What the...?

This story starts, like a lot of Red Sox stories, in October 2003. We listened to the Grady bashing, sulked through the World Series (except when the Yankees were taken O. U. T. OUT, which helped), and spent the winter with a serious case of hot stove fever. Somewhere in there was the beginning of The Red Seat. We’d been at Game 3, had gone looking for a souvenir that didn’t feel like the same old thing or cost a ridiculous amount of money, and came up empty. That planted the seed: there had to be room for Boston sports stuff that felt more like the people actually sitting in the stands.

Then came Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS. Dumb luck put us near the right-field bullpen when David Ortiz hit the walk-off in the 12th, and suddenly all of the misery, theater, absurdity, hope, yelling and general weirdness of being a Red Sox fan made sense again. We’ve been lucky enough to be there for some ridiculous moments over the years, including Pedro vs. Roger in ’99 and Pedro vs. Zimmer in ’03, and that feeling is really what The Red Seat has always been about. Not just the game itself, but the stuff around it that is hard to explain if you weren’t there.

So that’s what we make: Boston sports stuff for people who get the references, remember the weird moments and probably have stronger feelings about Fenway Park than is strictly necessary. Sometimes it’s nostalgic, sometimes it’s ridiculous, sometimes it’s both. We’re not trying to recreate the team store. We’re trying to make the thing you see and immediately think, “Ohhhhhh. I get it.” And if you’re wondering about the actual name, there’s a whole story behind that, too.