You are all fortunate people

[Beaneater]

Hello all--

I am a moderately active Sox fan -- enough so to be posting here in the first place, I guess.

I just wanted to say that you are all very fortunate folks. I work in Africa and thus suffer regularly from Baseball Deprivation Syndrome. Catching a ball game where I work in Africa is about as easy as viewing a whole week of NBC without seeing any useless reality TV. One of my neighbors does have a satellite dish, so I can occasionally catch a game on ESPN -- for instance, I did watch pretty much every ALCS game last year, though the time differential meant that the games started at about 2 AM. But it was worth it.

Now I'm back in the States for a while and trying to re-integrate myself into the world of MLB. But I'm also thinking how cool it is for you who can go to Fenway and have ESPN and the internet and NESN and... Baseball isn't my life (do I get kicked off the board for saying that?) but it is a very enjoyable aspect of life, even when it's as deeply neurotic as rooting for the Sox.

Anyway, just another blessing for you to count if you feel so inclined.

[CalvnHobs6]

Welcome to the board Beaneater - and you're not alone. There are a few fans on this board from far away from Boston who don't get to see many games. But I guess Africa wins distance-wise.

[yeszir]

Yea, welcome. That's really cool (from a non-sox watching perspective) that you work in Africa. Where exactly? It's a pretty big place.

And I think you do win distance wise (although, now that I think about it, someone is from Australia.) But, welcome again, how long are you back in the US for?

[Old Hoss]

Do they play baseball in Africa?

[Beaneater]

Thanks for the hearty welcome.

To answer the questions in the previous posts, I work in Benin, a tiny country just to the west of Nigeria. We'll be in the States 'til June '05, and part of that time we'll be close to Arlington Stadium, so we might be able to see the Sox when they come through. (But did I see somewhere that Arlington Stadium had been renamed? Ameriquest Field or something like that? If so, how vomit-inducing. But maybe I have my facts wrong.)

And, no, they don't play baseball in Africa. Some of the expatriates get together to play softball which would be a decent substitute, but we sort of live out in the boonies, so I haven't been able to get into that. The Beninese people play soccer, soccer, occasionally basketball, and soccer.

Yeah, Australia would beat me distance-wise, I think. Australia is just about as far from Boston as you can get without leaving the planet.

Well, off to do something constructive, uh, I mean... something ELSE constructive.