Yet as a Cleveland Indians fan living in New England, I am a non-voting illegal alien resident of something called Red Sox nation – a place possessed by the radio waves coming from an old green flying saucer named Fenway Park.

It’s sort of how I feel in America under the Bush presidency except that, finally, most of America has quit believing the flying saucer transmissions coming from the White House.

In New England, though, the doings at Fenway Park amount to a nightly War of the Worlds called, until the playoff conspiracy began, by the incomparably great Jerry Remy and Don Orsillo.

Yes, I cheer for a different baseball team than everyone I live around because everyone here is a Red Sox fan. Everyone. The trees are actually Red Sox fans here. So are the fish.

But I root for the Cleveland Indians, who by default have stolen the Red Sox former identity as the most heartbreaking team in the American League, if not all of baseball. When the Red Sox won in 2004 and eliminated the curse of not winning since 1918, the longest losing streak in the American League belonged to the Cleveland Indians, who haven’t won since 1948.

Gosh thanks. It’s like being the second oldest person in the world and then the oldest one dies. Now what is there to look forward to? I know the preceding analogy is not logical, but that’s still how it feels – not logical. My teams never win. And I feel so lonely as a Tribe fan in a nation of Red Sox fanatics after they have finally won.

Some New Englanders don’t even know what baseball is, but they are Red Sox fans. They may not understand the concept of first base, but they love Big Papi. Why? Everyone else does. Heck, even I like them and I am an infiltrator living under a Chief Wahoo hat. Yes, I really do think there are transmitters hidden in Fenway Park sending out brain wave signals through the radio.

The Red Sox became my second favorite baseball team in 1975, in an era when my favorite team, the Cleveland Indians, didn’t pay their players enough money to buy tickets to the World Series. And the play on the field showed it.

>From Sam McDowell to Cory Snyder, I hung my hopes on false promise and I dreamed of knowing how it feels to lose the World Series like Red Sox fans. I later learned to be careful what you wish for.

I was in high school near Cleveland in 1975. It was in the famous sixth game when Bernie Carbo hit a pinch-hit eighth-inning homerun when I began receiving transmissions from Fenway Park.

Four innings later, Carlton Fisk magically waved a foul ball back into fair territory for a game-winning homerun and I started plotting a move east.

Cleveland, I had discovered, was a great place to be from.

I cheered in that 1975 series for the Red Sox simply because back then in October, if you were an Indians fan, you always had to pick a team not named “Indians.” It was a law.

So since Pete Rose played for the Reds and I hated him (for different reasons than many of you hate him now), I chose to root for the Red Sox.

Seven years later after a stint at a quiet little university in Athens, Ohio, I arrived in New England. And within no-time I was cheering for Roger Clemens, Wade Boggs, Bruce Hurst and Oil Can Boyd, who once, in a visit to Cleveland, wondered why anyone would build a stadium on the ocean - or as it’s called in Cleveland, Lake Erie. That Red Sox team was a fun quirky team and Wade Boggs ate chicken before every game. Talk about transmissions from Fenway Park.

It was 1986, a decade had passed, I had settled in New England and the Indians still stunk so I cheered again, and again the Red Sox lost – but that time it was in a manner that Shakespeare couldn’t have imagined.

But then something bizarre happened in the 1990s. A flying saucer landed in Cleveland.

Yes, my old city quit whining and invested in itself and built a brand new baseball field. With that came a new baseball team that actually won until it lost in, yes, a manner befitting the Boston Red Sox or in the manner of the Red Sox football heartbreak twins, the Cleveland Browns, who were determined to invent the legend of John Elway.

So by 2004, when the Red Sox finally won the World Series, they were a distant second favorite team because the team of my childhood – the team you are supposed to root for unless they have been bad for more than four decades – had been actually great within the last four decades. So I didn’t cheer for the Red Sox championship as I could have in 1986.

And so here we go again into the baseball playoffs. My favorite team is in it. Hope springs eternal blah, blah, blah. I wear my Tribe hat with pride. I wear my flag with pride too. It’s like this:

My two favorite baseball players from that 1990s Cleveland Indians team were the sluggers Jim Thome and Albert Belle. I liked Thome because he was a great guy and I liked Belle because he was such a jerk. Yes, but he was our jerk.

And so although I don’t much travel overseas except by radio wave, I can imagine using that as a defense of George W. Bush in conversation. He may be a jerk, but he’s our jerk.

And I hope my team wins.

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