Fandom
Removing myself from the Major League Baseball world and digging deep into unaffiliated baseball has made one thing clear; baseball fans have a very weird definition of fandom. That definition is so weird that it’s fairly hard to articulate. There are hangups between amateur and professional distinctions, whether you can be critical of the team you root for, as well as between liking MLB or any other league. None of it really makes a lick of sense to me, but that’s what baseball fandom has become I guess.
At the root of the definition of fandom is the desire that we have as human beings to control what others like and don’t like. We want people to be a fan of our team, our league, our organization, and our way of consuming baseball. I’m as guilty of this as the next person. My drive to get more people aware of and following unaffiliated professional baseball is anchored by the fact that I have decided I only care about pro ball and that I want to see people follow my lead and stop devoting so much time to MLB. My intentions are good, I think so at least, but they are also an attempt to control the fandom of others.
At the end of the day, people are going to like what they want to like. That doesn’t mean we should accept people liking and being okay with a racist team nickname. It also doesn’t mean we should be okay with people dismissing the group of baseball leagues we like as being trivial and not worth anyone’s time. I’m not advocating that people lay down and stop trying to get others to understand why they like the baseball they like. However, I do think we need to allow more leeway into what we accept as fandom from others.
I need to do a better job of accepting that some people simply aren’t going to be into unaffiliated ball no matter how much I may think the leagues are worthwhile. That doesn’t mean I sit back and let people trash the leagues, but it does mean I have to allow for someone to say, “Oh, that’s cool that you enjoy those leagues so much, but I’m really only interested in MLB.” At the same time, we need to let people be positive and negative about their team or league. We can have nuanced discussions about why a fan feels negative or positive towards their team or league. But, there needs to be wriggle room for someone to feel negative when we feel positive and positive when we feel negative.
Most of all we need to do a better job of letting baseball fans be fans of whatever the heck it is they want to be a fan of, however the heck they want. We waste so much time and energy trying to police the fandoms of others. I don’t know about you, but that’s not why I became a baseball fan. I didn’t look at my Grandma and say, “This game is fun Grandma, I sure can’t wait to find a bunch of people and tell them the right way to be a fan and the right teams or leagues to cheer for!” Like what you like and let others like what they like. It’s a simple rule and we’d all be better of for remembering it from time to time.
-Bill Thompson
