We’ve always wondered about this: What kind of douchebag wears Team X gear to a game between Team A and Team B played on the home field of either Team A or Team B? Before the twenty-first century, usually the only fans you saw do this were obnoxious fans of the New York Yankees—you know the type, often caricatured in film and on television. It was kind of a given that wherever you were, there would be one.

With almost a decade of MLB press box experience under our belts, including the coverage of two World Series for CBS, we have heard and seen a lot of crazy and weird stuff in professional baseball. But this phenomenon always stood out to us as being kind of a jerk maneuver: tribalism at its worst, really. Then a funny thing happened when the Boston Red Sox cheated their way to the 2004 World Series title.

It got worse.

Suddenly, all these random Red Sox fans started showing up around the country at MLB games where Boston was not playing, wearing “2004 World Series Champs!” garb fresh off the manufacturer’s factory floor. After decades of futility and fancifully chasing the Yankees, the bandwagon “Red Sox Nation” suddenly felt like it had to tell everyone that it had finally won something. As if we all didn’t know, thanks.

After this tipping point, though, a lot of other fans started doing this, primarily Chicago Cubs fans. After all, no one could really give the Cubs fans any shit they hadn’t already endured, right? By the mid-2000s, the Cubs were almost 100 years into their World Series drought. In truth, there was usually some decent respect for people showing up to a Detroit Tigers-Minnesota Twins game in a Cubs hat or uniform. Respect.

But in October 2005, the Chicago White Sox won their first Series since 1917, and now the ChiSox fans had to do some chest thumping, too. This Windy City rivalry spilled on to the field in 2006 when the two teams played each other, and it wasn’t pretty. And truthfully, most people sided with the good-natured Cubs fans rather than the nasty, spiteful White Sox fans. Yet what can you do when a bitter fan base tastes true glory?

Enter the San Francisco Giants: deprived of a World Series title since 1954 and with just 5 playoff appearances after their move west (1958) until the moment the team started messing with BALCO chemistry (1999), the Giants finally won an MLB championship in 2010 via the same route as the Red Sox. Then those fans had to start being douchebags, too, showing up in Oakland to AL games in Giants orange.

In the decade-plus since 2011, it’s just gotten more and more out of hand. We’d cover an AL game in Seattle and see Giants jerseys there; we’d see an NL game in Phoenix and see Red Sox and Yankees hats everywhere. Tribalism at its worst, really: Why even go to the game if you’re not going to be supporting the teams playing, one way or another? To be an antagonist? To cause trouble? To stir up shit? It’s a douchebag move.

No matter which way you slice it, we prefer to be old school and show some respect to the teams playing by not wearing gear from a random third team when we go to a game—no matter what the sport. We remember living in Denver and covering the NHL around the turn of the century, and the Colorado Avalanche fans, in the middle of a game against the Philadelphia Flyers, would start chanting the oddity:

“Red Wings suck!”

It doesn’t get much more douchebaggy than that. Unless you’re the “Marlins Man” … right?