them himself. "Two World Series rings."

So how do I renounce my citizenship in Red Sox Nation?

I've been a member for so long I could still fill out a scorecard for the 1964 team. (Mantilla, Bressoud, Yaz . . .) I've rooted as my hometown nine went from bottom-dwelling to heart-breaking to dominating.

Now I want out. I sensed something had happened to me on the subway Tuesday and then in the stands when Boston bandwagoneers started chanting "Beat L.A." as if neither baseball nor Philadelphia - championshipless since 1983 - mattered.

I watched them stand and cheer when the Sox did something well, then I started to enjoy it as the Phillies fans booed them down, like dogs spraying their turf.

By Wednesday, I'd had enough. I walked out of the Businessperson's Special a few innings early, Sox up, me down.

I can't take the hangers-on. I can't take the pink and green ball caps and "Green Monstah" T-shirts.

I can't take the winning.

Back in 2004, when the team seized its first World Series since 1918, a friend asked me how Red Sox fans would survive, seeing how for the last 87 years their whole personality had been based on loss.

People get used to good things quickly, I answered. Like winning.

Now I know I was wrong.

Winning has made Red Sox fans losers. Add the three Super Bowl victories by the Patriots and this week's Celtics championship, and enough already.

It's not title town. It's entitled town. And smug is a hard sell.

I'm not saying it feels better to lose. Winning's better, believe me. But losing all those years - and losing in agonizing style - built character and appreciation of how they played the game.

Tuesday, as my teenage son and I were walking toward the ballpark, a colleague asked when I was going to be a Phillies fan.

"I am a Phillies fan," I answered, but the truth is that for 20 years they've been my second love.

In recent years, watching the Red Sox and Phillies play was like watching my sons play each other in tennis. I applauded good play and hoped no one got hurt.

By the first inning of Wednesday's game, I knew I'd hit the wall. The lustily booed J.D. Drew drilled a three-run homer, and Mike Lowell followed with a solo shot.

"Are we in the Red Sox section?" my son asked as the whole row in front of us erupted. So did those to our left and behind us.

We sat quietly, alone. And I had the feeling that I was without a country.

I thought of making a little small talk - where ya from? - trying to connect to the home I left in my teens. But I don't know what we'd have to talk about.

Then the guys next to me started handicapping the Celtics' chance to repeat, and I started hating on them.

So after 20 years I'm finally becoming a Philadelphian?

"What will happen when the Phillies win a championship?" my colleague asked as we walked toward the ballpark on Tuesday. "Will Philadelphia fans be as obnoxious as Boston fans?"

"Hell, yes," my son replied.

Winning will do that.

Me, I'll have to move to Cleveland. They haven't won a championship since 1964.

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