Yesterday afternoon, loyal reader/commenter/disciple Merrill made an astute observation in the comment section of my post about the front office’s new front in the ballpark war:
Normally, I try to respond to your comments as they come in. You get my knee-jerk, off-the-cuff response because the number of comments this site generates allows me to do that (either you all think I am the smartest person ever and just reflexively agree with me or, you think I’m a total moron and just blow me off). I started to reply to Merrill two different times but, upon further review, decided that his comment was worthy of a little more deliberation. That was truly a brandy swirler (No, I don’t regularly drink brandy, but I want you to picture me contemplating the deeper truths of Rays baseball in some big leather chair in a den whose walls are covered with leather bound books. That replaces the reality of writing most of this on the kitchen counter while my daugthers pull on my pant leg.)
So, I thought about it and, generally I agree with Merrill. Being a fan does suck, at least when the team sucks or the news about the team sucks. But, it’s worth it. I don’t even mean it hypothetically. I mean, in my own life, all the Bucco-Bruce-induced heartache was worth it in 2003, and all the Sting-Ray-Rending was worth it in 2008.
It is simply crazy to admit that, but it’s true. I am a grown man and I let a baseball team affect my mood. (To quote Jimmy Fallon in that silly movie Fever Pitch: “I like being 10 years old.”)
But here is the thing that occurred to me last night that seems to make this whole thing palatable. Being a fan can suck. But it doesn’t have to. As adults, we can all agree that we come to the game every night because the game is fun. Even when the Mudville Nine can’t score against Freddy Garcia and Mighty Casey can’t get a ball to carry beyond the warning track, it is fun. We need to keep it that way. If the ballpark story, or the business story, or the losing streak, get too serious, they kill the fun. And, if they kill the fun, baseball becomes politics, or work, or something worse. Trust me, win or lose, the guys in that clubhouse are having fun and we need to have fun too.
So, let’s just agree that stats aside, record aside, business aside, baseball is going to be fun no matter what. If I start killing the fun, call me out.
[That was an oddly serious post. My apologies. To lighten the mood, I'll leave you with a funny, Fever Pitch-related story that popped into my mind when I put that quote in above. The Rays generally book their team charters with Delta. Or at least they used to when I worked there. One long trip, Delta played Fever Pitch on the D-Rays' flight. Seriously. They played a movie about the Sox loyal fans to the D-Rays. So ironic. What made it better was, apparently none of the guys even noticed they were getting made fun of by Jimmy Fallon when he has his buddies over for the "draft" and makes them dance for Yankee tickets. To remind you, Fallon says "You call that dancing? You call that Yankee dancing? Man, that's Devil Ray dancing."]
that was reminiscent of the speech a young Bill Haywood gave to his Minnesota Twins when they lost touch with why they started playing the game. Tehn all of a sudden, they were hitting better, fielding better, coming up with trick plays to get people out…the game was fun again. And if it wasn’t for Jr. Griffey robbing a home run ball hit by Poindexter from “Revenge of the Nerds”, the Twins would’ve made the playoffs.
maybe we’ll start remembering why we started watching the game and rooting for the rays after your “Little Big League”-esque post.
“A Mark Heilig has to do what a Mark Heilig thinks is right for his team”
way to go skip!
I got to watch that movie again. I knew you’d make a movie reference. I was just expecting the reference to be the speech the injured hick catcher gives in Major League II when Willie Mays Hayes is jealous because the catcher can’t play the second game of the double-header.
Dang Mark, look at you turning my negative-nancy into a blog post. The burden of being this emotionally invested into the team does get old, because we are on the pulse of the team and see/hear all the good, bad, and ugly.
But you are right. I do have fun more often than not, especially when I’m just at the park taunting the other fans and they are taunting me (which took on a whole new level when I was in Rays garb at Fenway, that was just awesome). I just wish the national media, and lately the front office of the Rays, would give the fans a break. I know the casuals are where the money is, and they aren’t coming and that makes an easy target for the area, but a lot of people ARE going to games, I hate that we get alienated in the crossfire.
Time to get ready for my 12th game of this season. Going with a Yankees fan to his first ever Yankees OR Rays game. Poor guy thinks he’s going to be razzed in the Trop in Yankees gear. He actually doesn’t believe me when I tell him I regularly see Yankees garb in there even when we AREN’T playing them.
Let the fun trash-talking commence.
Y’All probably figured by now that I love my Baseball OldSkool style. (Even though I’m only in my 20′s.) Comes from growing up watching the Braves maybe. I like how much they build up from within, usually stay away from the nothing short of a ring this year means anything thinking and, for the most part, have teams that play all-around solid baseball at a high level against tough competition. And this has brought them extended success.
Maybe it’s just me, but I think that many teams and MLB itself often try to cater to an audience that seems to prefer that Baseball have NFL scoring and NBA, Mega-Star(s) and supporting cast make-up. Sometimes I wonder just how many baseball fans are actually fans of Baseball. Hopefully this doesn’t sound like one of those “real baseball fans” statements that Rays fans get hammered with so often. But I think that baseball fans that are fans of the game are very patient and understanding. They have to be with a 162 game season, unlike the NFL where being a fan takes very little work. One Sunday afternoon a week? Try staying up, often til 2AM or later for West Coast games, night after night for over six months. I think you have to LOVE baseball to be a baseball fan. It takes far too much work if you don’t.
If you love it, the jewelry is just wonderful whipped cream on top of a great, yummy dessert.
A fair point but, I think a similar argument can be made for die-hard fandom in almost every sport. Perhaps NFL games are only weekly but, die-hard NFL fans consume tons of information during the week and even in the offseason. Same goes for basketball fans, college sports fans, hockey fans. I think it all involves some serious dedication.
I remember a certain Tampan saying “I don’t bet money on the Bucs. I have too much emotionally invested to put money at stake too.”
Being a fan is an emotional investment. You invest time, money, and emotion. Your spoils is: yeah, when bad things happen to the team you’re irrationally upset. But then, when your team does well, you are irrationally happy. It’s a nice break in being rational.
Think about how you felt after the Bucs won in 03. That ain’t worth feeling bad for most of your fandom?
I think he was 21 when he said that.
I am not saying that you can totally divorce yourself from it, but you have to at least be reasonable. No one thinks 21-year-old me was reasonable.
do people think 29 year old you is reasonable?
i still won’t bet on the bucs or the seminoles or the german soccer club Werder Breman(they’ve screwed me too many times). but the Bucs and Noles is because of emotional investment.
Just because you are my significantly older, slightly wiser friend Brendan, doesn’t mean I am not a reasonable 30-year-old. At the very least, I am more reasonable than my daughters.
haha…you were always reasonable. except the time you wrote “the assassin” on the back of your shoes with little pictures of guns.
Your long memory is going to hurt me again and again. What kind of a-hole writes on their shoes? “The Ass—–” does.