5 years ago today, I had been living in Austin for less than a month, having left Boston and all the friends I had known just over 20 days before. I didn’t know anyone but Charlotte, and Kelly and Tara, and some of the folks at Hickory St.

I was new.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit, I was no rabid Sox fan during my time in Boston. Sure, I watched games with friends at bars, and I felt the collective groan of a city after Aaron Boone’s homerun in 2003 (I swear you could hear it come from every window). And sometimes I would climb up to my roof and watch a few innings, since I lived behind Fenway for a time (a fact that now makes me collectively slap my head – talk about not knowing what you’ve got til it’s gone.)

The Red Sox seemed impenetrable to me then – a locals club that I had not earned the right to be a part of. Having grown up a Mets fan, I possessed the required disdain of the Yankees, but other than that, I was an outsider. A tourist. And those who know me know there’s nothing I hate more than being a tourist.

But then I found myself leaving Boston, leaving what had become my adopted home, for a totally foreign landscape: Texas. And a month in, like I said, I was new.

So when the Sox made the ALDS, I started watching. I lived in a house of Massachusetts expatriates, and it was a collective experience that was familiar. It felt like home. And while none of us could claim true fandom, we all felt this comfort in the familiar.

There is something about being an expatriate that endears your hometown to you more than never having left. I’m sure it has something to do with having to defend and explain it, to be an ambassador of sorts. I imagine people have written whole books on the psychology of it. Having moved a lot in my time, it was a feeling I have grown accustomed to.

I remember Charlotte during Game 7 of the ALCS, when the Sox had loaded the bases against Vasquez, and that living cartoon Johnny Damon stepped to the plate. I remember her saying: “Well, all he has to do is hit a Grand Slam, right?” And then he did. And the look on her face was purely logical, like “See? Nothing to it.”

And then this moment. The moment from this photo.

I wish I could say this happened at my house, filled with Boston friends and new friends alike, all galvanized by the history of the moment. But Tara had to close that night, so we all went down to the bar to hang out with her while she counted the registers and cleaned the soft-serve machine. I sat outside, at a plastic table, and watched the game end. We knew what was going to happen, but it didn’t seem real. I remember taking this photo as some sort of proof; a historical document.

Can you believe it?

It would be years before my fandom matured (some could say mutated) into what it is today. It would take a true fan, also living in exile, to show me how awesome and engaging and infuriating such a simple game can be-someone to get me hooked. It would take me moving back to New York, magnifying that need to be an ambassador, a representative. It would take getting my first Sox hat from someone who felt I had earned it.

And when I put it on, I don’t feel like a tourist at all. I feel like a fan.