BOSTON FANS FULL OF IT.

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI

The setting was Yawkey Way, the avenue of food carts and souvenir shops that nudges the third-base stands at Fenway Park, as the Boston Red Sox faithful swarmed in the hours before last Friday's game against the Angels.

Young locals in their heroes' red-and-blue-trimmed jerseys lined up at the park's steel portals.

Others prowled in small packs for their first (or their fourth) beers of the day.

Boston's morning newspapers had been full of hopeful speculation about a grudge-match series for the American League pennant between the Red Sox, who were a win away from sweeping the Angels out of the playoffs, and the New York Yankees, then two wins from disposing of the Minnesota Twins.

``Go Yanks!'' the city's tabloid paper declared in a page-one headline, reasoning that a long-awaited Red Sox championship would be sweeter if the club knocked off its hated rival along the way.

``The question,'' a young man in a Jason Varitek shirt announced to two friends as they walked, ``is 'Can you root for the Yankees?' ''

In his 20s, he spoke with the gravity a Harvard student might reserve for a discussion of the relative merits of Keynesian and neoclassical economics.

`"It's really a philosophical question,'' he said of the Yankees conundrum, ``that reveals who you are as a person.''

His friends stared at him. They waited for him to answer his own question. But the kid in the Varitek shirt had nothing left.

``I'll shut up now,'' he said.

You've got to hand it to Red Sox fans.

They're dead certain that rooting for the Olde Town Team is a ritual imbued with transcendent meaning.

Whether or not they have any idea what that meaning might be.

They're unfailing in their loyalty to the team of their fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers.

Even though it has brought the generations more pain than joy.

They're entranced by a supernatural explanation for their team's historic failures.

Never mind the role played by the franchise's refusal until 1959 to avail itself of the talents of black players.

The Red Sox did sweep the Angels last Friday, the Yankees did get past the Twins, and so they've got the American League Championship Series they wanted.

But Boston has seen its aces Curt Schilling and Pedro Martinez outpitched by Mike Mussina and Jon Lieber as New York has taken a 2-0 lead.

Now the scene shifts from Yankee Stadium to Fenway Park for games tonight, Saturday and (maybe) Sunday.

The question, you might tell the kid in the No. 33 shirt, is whether we're supposed to pity Red Sox fans or envy them.

Sure, they haven't celebrated a World Series championship since Sept. 11, 1918, the day Carl Mays pitched the Red Sox to a Game 6 victory over the Chicago Cubs, a little over a year before the sale of Babe Ruth to the Yankees that is the root of the Curse of the Bambino.

Sure, they've suffered through Game 7 losses in the World Series of 1946, 1967, 1975 and 1986 and the ALCS of 2003; the tiebreaker playoff-game loss to Cleveland in 1948; the collapse and Bucky Dent's home run in 1978.

Sure, they've learned that hope is followed by disappointment as surely as the Green Monster rises in the East.

Yet, they keep coming back for more. Not only that, but after 85 years without a World Series championship, they have the audacity to call out the Yankees just to make the ALCS more picturesque.

You'd think under the circumstances they'd take a World Series title however they could get it, even if they won ugly against the Twins and the Houston Astros.

Red Sox fans these days are like gamblers on a losing streak, trying to get it all back on one horse.

On Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica is an Irish pub called Sonny McLean's, a Boston sports fans' hangout, where non-regulars showing up to watch Tuesday's Red Sox-Yankees opener found all the bar and table spaces reserved.

Before the game, the waitresses spun a wheel of fortune bearing the names of the Red Sox players.

Whichever name came up, a home run by him would trigger dollar-off beer.

On the first try, the name that came up was that of closer Keith Foulke.

They spun again.

At Fenway Park, the wheel has been coming up wrong since 1918.

They keep spinning again.

To me, an L.A. native who has been to one Fenway game in 18 years, it's the greatest park in baseball.

Because of its weird contours, it holds history like no other. Because of its history, its best day is yet to come.

Even if you don't like the Red Sox, and even if you find their fans way over the top, you look at the old building on Yawkey Way on nights like this and think there's a spirit there ought to be bottled and put to general use.