Welcome to my Red Sox column, titled Fire Brand of the American League, Evan Brunell's analytical (and sometimes not so analytical) look at the Boston Red Sox.

Are you wondering what "The Fire Brand of the American League" means? In a nutshell, its origination is from a newspaper article published in March of 1919 in "Baseball Magazine," with the subject being the new owner of the Boston Red Sox, Harry Frazee. The article gives a glowing review of Harry Frazee, and is quite interesting. He sounds remarkably like John Henry. If you're wondering how you can read this article, you can buy the book - "Impossible Dreams," which was compiled by Glenn Stout. It also has other collections of newspaper articles from all of Red Sox history, including one of the sale of Babe Ruth. I actually posted a column about that article explaining what it says and my take on it, which ended up being Fire Brand's very first column (Dec. 31, 2003 in the archives).

The main reason I wanted this site to be named "The Fire Brand of the American League" is...well...doesn't it sound cool?

Born on the 37th anniversary of the the day Babe Ruth died (1985) which later became the day Jimy Williams was fired in 2001, I was too young to experience the pain 1986 brought, but a deep wound was sowed in 2003. 2004 covered that wound up, and more. I am a guardedly optimistic Red Sox fan. Red Sox fans are by nature, quite pessimistic, so I do my best to stay positive but there are times where I fall into the deep, black hole of being a Red Sox fan.

I have written on Fire Brand since December 31, 2003 and grabbed a partner in Zach Hayes in September of 2005. A few partners later, we have Ryne Crabb, Tim Daloisio and Shawn Medeiros rounding out the corps. My self-created motto is: The universe is the limit, not the sky.