Being the only one to attend my 1st Annual Red Sox Opening Day 6am Breakfast, I had a lot of time to myself to think. And what struck me about this season is how oddly familiar it felt. Hometown favorites make it big and go on a world tour of sold out shows. Where had I seen that before?

Then it hit me: Rock.

So I started thinking – the Sox aren’t that far off from one of those 80’s rock bands you see on Behind The Music. Think about it: starting out, and for years sometimes, you have a band with a small but rabidly loyal fanbase that attends every show, buys any and all merchandise, and argues about your best shows and who heard of you first (for the record, I would never claim to be one of these die-hards – I came into my fandom like many of us find our favorite bands: to impress a girl. That said, the fandom remains).

So you chip away at your career for years, you play to sold-out hometown crowds at old, cramped venues. But then one day, one day you hit it big.

The Sox’s big album was 2004’s Don’t Call it a Curse, and suddenly they found themselves thrust into the national spotlight, something of a local curiosity made public. As a fan, you struggle with this. You’re glad to see your boys get the recognition they deserve, especially when the crap band from the city to the south is used to hogging the spotlight. But you’re torn. This is YOUR band. You saw them first, you know their songs by heart and you write their lyrics on the instep of your All-Stars.

But fame is a river, and it only flows downstream. Like it or not, the Sox are in the big time now, rubbing elbows with celebrities and on the cover of the magazines. Suddenly, EVERYONE is a fan. And you fight the feeling it somehow dilutes the earnestness of your own fandom.

And then, just when you’re comfortable with this new reality, then the real fame comes. They release a second album, a stellar, near perfect blockbuster in 2007’s Destiny. Overnight, they go from local curiosity, one hit wonder, to Rock Juggernaut. And you celebrate, you play it over and over, but you start to worry. Somehow, is it possible all of this attention will go to their heads? Will it change them? Will they throw away some local kid who can kill a drum solo to sign Johnny Marr?

You start hearing them on the radio. Then in commercials. Commercials for stuff YOU DON’T LIKE. What’s going on? Are they selling out?

Then it comes: they’re opening their next world tour in Japan. You think for a second about going, but you know you can’t. So you listen to it on the radio and wish you were there. They’re selling out stadiums. They’re staying out all night. They. Have. Made. It.

We all know how this story usually ends. Drugs, Money, Egos. A founding member leaves. Innocence is lost, the rare quality of having something that is yours, and suddenly the band you loved, the one who’s first album you still play, is just a bunch of glam guys in silly stretch pants.

Is this, then, the fate which awaits the Sox? Lord, I can only hope not. I hope that while all the other bands disintegrate around them, they never forget who they are, or where they came from. They may still sell out around the country, but they’ll come back to that cramped little club on Lansdowne for the homecoming shows.

And sure, you may have to spend your rent money getting a ticket on Craigslist instead of at the door, but once you’re inside, the rock sounds just as sweet.