Fans Should Simply Watch Games, Not Disrupt Them

Those poor citizens of Boston who insist on rooting for the Red Sox ought to be used to aggravation by now. But when they saw another disappointment taking shape, they responded by littering Fenway Park with debris.

Now that was a great idea, wasn’t it?

The Sox are losing, so let me heave this water bottle on the field. That’ll fix it.

Instead of running out and buying books by kindred souls like longtime Red Sox devotees Stephen King or Doris Kearns Goodwin, they chose to behave like louts.

Maybe what they need is an appointment with a shrink. Here, at no charge, is what Dr. Leonard Zaichkowsky, a sports psychologist at Boston University, thinks about their behavior.

“It’s crazy,” he said. “We have seen this phenomenon elsewhere in South America and Europe. I spent some time in Australia and it was the same for Aussie football.”

As for Boston fans, Zaichkowsky offered this explanation.

“There was the frustration of losing to the Yankees, the Evil Empire,” he said. “That’s really terrible. The Curse of the Bambino is there. There is a century of history impacting the fans, who learn it from their parents and grandparents.

“Then you have the other evil people, the umpires, ganging up on them, too. It’s fueled by a few too many Budweisers and it becomes social contagion, like the wave, with everybody hooting and hollering.”

Dr. Daniel Wann of Murray State University, has done extensive studies on fan behavior. He thinks the Yankees connection was central to the unpleasantness in Boston.

“That’s the disposition theory,” he said. “Fans like two kinds of games, ones where their team wins and ones where their rival loses.

“It’s one thing if your best friend runs off with your fiancee, but if your worst enemy runs off with your fiancee, that’s as bad as it gets.”

So there were the Yankees, running off with their 34th American league pennant, all of them won since 1921, three years after the Red Sox last won the World Series.

Gimme a water bottle.

“There is a psychological connection for fans,” Wann said. “The team is an extension of who they are. If you identify as a Red Sox fan, to some extent you learn to live with frustration. But if you feel you’re getting gypped by the umps, it’s not just the Red Sox, it’s you being gypped. As a fan, there’s nothing you can do. The players come back the next day. The fan? What can he do? It’s almost a control issue. There’s nothing they can do. That lack of control can be problematic.

“Our research shows highly identified fans are better off psychologically. They are less depressed and less lonely. It’s beneficial. Camaraderie with others is a buffer for negativity in their lives.”

Now it’s not like the Red Sox invented frustration. Check out the Brooklyn Dodgers of the ‘40s and ‘50s, who absorbed their share of punishment from a previous generation of Yankees. Their fans skunked off into the night, mumbling, “Wait till next year,” instead of heaving stuff on the field.

“Our society has changed,” Zaichkowsky said. “Television socializes us with bizarre behavior. Rationality overrides emotions at home. At games, emotions overpower the intellectual.”

That might explain why a couple of years ago a Wrigley Field fan, outraged when Randy Myers gave up a home run, hopped out of the stands to confront the pitcher. The fact that Myers dabbled in martial arts made this a bad idea.

And this season, a fan at Milwaukee’s County Stadium decided to go after Houston’s Bill Spiers, who was doing nothing more offensive than playing right field for the Astros.

Fans generally stayed in the stands before, although there have been some departures from that rule. There was the case in Ebbets Field, for example, when a Dodgers fan went after umpire George Magerkurth, pummeling him to the ground.

It was a dandy brawl and it would be nice to report that it was triggered strictly by the fan’s passion for his team. Unfortunately, that was not the case. It turned out the guy was creating a diversion while his pickpocket partner worked the stands.