By Gina Horan
Boston Native Presides Over Popular Baseball Fan Club in The Villages
Tom Casey
RSNV began: Red Sox Nation Club here in The Villages was founded in 2011 by a gentleman named Art Plant and I took over as president in April of 2023.
The Club: We are 600 strong with 25 on the leadership team. We take bus trips to Tampa twice a year to see the team play and we also get down to spring training in Fort Myers each season. We meet monthly and have speakers such as former players and we also have a 501(c)(3) foundation that supports local youth baseball and softball.
The Curse of the Bambino lifted in 2004: When the Red Sox defeated the Yankees in four straight games during the ALCS, I was living in Connecticut about an hour and 15 minutes from Yankee Stadium. My daughter was studying at Northeastern in Boston at the time and I drove over for the victory parade, where I purchased a championship flag that I later placed on my father’s grave because he never got to see the Red Sox win a World Series.
The moment it happened: It’s been 20 years, but I do remember game seven of the ALCS, specifically because the Sox took a huge lead and I was still nervous so I got on my knees in the kitchen and said, “God are you going to do this to me again, are you going to rip my guts out?” Then Johnny Damon hit a monstrous home run and sure enough, they won!
Other hobbies: I’ve been here in The Villages since 2016 and I play a lot of golf and we enjoy socializing. I continue to work in my prior field as a financial planner and I’m also very involved in my church, which is called Church at the Springs.
A.L. vs. N.L. at home: My wife Linda is a fan only by marriage. We met in 1975 during the Reds/Red Sox World Series when I was working in Cincinnati. She is still a Reds fan but we make it work as it’s all in fun.
Fondest memory: When I was 9, my dad came to me and said, “You aren’t going to school today.” That day, (September 28, 1960) we went to see Ted Williams play his last game at Fenway and he hit a home run in his last at-bat. I’ll never forget it.
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Gina moved to central Florida in August of 2021 from the San Francisco Bay Area. She has a bachelor’s degree in Linguistics and spent 10 years as a fashion editor, columnist and food writer for The Knight Ridder Newspaper group. She was also a photo stylist and covered concerts, fashion shows and festivals all over Northern California. In 2000, she joined KSAN radio as a morning show co-host and produced the news and sports content there for 4 years. She also covered travel, events and the restaurant scene for KRON-Bay TV. She is a veteran bartender and has worked in hospitality on and off since high school. Her passions include travel, road trips, history books, baseball, tasting menus and most of all, landing in a new city with no map or guidebook. Gina lives in Oxford with her mom, cats and baby hamster.
