Red Sox Nation Fans Out

Gary Vincent grew up in Medford, Mass., and even though he owns a Redondo Beach restaurant and has lived in Southern California since 1982 he has always been a Boston Red Sox fan.

Thursday, when the Red Sox play their final game of a three-game series at Angel Stadium, Vincent will be on a bus with 99 other Boston fans heading to Anaheim.

“We actually had to buy 200 tickets to get 100,” he said, explaining that his group was forced into buying a package of Red Sox and Texas Rangers tickets. “You know, since the Angels won the pennant a few years ago, we have a harder time ...”

But they’ll be there. It is, after all, tradition.

When the Angels play host to the Red Sox beginning tonight, and again when the New York Yankees arrive for three games starting Friday, the Angel Stadium crowd will include more than a fair share of fans rooting for the visitors.

“There’s a lot of them, and they are all over the country,” Dodgers pitcher Derek Lowe said of the fans who follow his former team. “It amazes me.”

Lowe, who played more than seven seasons for the Red Sox and had a key role in their 2004 World Series championship, can’t explain the steadfast allegiance of Boston fans.

“Maybe it’s the mentality there,” he said. “They are passionate. And it’s generational. It gets passed on.”

That’s the way it was for Vincent, who said that until last year he could call the Angels’ ticket office and get a block of seats for Red Sox fans. Then, last year when he made that call, he was told the games were sold out. Suspicious, Vincent had a friend call and say the tickets were for a wedding party.

“One of my guys said the tickets were for a Boston kid marrying an L.A. girl,” Vincent said. “We had to pull a few legs but it worked. We got the tickets. It was a blast. We actually had a mock wedding in the stands. We brought a blow-up bride. We proverbially blew up the bride.”

It is not only Yankees and Red Sox fans that have that kind of national loyalty and cold-blooded chicanery. Chicago Cubs fans are always a loud and obvious presence at Dodgers and San Diego Padres games. In football, Oakland Raiders fans appear all over the country. And although their popularity has waned, the Dallas Cowboys spent nearly two decades as “America’s Team.”

Thomas Boyd, an associate professor of sports marketing at Cal State Fullerton with a special interest in baseball marketing, said there are four reasons why some sports organizations are able to go national and why their fans become so loyal.

“Success on the field is No. 1,” Boyd said. “Second, how good do fans believe the organization is? Do fans feel like ownership is trying to put a winning team on the field? Third is the sense of shared histories and traditions fans have with the team. Did the person go to games as a child? Does the dislocated fan call home and talk about the team? It feeds into the underlying wish to associate with things back home. The fourth thing is that fandom allows people to identify themselves in some way. They choose a team that tells others what kind of people they are.”

Boyd said one of the reasons the Cowboys became so popular -- besides winning Super Bowls -- was that their era began shortly after the Vietnam War.

“They had the Cowboys star logo,” Boyd said. “Their quarterback, Roger Staubach, was from a service academy. It seemed very patriotic to root for the Cowboys wherever you lived.”

In the same way, Boyd said, the Raiders appeal to macho young men.

“The Raiders have an image of being a little tough, a little edgy, a little outside the lines,” Boyd said. “And there are a lot of young men who like to flaunt that image.”

In addition to being boisterous, Raiders fans also carry a reputation for being aggressive and, on occasion, downright nasty to supporters of opposing teams. There are no such worries for visiting fans at Angels home games.

John Dukakis expects to find plenty of like-minded fans sitting all through the Anaheim ballpark when he goes to see his Red Sox.

Dukakis, 48, whose father, Michael, was Massachusetts governor and a presidential candidate, is a Los Angeles entertainment manager who prefers the team he grew up with “because the Red Sox are special, you know?”

Usually, Dukakis said, visitors are made to feel welcome in Anaheim, although he said he did notice that after their World Series championship in 2002, Angels fans became more vocal. “They were taunting us with, ‘We can beat the Yankees. How about you?’ ” he recalled. “We didn’t have much of a response to that except, ‘We have a football team. How about you?’ But that only lasted two years. Then we won the title.”

Lowe said Red Sox players “get used to playing in front of sellout crowds. That’s all you know.

“You either love it or hate it. There is no in-between. You never hear a player say he doesn’t have an opinion about playing for the Red Sox. You have to be 100% focused for every game, or the fans are going to boo you. You can use it as motivation, or whatever. But you will either love it or hate it.”

Jim Conners, owner of Santa Monica bar and Red Sox fans hangout Sonny McLean’s, is taking a bus of about 50 fans to Angel Stadium Thursday night. Like Vincent, he had to buy an extra 50 tickets to an Angels-Rangers game.

Is he going to use those Rangers tickets? “No way,” Conners said.

Conners moved from Boston to Los Angeles 10 years ago to attend film school. That hasn’t worked out, but being a misplaced Red Sox fan is a good gig, he said.

“Going to Angel Stadium is great,” he said. “We’ve always made more noise than the Angels fans and no one hassles us.”

However, Conners has also noticed it’s not so easy buying tickets any more.

“Used to be the Angels would call me every year to see how many I needed,” he said. “Last year when I called, I was told all the Red Sox games were sold out. So I had our bartender call. He didn’t identify himself and got 100 tickets just like that.”

Conners said that he has noticed more baseball knowledge and passion from Angels fans since owner Arte Moreno bought the team three years ago.

“The fans in Anaheim are more into the game,” Conners said. “It’s more of a real baseball crowd. Honestly, it’s more like a Red Sox crowd.”

Moreno grew up in Arizona as a Yankees fan, and he fits Boyd’s criteria as to why: “The Yankees were winning and when I grew up we only had one game a week on television and the Yankees were on all the time,” Moreno said.

Moreno has been to Sonny McLean’s, too.

“The guy behind the grill knew who I was,” Moreno said. “He gave me a look that said, ‘Don’t you wish you were a Red Sox fan?’ I don’t think I’d get that look now.”

According to NFL statistics, 20 million Mexicans call themselves NFL fans.

Ivan Pirron, a columnist for the Mexican sports daily Record, told the Miami Herald this year that television made the Cowboys the most popular team in his country.

“In the late 1960s and early 1970s,” Pirron said, “there was only one channel that broadcast football on TV here and it exclusively showed the Cowboys.”

Moreno has made an effort to appeal to Latino fans in Southern California and he said his passion is paying off across the country.

“At Yankee Stadium, you’re starting to see Dominicans and other Latin fans wearing Vlad Guerrero jerseys and Angels caps,” Moreno said.

“But it takes many years to build that fan commitment. You have to earn that. It’s not guaranteed. We have to develop a team and a culture where we can go to another city where not only the other team’s players but also its fans respect us. That’s how the Yankees did it.”

That and winning.

A lot.

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Kids’ stuff looks good

Angels rookie starting pitchers Jered Weaver, Joe Saunders and Dustin Moseley are a combined 14-1 with a 2.63 earned-run average in 17 starts this season. A look at the pitching matchups vs. Boston:

Tonight, 7, Saunders (4-1, 3.64) vs. Boston’s Kyle Snyder (3-2, 6.35).

Wednesday, 7 p.m., Kelvim Escobar (9-10, 3.77) vs. Boston’s Jon Lester (6-2, 4.72).

Thursday, 7 p.m., Weaver (9-0, 1.95) vs. Boston’s Josh Beckett (13-8, 5.35).

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Times staff writer Steve Henson contributed to this report.