2023 was the year I officially got way too into Boston sports talk radio. If I’m being honest, I’m not even sure how interested I am in watching the Boston Red Sox or the New England Patriots but I have to watch the games for no other reason than just so I have the proper context to follow along with what Felger and Mazz are talking about every day.
I’ve always thought of podcasts as being kind of dangerous because the listener can basically replace conversations they would normally be having with friends with just listening to 2 guys talk about a movie for 3 hours. With Boston sports talk radio there’s really no fear of mistaking the hosts as your friends, but that doesn’t mean it’s any more healthy than obsessively listening to podcasts. Sometimes it feels like I’m doing my “Boston homework” when I listen in every day. It’s not a waste of time because I’m actually becoming “more Boston” and this will help me in the future when I need to establish relationships with people from Boston.
It won’t actually help, obviously. The typical “Boston guy” has had the same friends since he was in elementary school, maybe meeting some as late as high school, with one or two college friends sprinkled in. There’s no easy way to permeate. One wrong observation and it’s over. “Did you see how he ordered a water after only having 4 beers?” “I don’t know, he wants to go to The Draft instead of the Sil”.
Nothing worse than a mildly buzzed guy from the suburbs writing their shitty version “here’s what Good Will Hunting got right about men in Boston”.