Caricature of New York

NEW YORK -- Of all the lessons I didn't expect to learn in a uniquely unsatisfying visit to the Bronx this week, here's the first that jumps to mind: Yankee fans are stupid.

I don't mean that in any negative way. It's just an incontrovertible fact, and given all the enviable success of that storied franchise, you have to shake your head at the colossal waste.

How else but raw stupidity to explain why the loudest spontaneous ovation in Wednesday night's 3-to-1 pitcher's duel came when the Jumbotron in right-center field showed a live-shot of Jack Nicholson wearing a Yankee hat in the front row?

Think about that. Jon Lieber pitches the game of his career, and good-guy John Olerud hits a decisive homerun. But what really gets the crowd going is that an aging actor took time away from his splashy courtside seats with the Los Angeles Lakers to see and be seen in New York.

By the way, I use the word spontaneous because most ovations are not. Rather, they're prompted by the message flashing on multiple scoreboards, ''Make Some Noise!!!" That's followed by a cartoon of clapping hands, as if the locals might not be sure how to comply on their own.

And that's followed by the spectators looking down at their own hands as they smack them together. You can all but see the thought bubbles sprouting over their heads: ''Am I doing this right?"

The disappointing truth is that going to Yankee Stadium isn't much different than heading to an NBA arena in a city like Orlando or Dallas, except everyone here looks like Joey Buttafuoco or Gordon Gekko. Someone should tell these people that the 80s and early 90s, never that good to begin with, are over.

These fans, such as they are, need to be entertained by something other than the most successful franchise in the history of baseball. So the Yankee organization throws in the kitchen sink. The grounds crew dances to the song ''YMCA." In a videotaped spelling bee on the Jumbotron, a fan is asked -- and I'm not making this up -- how to spell Jeter. Every time the home team draws a walk, the scoreboard shows a caricature sashaying down to first base.

Between innings, they broadcast trivia games with individuals picked out of the stands. One guy was asked, ''Who's nicknamed the Chairman of the Board?" The entire stadium fell into shocked but appreciative silence when he got it right, on the second try.

But, hey, everybody, ''Make Some Noise!!!"

Compare that to Fenway Park, where we fill the scoreboard with statistics, not cartoons, and at any given time during any given game, most of the crowd is thinking, ''Millar needs to work the count," or ''The humidity should help Wakefield's knuckler."

A Yankee fan in the same situation is thinking, ''The humidity is making my hair frizzy," or ''Maybe they'll show Jack Nicholson again."

Yet they win, we lose, at least until now. How easy it must be to root for New York. You cheer when told, you guzzle $9 bottles of beer hawked at your seat, and usually you claim victory. The lesson learned is that you can buy your way into anything in life, whether it be Babe Ruth or Alex Rodriguez or too many World Series titles to relive here.

True story: I'm standing outside the stadium wearing a Red Sox cap at the end of Wednesday night's loss. A guy in full Yankee regalia sidles up and says: ''I know how you feel. I was a Mets fan until the 2000 World Series," the one where the Yankees beat the Mets as a nation slept. ''The next year, we switched over to the Yankees. Why make it hard on my young son?"

Why make it hard on him? There was a good answer in there somewhere about the lessons of undying loyalty, unfulfilled expectations, unending patience, and maybe loving the game for the sake of the game. But in the depths of a fresh defeat, I couldn't think of it.

And so we come home to Fenway, somehow superior, even when we're not.

Brian McGrory is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at mcgrory@globe.com