A couple of week ago, at one of the local poker games I attend when I need extra spending money, the host, a guy we call the Big Ruskie (though he is, in fact, a midsize man of German/Irish extraction), looked at me during a lull in the game and said:

" You know, Stevie, I’ve never believed in ESP or any of that kind of crap. But I really do have a feeling, a deep feeling, a feeling in my soul, that this is the year the Red Sox will win the World Series. "

I wish I could report that the Big Ruskie was pulling my leg. In fact, he uttered this statement with such naked hope, such complete and obvious infatuation, that his cheeks were literally glowing. I wanted, very briefly, to weep.

And then a second impulse seized me, a much less generous — though perhaps psychologically healthier — impulse. I wanted to tell him to just shut up.

I love the Ruskie. But looking at him across that poker table, I felt I was gazing into the bloated, half-cracked heart of every single Red Sox fan on earth. Because every single Red Sox fan on earth (whether or not they say this aloud, though most of them do) truly believes that this is the year the Sox are going to vanquish the Yankees, break the curse, win it all.

So let me be the first, at the outset of yet another season, in this blessed year of 85 AS (After Series), to deliver to the entire Red Sox Nation the same simple but timeless message: shut up.

Shut up about Pedro and how he’s the greatest pitcher on earth if his shoulder holds up. Shut up about Nomar and how he should be a more vocal leader. Shut up about Manny Ramirez not running out ground balls. Shut up about the iffy bullpen. Shut up about Grady Little and his apparently middling IQ. And for God’s sake, shut up about how we got nothing in return for Roger and Mo.

Shut up.

Shut-up-shut-up-shut-up.

Now look: I’ve been a sports fan my whole life and I’ve rooted for the same three teams all along. I rooted for the Oakland A’s during the darkest days of that franchise, when they routinely lost 90 games per season. I rooted for the Golden State Warriors (the Golden State Warriors, for God’s sake!) through the entire Manute Bol era. I am on intimate terms with the agonies of fandom. What’s more, I’ve traveled this fine country of ours and witnessed the behaviors of numerous sports habitats.

And yes, it’s true that most fans are prone to unconditional complaint.

But I hope you’ll believe me when I observe (with no intention to offend) that I have never encountered a group of fans as whiny, sanctimonious, and unforgiving as Red Sox Nation.

I have my theories about why this might be. The ingrained humiliation of watching the Yankees pile up championships leaps to mind. So does Boston’s more generalized inferiority complex. So does Bill Buckner’s soul-crushing error. Sometimes, it seems to me that Red Sox fans actually derive a certain masochistic pleasure from their team’s futility. (They get to indulge in the endless pleasures of grievance.)

In the end, though, I don’t really care about the whys. I just want Red Sox fans to shut up. Shut up about the team’s failure to sign a single overpriced free agent. Shut up about what a bust Tony Clark was. Shut up about Casey Fossum’s missing change-up. Shut up about the new ownership’s debt service.

I have, of course, asked Red Sox fans to shut up on an individual basis. I have frequently asked my friend Zach to shut up. This is especially important because Zach is that saddest species of Red Sox fan: the rabid optimist. Last year, when the team leapt out to a 27-9 record, he was ready to start setting the rotation for the playoffs.

Then, of course, the team did its usual late-summah swoon.

This is generally how it goes with the Sox. They start strong and finish weak. Part of the reason for this — according to me — is that the players simply get tired of listening to the fans, who are always one strike-out, one bonehead error, one gopherball away from crying bloody murder. In short: the players would like the fans to shut up.

They can’t say this, though. Because if they did, the fans would go into that self-righteous how-dare-you-I-pay-good-money-to-watch-you-spoiled-babies mode that is even more tiresome than their usual tirades.

And here I think of my pal Artie, who actually does pay good money to see the Sox — he shares a set of season tickets with a bunch of his friends — and who occasionally invites me along to games. Oh, Artie! How sad it is to watch his transformation, from the guarded optimism of May to the disconsolate rage of August. This is a man, after all, who tapes every single Red Sox game he can’t see and gets furious if you tell him the score before he has a chance to watch it.

Artie is the more common kind of Red Sox fan, the fatalist, and he knows he’s locked in a terrible cycle of self-punishment, but he’s helpless. He’s given a significant portion of his heart to the Sox and they have inflicted the standard crack down the middle, and there’s nothing he can do but yell at his television and radio in blind frustration.

The thing is, to a true Red Sox fan, the idea of shutting up is simply impossible. It’s become the entire raison d’être of their allegiance. To allow the team’s flagrant and repeated misdeeds to go uncriticized would be, in their own twisted logic, to let the team down.

And the sort-of-beautiful-but-really-more-pathetic thing about being a Red Sox fan is that they’ll never run out of things to bitch about. Because baseball is a game of endless mistakes, miscalculations, and misfortunes; so sure, Varitek may go three for five on Tuesday, with a nifty basket catch in front of the backstop. But on Wednesday, he’ll muff the throw down to second on a sacrifice bent — are you kidding me, the thing was hanging up there like it was filled with helium! — and the ball will go bounding into center field and Red Sox Nation will rise as one to denounce him.

It’s such a dysfunctional relationship.

In closing, I’d like the Red Sox Nation to consider a simple exercise in logic:

a) The Red Sox do not seem to improve when bitched about.

b) You bitch about them incessantly.

If you agree that a and b are true, then

c) Shut up.

Steve Almond can be reached at sbalmond@earthlink.net