Remember Postcard Showers?

My Sistahs remind me that we haven’t had a postcard shower in a while and the beginning of this season is the perfect time to rectify that.

Before we go on, I wanted to share the history of the Postcard Shower with those unfamiliar with it.

The background:

In  2003 a group of us from the Red Sox Fan Forum decided we needed to override the constant negativity whenever a player is doing poorly…and we got together and ‘showered’ specific players with postcards bearing positive messages. At the time, we called ourselves “The BOSTONS” (Babes Offering Support To Our Needed Sox). We even used to have a website. Here’s a blurb from it:

The BOSTONS was formed to show the guys on the team how much the fans support them. The definition of our “postcard shower” was to get at least 10 of the women to send out 10 postcards with positive messages of support written on them to the player we all agreed needed it the most.

We started in August 2003 with Todd Walker who was in the middle of his worst slump of the season.

According to the Boston Globe: “(As of September 8th) Since Todd returned to the second spot in the order Aug. 21, he is batting .333 (18 for 54) after hitting .177 in the previous 37 games” .

We BOSTONS know the truth!  By that week of August 21st Todd was already receiving his postcards!

With the players all playing so well, we decided on Kevin Millar next since he was getting a bit of a hammering from the media. Following Kevin we chose Billy Mueller and Nomar Garciaparra. Two guys doing well for most of the season – both had been toying with slumps in the late stages of 2003.

We firmly believe that the vocal support of The BOSTONS was a major factor in the wonderful way the guys came through for us in 2003 and ESPECIALLY the way they came through for us in 2004 and we know that tradition will continue!

Okay, so we were a little giddy. We’re fans and we feel strongly about supporting our team. And at the end of 2003, we were rewarded, somewhat, with this:

This is Todd Walker cleaning out his locker in October 2003. If you enlarge the photo, you will see a postcard taped to his locker. A white card with a yellow smiley face on it. Three of the “Babes” (including Booklady and yours truly) sent Todd ‘smiley face’ postcards. So we use this photo as proof that the showers meant something to the guys.

There was also a quote from Gabe Kapler in 2004 (thanks to Sistahs Soxcruiser and Brenken for it).

“I have never seen a group of fans care so much about a team in my life. I’ve never gotten a letter that explains, I get these random letters, asking for nothing, they’re not asking for anything, they just want to show support for the team. They just want to say, hey I loved that play you made or it’s great that you guys beat them in this series, a post card, no return address, just out of the blue.”

As you can see, we feel strongly about the power of our support.   Over the years, various players have been recipients of our postcard shower and in 2004 we started showering the entire team when they needed it.  Right now, the entire team needs it.

Choose a Player and send him a postcard (or five or ten) of support.  If we start now we can shower them for this four game homestand and keep it up while they’re on the road so they come back to all the love from the fans.

c/o Boston Red Sox
Fenway Park
4 Yawkey Way
Boston, MA 02215

Red Sox Nation is a much larger (and diverse) group than the BOSTONS were…so men and women getting together to show ssupport for their team will make a greater impact, yes?

It’s a great way to show the team we’re behind them while feeling like we’re doing something to help.  So grab a pen, some postcards and some postage and start writing!