Performing Issy

The pedagogy of “outlaw teaching” is presented as a way of bringing risk into the classroom, as Joyce encourages us to do. Reading Ulysses aloud is one way of getting students to become familiar with risk-taking, and some tongue-in-cheek guidelines for such a reading are presented. An extended example of the benefits of such an approach is given with a reading of the “Night Lessons” chapter of Finnegans Wake, as a baseball game between the Boston Red Sox and the St. Louis Cardinals, sometime prior to the selling of Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees. Issy, the writer of the footnotes in this chapter, is rearticulated through narrative voicing as a baseball announcer, and the section takes on new life through the admittedly strained analogy of an inning-by-inning analysis of 20 pages of Finnegans Wake. The value of the enterprise is in its method: the author is modeling an approach to centrifugal reading that transforms the Wake into a reading game.

When outgroup negativity trumps ingroup positivity: Fans of the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees place greater value on rival losses than own-team gains

Much research suggests that ingroup positivity is more central than outgroup negativity. We argue that this conclusion is incomplete as a description of the totality of intergroup emotions. In 4 studies, we use a novel measure of willingness to pay for intergroup gains and losses to examine the intergroup emotions of fans of the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees. Results indicate that pleasure from a powerful rival’s losses can outstrip that from gains of one’s own group (Studies 1–2), and these patterns extend into domains not immediately relevant to the competition (Studies 3–4). A reversal in the competitive position of the two teams in the 2012–2013 season allowed us to examine whether fluctuations in competitive status moderated this pattern (Studies 3–4). Indeed, fans of the rival teams frequently valued outgroup losses more than ingroup gains, and this effect was particularly strong when one’s own team was behind in the rivalry.

We Believe

This chapter examines the diasporic quality of Red Sox Nation and the effects of winning two World Series on its (formerly “angst-ridden”) citizenry. For Boston Red Sox fans, the definition of home has always been blurry. Red Sox fans have always been part of a diasporic New England community more imagined than real, but maintaining a strong identity. Even in its most parochial eras, the Red Sox have reached far beyond Fenway Park, rendering “Boston” as home for people in Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, parts of Connecticut, and the rest of Massachusetts. In the 2004 championship season, the Red Sox surpassed the New York Yankees as Major League Baseball's most profitable road attraction. This chapter considers how the creation of Red Sox Nation turned the team into a national phenomenon, “enjoying a community that is rooted to whatever space it occupies at any given moment.”

Digital Media and Sports Advertising

Advertising and sponsorship in the area of sports continue to be a prominent way for companies to receive brand exposure to a desired target audience and obtain a brand association with a popular entity. The fundamental advantages of advertising and sponsorship in sports now combine with digital media to provide more extensive and unique opportunities for companies to promote their brands and potentially better connect with their customers. It is clear that digital media do not replace more traditional forms of sports advertising and sponsorship, but rather represent additional vehicles for promotional communication. This chapter begins by providing an explanation of the goals and advantageous characteristics of a sports sponsorship for a company. This review is necessary because developing an agreement with the sports property is required for sponsors to obtain exclusive rights to content (footage of that sport), and logos they could use on their product packaging or in their advertisements to better communicate a brand association. The chapter then offers four examples of companies using digital media to execute their sponsorships with sports properties: Sprite and the NBA, Verizon and the NFL, AT&T and the Masters Golf Tournament, and Wise Snack Foods and the Boston Red Sox and New York Mets. A fifth example looks at how sponsors are using another prominent media destination for the sports audience, ESPN. The chapter reveals the endless possibilities of what a sponsorship using digital media can include in the area of sports.