As a former NCAA Division III athlete, I truly understand what it means to “play for the love of the game.” Looking at the handful of fans attending the games and doing some basic math (hmm? 20-30 teammates, 1-2 parents/family members each player? Wow….not a sell-out crowd at all) you really get the sense that you are in it for you and your teammates passion for competition. Not so for baseball players and professional athletes who display their finely tuned skills in front of tens of thousands of paying fans each night. Fans provide atmosphere, excitement, support and certainly financial gains and it almost goes without saying that it’s more fun playing in front of a packed house rather than a few hundred people seated in a 50,000-seat stadium.
A good friend of mine, Theo, in offering his support for my early days here at OTBB, proposed that I delve deeper into the different kinds of fans and their respective fandom. He pointed out an interesting nugget about his own experience– that he gets tired of being labeled a fair-weather fan because of his allegiance to the Miami Marlins. He explained, “the Marlins never sell out games but they have great fans. It’s just hard to spend 3-4 hours at a ballgame when you can go jet skiing, clubbing or ton of other activities in South Florida.” Fittingly, being labeled as a “fair-weather” fan is one of a few classes of fandom that he suggested for analysis including familiar terms that I’m going to investigate further including bandwagon fan, the fair-weather/casual fan and the crazed die-hards. As bloggers, we’re fans too. I’ll let our readers decide to which fan group I belong.
The Bandwagon
One my first classes at Vassar, an Introduction to Hip-Hop and Cultural Critique class, was taught by the amazing Kiese Laymon. Professor Laymon described the power of the “boast” as a tool that some of the best MCs employ in their roles as pillars of rap and hip-hop. Similarly, their braggadocios nature is probably the most defining feature of the bandwagon fans. They’re often loud and confident in the teams they flit and float between. While die-hard fans and lifelong supporters wait years on season ticket lists, these bandwagoners are the people plunking down outrageous cash to sit behind home plate. In their closets and out in the stadium they’ll be spotted with the brightest and newest jerseys or hats so fresh they seem to have forgotten to remove the New Era sticker off the brim. You know the type.
The bandwagoner seems to always have a new team or new favorite player that shockingly always happen to be either the most popular, most successful or sometimes both. In fairness these supporters, while they shift identities like a chameleon, aren’t necessarily always uniformed. With social media, Baseball Reference, and a plethora of team-specific fan blogs like the excellent family at SB Nation, they can often blitz their unsuspecting followers with “insane” and “never before seen” statistics to prove to you how good the team that they have chosen to support is. The inanities of why someone jumps on and off bandwagons can be extended to even more trivial matters: maybe a young woman’s favorite celebrity roots for a team or a man without his preferred team being in the playoffs selects a team based an something as small as the excellence of the team’s color scheme (you see this a lot with NCAA basketball brackets). No matter the circumstance, I’ll admit that bandwagon fans serve a purpose in generating awareness and positive publicity for teams with newly found success, but often at the cost of an unbearable amount of obnoxiousness.
The Casual Observer/Fair-Weather Fan
There’s a general consensus that bandwagon fans are typically irksome even among themselves, but the discussion of the casual fan/fair-weather fan gets into murkier territory. Let’s look at the fair-weather fan first. This fan base probably most overlaps with the dreaded bandwagoners. While lacking their colleagues’ flash and glamour, the fair-weather fan also has the nasty habit of showing up in support only once his or her team is enjoying success. They’re never going to shove their fandom down the throats of everyone in the area that will care to listen, but they follow the same boom-or-bust structure of the bandwagoner.
One of the defining features of the fair-weather fan that also overlaps with that of the casual fan is the lack of involvement and participation within being a team supporter. The casual admirer generally acts out of pragmatism, maybe buying a shirsey, not wanting to commit to an exorbitantly priced replica jersey or only going to a few games a year due to the cost and time it takes to schlep to a major league game. The fair-weather fan may also adhere to these principles, but the breakdown in comparison usually depends on the success of the team in question.
While the casual fan may not be as gung-ho as the die-hards, they will generally be in the know about their team, catching highlights, occasionally checking box scores and staying somewhat updated on team news. However, the fair-weather side of their fandom can lead to a disappearing act when their team underperforms. Some falling in this category may slide to the dreaded bandwagoners, but in general, they’ll just clam up and look for any distractions from baseball season. It’s pretty easy to do, with April-June being the end of hockey and basketball season and late August summoning the return of football, the true test lies in the summer. In an even year like 2016, you should be skeptical of any supporter of a terrible/decidedly mediocre team that begins to sing the praises of the Summer Olympics, or international soccer tournaments and especially the NBA summer league.
The Die Hard
If the line between the casual fan and the fair-weather one is a blurry one, trying to define the qualities of a die-hard is a rather unenviable task. Does one need to get a potentially regrettable tattoo do be deemed a super fan? How about consistently attending games in person? I consider myself a staunch supporter of the Cubs, but living in Tel Aviv makes heading over to Wrigley a bit of work. Does fanaticism extend to religiously following each major league club’s farm system and trade rumors?
At the very basic level I believe those who consider themselves die-hards should probably…
- Know the basic history and major historical figures of the team. In baseball almost more than any sport, tradition is one of the most hallowed concepts. Respect the history and the respect your elders, simple as that.
- Follow the standings: if you can’t differentiate between your team being in first or last place, and only happen to follow your team based on success, you might want to see the fair-weather fan section above.
- Be able to name all, if not, almost the entire active roster. Like a child who wanders into the middle of a movie, no one wants to drag that guy or gal along to the ball game who’s going to ask questions like “who’s that?” and is completely lost when teams wear uniforms that don’t have names.
As with most trivialities, the lines and nuances of fandom correlate with the grand tongue-in-cheek debates around game of baseball. Fan is short for fanatic after all, and as long as people remain interested in all sports these conversations are usually in good fun. As of right now, baseball attendance is down which is hopefully a trend that can be reserved and hopefully the die hards, casual fans, fair weather fans and bandwagoners alike can keep the ballpark atmosphere exciting and memorable as the season progresses.
-Jesse Hartman
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