Journeys of Jack Tripper

Cognitive dissonance is the condition of unease or anxiety caused when one's beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors come into conflict with one another. It's a core concept of persuasive theory, and one I've been teaching for seven years now. I always considered myself such an expert on persuasion so as to be completely immune to appeals utilizing cognitive dissonance, because my behavior is so deliberated-upon that I don't really see any conflicts between how I behave and how I feel.

This week has sent my cognition into a state of dissonance more dischordant than a Philip Glass composition.

The reason?

I hate Red Sox fans. HATE them. There are many reasons to hate Red Sox fans, but here are several.

1. The vast majority of the Red Sox fans in the Tampa Bay area are bandwagoners, realizing their support for the Sox only in the midst and denouement of the 2004 World Series. They are not true fans, but fans only because they want to sing when they're winning.

2. They are obnoxious. Far more obnoxious than any other team's fans. Sox fan is "likes to fight guy" combined with "rich, snooty kid with all the nice furniture down the street." Sox fan sees no problem with being a guest in your home and telling you to shut up. Sox fan sees no contradiction in mocking you in the face after salvaging one game from a four game series -- barely avoiding being swept by "your minor league team." Sox fan literally BOWS DOWN to Manny Ramirez when he looks up to his adoring followers. Sox fan sits in your season-ticket seat and claims in Red Sox Nation everything is general admission.

3. They are fans of a team with such an astronomical payroll that it is six times your team's. This is the equivalent of driving your 1998 Jetta with 157,000 miles on it and having a dude pull up next to you in his Maybach he bought with money handed down to him by his dead grandmother. "Your car sucks," Sox fan says.

4. They are unable to appreciate the value of free pizza. One strikeout away from the third ten-K game of the series, they found themselves, even with a seven-run lead in the ninth, incapable of cheering for Travis Harper to throw a strikeout. They see no problem with running up the score and humiliating anyone.

5. They live in the Tampa Bay area, many for 20 years or more, and are still incapable of supporting the team that is an economic focus for a lot of activity in Pinellas and Hillsborough counties. They cling to their past so tightly you expect them to still wear Underoos, and some do. This is my main point of contention with Red Sox fan. "Oh, I was born and raised a Sox fan," they say. That's fantastic. But that's your past. As I told Sox fan at the Hangout on Wednesday night, angry as he watched highlights of the drubbing we gave them that evening, "You live in Tampa Bay! You should support the home team!" He replied, "But the Sox are my past, man. My history." "Yes, your PAST," I retorted. "Do you still beat off to pictures of your high school girlfriend?" ... to which he had to be restrained and I ran into the other room giggling.

Yet there is one interesting characteristic of Sox fan -- at least as far as female Sox fan goes.

They are hot.

It didn't escape me the last time I was in Boston that Beantown's women are smokin', but not every Bostonian is a Red Sox fan, only the vast majority. And I'm not even sure that all the Sox fans in the Bay area are from New England, but it is consistent that if I see a woman in Red Sox gear, she is the kind I would buy a beer for at the bar and then have her walk away and give it to her brother, like in that Heineken spot.

So last night was another trip to the Trop, in my increasingly-dirty Carl Crawford jersey and dedicated to not eating any hot dogs for once. As usual, I snag my section 145 ticket, and seeing as how my section was so predominantly Raysian on Tuesday, I predicted the same for Thursday.

Instead, I was in a Red sea.

Sox fans in front of me. Sox fans behind. To my left. To my right. In fact, there were Sox fans IN MY SEAT and I sat down next to them, calmly telling the dude that I didn't mind him sitting in my seat but that if whomever had the seat *I* was in came calling, I'd have to kick him out.

As it turned out, seat-stealer and his crew were the only non-obnoxious Sox fans in the section. The girl next to me, curiously decked out in a yellow halter dress, seemed to be barely a baseball fan at all -- and was as good looking as anyone I've ever seen at a Rays game. Of course, she was seat-stealer's girlfriend, and I spent most of the game talking to her as if she were completely single. A senior business major at Wellsley, she was a native Floridian and thus visiting Red Sox nation on a Miami passport. That explained the unfamiliarity and the "do baseball games go into overtime?" questions. The four were in town on vacation, had been drinking all day, and were overall fun and low-key. I'm not even sure they were real Sox fans, because they didn't really exhibit any of the typical characteristics.

Meanwhile, there are more gorgeous women in Red Sox gear everywhere. I wonder if I really could hit on a Red Sox fan. It was hard enough for me to deal with the Yankee fan I did the dating dance with earlier this year -- could I handle it? What's wrong with me, that I'm finding such obviously incompatible women attractive?

The dissonance is enough to break glass.

National Geographic presents this photo of a highly endangered species: unobnoxious Red Sox fan.

This is essay #6 in an ill-fated "30 in 30" campaign.