The Joy of Sox Movie

That’s the thing about the Internet – once information gets dumped on it, there’s no telling who’s going to latch onto it, and what they’re going to do with it. That just happened to me, in response to a recent Globe update on our project (go to this link for the article: http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/02/15/can_good_vibes_fuel_red_sox_victories). We've had some crackpot responses to “Joy of Sox” in the past, but this was a new one, and it came from an apparently reputable source – NESN.

For you non-New Englanders, NESN is the New England Sports Network, the regional cable channel that broadcasts all the Red Sox games (yes, you have to have cable to see any Sox games – apart from the 2 or 3 national Game of the Week broadcasts every year. Which puts me, an erstwhile Sox maven, in a bit of a dilemma – technologically backward and morally opposed to the gazillion options of cable, but without any other recourse for following the subject of my life’s work. I think it’s time to enter the 21st century and sign up). I was contacted by one of NESN’s producers to see if there might be “a nexus to discuss” (TV people actually use words like that) between the “Joy of Sox” project and a new reality show they’re developing, called “Sox Appeal”. It’s a dating show at Fenway(!), with each week’s contestant being fixed up with three blind dates lasting two innings each during the course of a game – the hope is that one of the dates will “click”.

I was having trouble seeing any real connection to “Joy”, but I had the good sense to keep on listening to the pitch as the link was explained to me (fortunately, the allure of NESN’s influence overrode my initial skepticism). Of course, I should have been the one doing the explaining, but the idea was simple – if our theory is true that fan energy during a game can influence players’ performance, then wouldn’t that same energy also influence other types of high-stakes performance, liking dating? I’d never thought of that connection, but he had me – the highly coherent group energy field generated during a great ballgame should also be very conducive to enhanced bonding in dating couples!

The more I thought about it, the less hokey it seemed, and so I agreed to go to the NESN studio to be interviewed for the promotional campaign of “Sox Appeal”. It was a trip, not only because Seanbaker Carter, the producer and interviewer, was really into the energy concepts and asked excellent probing questions, but also because the on-camera interview put me in a role I’d never anticipated – dating adviser! After I’d explained how powerful energy fields can be created at a ballpark, and how they just might influence the emotions of people there (including dating couples), it wasn’t that much of a stretch for him to ask me what advice I might have for dating couples. I had to confess that my expertise was a bit dated (so to speak), as my most recent date happened well over 30 years ago (but it went quite well, as I recall).

But I still managed to come up with some tried and true profundities, like “be yourself”, and “just enjoy the moment”. He seemed to thinkt those were useful ideas, but I’m not so sure. Either way, the research possibilities from this application of energy concepts is intriguing. Suppose we were able to have the RNG monitor all 8 games that “Sox Appeal” will be involved in, a total of 24 blind dates. If our monitor detects unusual energy peaks during three games, for example, we could predict that the first inning date on June 2, the fifth inning date on July 24, and the ninth inning date on August 11 would be most likely to succeed. There would be enough data points that we’d have a chance at some true statistical significance. What a hoot if the results actually showed a solid correlation. We’d have to chalk up another victory for technology, knowing that the science of dating would never be the same again.