Late yesterday afternoon, I turned on the TV, hoping to catch the
end of the Red Sox-Oakland As game. There was a rain delay, however,
and to fill up the time, the station was broadcasting something called Sox Appeal.

It
struck me as the Red Sox equivalent of reality TV, in which
twenty-something guys and gals are filmed together in blind-date
situations, all while taking in a game at Fenway Park

Now, why am I telling you this? Im not a big reality TV show expert, or fan, but there was a segment that caught my attention for reasons youll soon understand.

In
this segment, one fellow, web designer Dave Sawyer, was meeting three
different blind dates for ten to fifteen minute introductions, so he
could decide who his winner wasthe one he would most like to have a
followup date with.

The second woman he met, Kate Walston, was
identified as a yoga teacher who prefers healthy lifestyles, a
26-year-old woman who has just launched some kind of health-related
business.

As Dave and Kate were chatting, and she was telling
him about her interest in healthy food, he asked her what she liked to
eat at Fenway. She answered that she always packed her own food when
she came to Fenway. A woman after my own heart. Here I thought I was
the only person in Red Sox Nation who refused to eat any food served at
Fenway, and not just because its outrageously priced, and here was
this healthy and happy looking young woman saying the same thing on the
Red Sox’ own television station.

While this intriguing
conversation was going on, though, the two other women (one of whom had
already had her blind date with Dave, and the other was to be his third
blind date) were plotting. They decided to embarrass Kate by sending an
order of French fries, chips, and margaritas to the table, and watch
her struggle with how to handle the situation.

A waitress
arrived with the goods, and Kate was obviously surprised, but
surprisingly cool. She took the fries and, rather than simply picking
at them to look like a good sport, grabbed the bowl and began passing
the fries out to other fans seated around. At that point, the shows
announcer interrupted the film with a bell signaling she had screwed
up. She could have eaten a few fries. It wouldnt have hurt her,
stated the announcer.

Kate also left her margarita untouched,
and when her time with Dave was up, she went up to the next date, one
of the plotters, and said, The margarita is for you.

She made it clear she knew she wasnt going anywhere with Dave afterwards, and was relieved about that.

Maybe
Im just a bad sport as well, but I sensed that much more was going on
here than intricate reality show maneuvering. Sox Appeal had
inadvertently become caught up in one of the great American divides,
over food and health. If youre a mainstream American, you dont worry
about junk food, or any food. You go along, eating your chips and
fries, and let Big Pharma cure what ails you.

If you oppose
that, youre not just a stick in the mud, but un-American as well, and
you deserve to be humiliated. Credit to Kateshe not only wasnt
humiliated, but coolly stood up for her principles.

I guess I
was sensitive to the episode on this particular afternoon because I had
just spent a chunk of the morning at a place called D Acres Farm having
a wonderful locally produced breakfast of fresh eggs, potatoes, kale,
and buckwheat pancakesall in exchange for a suggested contribution of
$10.

Its a farm run by a nonprofit organization that seeks to
educate people about the benefits of locally produced food and the
waste created by the factory food system via transportation, packaging,
and additives.

Its run by a dozen idealistic hard-working young
people whose main immediate challenge is that the wet summer has
created a shortage of hay for the two oxen (pictured above) which help in
clearing woods and planting crops at the farm. Maybe the confrontation
at Fenway Park just came at the wrong time of day for me.