Sports Fan Mentality

My father started taking me to baseball games when I was six years old. We would brave the dangers of downtown St. Louis and the hassles of parking to watch the Cardinals. He taught me the details of the game, and always bought a program and recorded each batter's activity, such as Lou Brock leading off the fifth with a single. I was fascinated by all the statistics and within a few years could calculate batting averages and ERA's.

I became a dedicated follower of the team, listening to games on the radio, checking the newspaper to follow the standings and players' stats. If my team lost, I felt bad. When they did well, either as a team or individually, that made me happy. I was embarrassed by their lack of homeruns, but proud of their strong pitching and high batting average as a team. I knew the names of all the players and much about their statistics.

I continued to follow the team closely throughout adolescence, but as a young adult, I stopped following the details. I had some idea of their standings and certainly knew if they were in contention for another title, but lost track of who the players were. I moved out of the Midwest years ago and haven't watched more than a few minutes of baseball here and there for over twenty years.

And yet, to this day, even though I can only name one or two players on the team, I want them to win. I feel bad when they lose. They won the World Series a few years back with Pujols and some other people, and I was ecstatic. They've only done that a few times in my life. But this team today has almost nothing in common with the team I followed as a boy. The logo, the name, the Busch Beer family, that's about it. Why do I care now?

It's just a sports thing, right? There's nothing unhealthy about having a favorite team, cheering for the one you identify with. It's healthy. Isn't it?

The phenomenon of identifying with an idea for no particular reason, other than that you have identified with it for some time, and that significant others in your life have as well, is an interesting one, and goes well beyond sports. I see the same sports fan mentality in politics. If your parents, your friends, your community tend to hold a certain political belief, chances are good that you will too. Most people identify with or despise a political party or political label. Phrases like "left wing" or "conservative" often lose any meaning other than team affiliation, and people are delighted when their side wins, even if they have no concept of the values or actions of those they voted for.

Moreover, when a person has openly defended a team, it's difficult for them to come out in support of the other team. We see this often with respect to religious and nationalistic behavior. Adults instruct children to recite something they don't understand, such as a national pledge of allegiance, or a church's tenets of faith. The child now identifies with that team, and might never in his life question that membership. Since we may not even be capable of questioning belonging to such a group until well into adulthood, by then being already recognized by our communities as fans of that team, switching allegiance could be a daunting task, and even socially and economically damaging.

So let's suppose I have been brought up as a member of the Catholic Church, just to pick one example, and I've raised my children to be Catholics, and taught them a set of beliefs which they must accept on faith, and that at age 40 I suddenly realize that I don't accept these things to be true. Maybe I have come to see how religion has been used to control the masses for the gains of the few throughout the ages, and that I can be loving and forgiving and kind without thinking about whether or not Mary was or was not a virgin some 2000 years ago. How do I go about telling everyone in my life about the change of my beliefs? What will be the effects? It's possible, and it happens, but there's a huge barrier to be crossed.

My father became a fan of the Atlanta Braves when he got cable, because their games were often on television. But not being from St. Louis, he hadn't been raised to be a Cardinals fan like me. Interfacing with his television, a part of the community, was enough to switch his allegiance. When I used to spend more time driving, I always had the radio on a talk station. Fortunately for me, those angry talk show hosts only reinforced my identification with the environmentalist team (Enviro-Whackos, indeed!), but I found myself thinking often about the subjects they brought up, such as gay marriage, the legality of abortion, immigration, and so on. Nothing about preventing malaria in Africa or malnutrition in Guatemala.

Even when I listen to the media of my team, I don't want to be told what to think or what to think about. Of course that's impossible. The people of St. Louis want to hear the details of the Cardinals game first, and the announcer will use emotional language ("disappointing night for the Cards" instead of "great night for the Dodgers"), thereby establishing in the impressionable minds of their audience that this team is more important than others. The weatherman on the news will similarly tell you how you should feel about the weather, as will many so-called news outlets tell you how you should feel about politics.

To answer my question: Yes, it's healthy. Watching a sporting event without caring who wins is lacking in passion, and that's what sports are about. The sports fan mentality is healthy with respect to sports. When it comes to more serious matters, such as war, famine, justice, and environmental preservation, to name a few, we need to escape partisan thinking. We need to stop mindlessly slinging about words like Muslim, American, liberal and say instead what we really mean.