Red Sox Fans Discover a New Reason to Be Mad at Jimmy Fallon

The past week has given the world a number of reasons to be annoyed at Tonight Show host/overpriced pajama pitchman Jimmy Fallon.

For starters, Fallon promised to respond to recent threats of White House censorship by keeping his “head down” and trying to appeal to “both sides.” Then there was the premiere of his late-capitalism garbage show On Brand With Jimmy Fallon, which kind of looks like Mad Men, if Mad Men was a reality show where none of the creatives got paid and Don Draper’s day drinking just made him really annoying. 

Well, now there’s a whole new group of people that are seemingly pissed at Fallon: Boston Red Sox fans.

The Red Sox were eliminated from the postseason on Thursday, following a loss to the New York Yankees in Game Three of their American League Wild Card Series. And who was at Yankee Stadium fist pumping along to their victory? Jimmy Fallon. 

We all know that the comedian lives in New York, but this still rubbed some fans the wrong way since Fallon famously made a whole movie about Red Sox love: the 2005 romantic comedy Fever Pitch, co-starring Drew Barrymore. 

Obviously actors aren’t the same as the characters they play, hence why nobody asks George Clooney for medical advice and Al Pacino was never arrested for his 1980s cocaine empire. But as Over the Monster pointed out, when the Red Sox won the 2004 World Series, which was documented in Fever Pitch, Fallon seemed to be overjoyed, even when he wasn’t acting.

Or maybe he was just in character the entire time? Is Fallon secretly the Daniel Day-Lewis of mediocre sports rom-coms?

And this wasn’t the first time that Fallon played a Red Sox fan, he was seen wearing the team’s memorabilia in Saturday Night Live’s “Boston Teens” sketches.

Even Elizabeth Olsen was confused. Earlier this year, during a Tonight Show appearance, the actress told Fallon that she believed he was a Red Sox fan “because of your one movie or whatever.”

Some of the confusion is clearly Fallon’s fault. Back in 2004, Fallon told an interviewer that he was originally a New York Mets fan because his dad got free tickets to games. But he later became a Yankees fan after being hired at SNL, when he started going to games with Lorne Michaels. But that was only for a “few years” before he seemingly switched teams again. “Now, I gotta say, I’m really rooting for the Red Sox,” Fallon stated. 

Of course, it doesn’t really matter which baseball team Fallon roots for, especially since he’ll probably just try to keep his head down and root for both teams during the World Series.