By Spike Eskin

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – Jonathan Papelbon hasn’t been a member of the Philadelphia Phillies for very long, but he already notices a difference between Phillies fans and Red Sox fans.

“The difference between Boston and Philadelphia, the Boston fans are a little bit more hysterical when it comes to the game of baseball,” Papelbon said in an interview with 94WIP’s Angelo Cataldi and The Morning Team. “The Philly fans tend to know the game a little better, being in the National League, you know, the way the game is played.

I’ve had a guy take off his prosthetic leg and throw it in the bullpen in Boston,” Papelbon said. Even though Red Sox fans can be extreme at times, Papelbon used it to his advantage. “It’s a religion. It’s a way of life. They come to the field and they expect certain things out of players. It’s an environment where you put up or shut up. I enjoyed that. It got my motor running every day.”

When he became a free-agent, Papelbon says he expected more from the Red Sox. “It was a situation where the Red Sox didn’t really come at me the way I was expecting them to come at me in the off-season. And I told my agent that the first team that shows me interest and shows me loyalty, I’m going to show that right back to them, and that was Philadelphia,” he said.

What if that team showing loyalty and interest would have been the Yankees? “You hate ’em when you play in between the lines. But there’s a fine line here. That hate and that passion to beat them was in between the lines, and that was it. I would have definitely entertained the decision to go to the Yankees if that was there, but obviously it wasn’t,” he said.

“I really don’t even care to be totally honest. Honestly, I could not be happier,” Papelbon said.

Listen to the entire interview with Jonathan Papelbon: