Andover baseball blogger has worldwide reach

By Jason Tait
Staff Writer

ANDOVER --Friday, October 29, 2004. It started as a little Web site for Ernie Paicopolos and some buddies to "talk" baseball. But in the past four years, the site has grown from local to global, with some 1.4 million visits in the last year alone.The site is FenwayNation.com and even Paicopolos had no idea just how large that nation was. Paicopolos has Internet visitors from Europe to American Samoa and New Hampshire to California.

"It's difficult to comprehend how extensive and popular the Red Sox are," he said. When he started the site, he "honestly did not have a sense of the global reach of Red Sox interest," he said. It was that interest that led to Paicopolos' rushed drive home Wednesday night from Medfield, where he had gone to watch the game that gave the team its first World Series win in 86 years. He was up until 3:30 a.m. yesterday writing and loading photos. He chose "Redemption 2004" to headline the entire package. "I absolutely felt a need to get back ASAP to update the site," Paicopolos said of driving home from Medfield. "I had received so many e-mails from around the world telling how FenwayNation is relied upon as their key Sox connection."

A Somerville native, he has been following the Red Sox since age 5 when in 1956 his father took him to Fenway Park. The Red Sox beat the Baltimore Orioles in both games of a doubleheader, and he still has the ticket stub tacked up in his office at Cambridge-based Opinion Dynamics Corporation, a marketing research company.

Paicopolos still ponders how the Red Sox retain their draw on New England natives who fan out around the globe. "That is the $64,000 question," he said. "There is some special bond that develops when you finally commit to this team. It's almost indescribable, but everyone in the 'Nation' knows it instinctively."