Cool story. Mine is similar, but a few years later, 1975. The amazing rookie seasons of Lynn and Rice, and that outfield with Evans. Fisk, Yaz, Tiant, so many great players. Bill Lee a great favorite, obviously. The Fisk HR in game 6. Never knowing if we would have been over the top had Rice not been injured. When you consider how much talent CIN had, it's amazing we took them to seven, and still were in the game till the last at-bat.
Most people nowadays have no idea what it was like to be a fan back in 1975 in a small town in CT around two hours away from Boston. Never mind no phone or Internet, even cable TV was just coming through at that point in time, and my parents weren't going to pay the extra $$$ just so we could get WSBK TV38 so I could watch the Sox. For me the only way to follow the team on a regular basis was the AM radio, WTIC 1080. Ned Woods and Jim Martin. Night after night. Staying up late for the West Coast swings. Reading box scores and stats out of the newspaper. Going to the one newsstand in town that got papers from Boston, looking but not buying, hoping someone left an old copy at the diner. I did have a subscription to Baseball Digest, read that cover to cover when it came in the mail. Reading TV Guide as soon as it came out to find out if the Sox were going to be on the Game of the Week or Monday Night Baseball, planning the weekend around that if they were. You had to be passionate to follow the sport back in the old days.
And, as others have mentioned, for me the passion is on ice. The game is just too slow paced. As a special treat, during the playoffs the games get even slower. There's so many other things to do with one's time these days. Committing 2.5 hours * 162 games just isn't gonna happen, especially with the current ownership not re-signing its home grown talent.