(OMDQ is a Red Sox fan who tries not to be as dumb as the one you will read about below.)

We here at Awful Announcing give broadcasters a lot of crap around here, but it's important to remember that sometimes the fans are just as bad.

Case in point: while heading out to run some errands about an hour ago, I caught the tail end of the filler being played by the local radio station during the Red Sox rain delay. Not a lot was going on - the game was just about ready to begin and it was obvious that the host was just trying to hold down the fort until the time came to kick it over to Dave O'Brien and Joe Castiglione.

One of the last things I heard was a caller who, after some small talk about when the game was going to start, announced that he expected the Red Sox to "fold like a cardboard table." For the record, this is not a completely ridiculous pronouncement. The team hasn't been decimated to the extent the Yankees have, but with Josh Beckett on the disabled list, a couple of minor leaguers making spot starts this week, and Manny Ramirez yet to break out, the potential for a significant letdown is there.

This fan, however, had different reasons for expecting disaster at some unspecified point in the season: "I'm thinking of the Celtics, the Bruins and the Patriots."

I'm pretty sure Bill Simmons has said something like this before, but isn't this line of reasoning sort of like being dumped four or five times in a row by girls who were never good for you anyway, then ruining a potentially great relationship with an awesome girl because you keep waiting for the other shoe to drop? (In fact, I'm almost positive Simmons said that, and it makes a lot of sense.) Maybe the problem isn't the team, in this case, but the fans who refuse to think positively no matter how good things become.

Mr. Fan also made some comment about the championships getting farther and farther away. Yeah, it's been three whole years since the Red Sox and Patriots won titles, and the Patriots came within a second-half meltdown of playing for one last season. Our teams are FAILURES!