I'm actually not sure where the misperception of Yankee fans come from. To be honest there has always been a pretty large difference between a Yankee fan, Red Sox fan, Phillies fan, etc.
A real Yankees fan is someone like Edge. He generally dislikes all other teams but he always is critical of his own team first and foremost. Real Yankees fans generally aren't abusive to other team's fans for the most part. They really get on other TEAMS but that is their job. Where a real Yankee fan thinks "win and that's all that matters, the rest takes care of itself" a Red Sox fan does take some pleasure in other team's losing...even when they aren't playing that other team.
A real Red Sox fan is usually someone who is caught up in two things: how their team is doing and how the other teams in the division are doing. They have two favorite teams, their own and who ever is beating up on other good AL East teams. Real Red Sox fans are generally not abusive to fans of other teams, on the contrary they are very abusive to each other.
A real Red Sox fan goes into a visiting stadium and wears his Red Sox hat. He's generally well behaved and keeps to himself unless engaged. If he is engaged you'll see him talking baseball with fans of other teams. A real Sox fan is the guy you sat next to during a game and thought "nice guy" when he left.
The jackasses like the guy in this article are the small, yet loud, minority.
You bring up some valid points in there, but the bottom line is that you, like the vast majority of sports fans, are guilty of establishing standards on the fly.
"A real Red Sox fan..." doesn't have any set behavioral patterns. Some are obnoxious, some aren't, and both are just as real. Some real red sox fans spend an above average amount of time tracking the rest of the AL East, and some real red sox fans don't. BoSoxGrl and yourself are as real as Sox fans get in my world, but I'll bet she doesn't look at any boxscore other than Boston's more than once in a blue moon, and I'll bet you've looked at more than a couple since breakfast. You're both real fans...you're both true fans...and you're both completely different fans. Snowflakes, snowflakes, fukkin-A, hallelujiah.
But before I condemn you for your heinous crime of semantics, let me just strap myself into the chair next to you, and we'll ride ol' Sparky off into the bright light together. I'm guilty too...and so is everyone else within eyeball range of this post.
We are, as a species, the most label-loving bunch of life-goo to ever sprout legs, climb from the muck, sit on a stool and order a beer. We NEED to be able to say "a real fan is ____" or "a real man is ____" or any other "a real ____ is _____" because it helps us keep from getting vertigo in a world of infinite angles. We throw blankets over groups and say "you're all covered by this definition/stereotype," because trying to label and track as many different people as there are different people out there is just too much to handle for Joe Ordinary.
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