Note: I meant to post this yesterday before leaving work, but got distracted with some last minute tasks. Please enjoy and pretend it’s May 24th for added effect.
Well, after going to the Blows game on Tuesday night and seeing them lose to the Blue Jays, I was pretty happy. I was even happier checking the scoreboard at the game to see that the Nats and Reds were tied at 4-4 when Annie and I left the game. I was ecstatic to find that the Nats had won with a Felipe Lopez grand slam shortly thereafter. A great night to love the Nats and strongly dislike the Blows. Annie wore her old Johnny Damon Red Sox T-shirt she bought at Fenway back when she was doing her Masters at BU, which got several comments from Blows fans. I’m going to buy her a pink Nats hat (she’s an opera singer, hence the love of pink) so she’ll have something new to wear.
Along that same line, I scored two tickets from one of our portfolio managers at work yesterday for the Blows game tonight. Despite my neutral to moderate distaste for the Blows, I do have some logic behind why I’m going to so many of their games:
The company tickets are 10 rows back from the field and are worth about $50 a pop…and are FREE to me. No reason not to take full advantage of that.
I love baseball and would rather see any game than no game at all.
I already have plans to see all three Nats games in June at the Yard.
Despite its detractors, Camden Yards is still a great ballpark and laid the foundation for future parks like AT&T, PNC Park, Great American Ballpark, and the new Nationals park. That Boog’s BBQ sucks (sorry, but I’ve had real BBQ and Boog’s is lightyears away from it), but you can’t beat an Italian sausage and fries.
Oh and did I mention that the tickets are free. Yeah, freaking awesome. I wanted to go to tomorrow’s game against the A’s, but those tickets had already been given away.
On another subject more Nats-related, Nats 320 recently had a great post about having patience and not being so damn angry about the Nats this season. The comments are excellent as well and some of the best I’ve seen on a blog. A good example of debate and rational points of view.
Anyway, I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s a scale of fandom in Nats World. Just about every fan (not casual observer) can place themselves somewhere on this scale. It begins on the far left, where the eternally positive and obsessed fans reside. They are almost all season ticket holders and go to every home game unless an Act of God, extreme bodily injury, death of an immediate relative or debilitating head injury prevents them from getting to the ballpark. Many attend BP and any other function the team hosts outside of game days. They will be fans until the day they die and will pass this partisanship to their children. Think of your typical Yankee or Cubs or Red Sox fan here. Every club has them, but some are more prevalent than others. Is it raining? They’re there in Nationals ponchos. Is it snowing? They’re shoveling the snow out of their sections with Nationals snow shovels. They’re eternally optimistic about the team’s future and intertwine that with their deep love for baseball as a game and Institution. This affection often rivals their love for their spouse and children. They are the idealists and preachers of the Nationals faith.
Converesely, on the far right you find the fans whose love for the team has been spurned. They exist in a perpetual state of disappointment, much like the parent of a loser teen. They see so much potential but their cynicism often overrides their optimism, which only makes them angry and frustrated. As their team spirals down the standings, they decry the efforts on the field, the managerial talent, the front office acumen and/or the ownership’s greed as the source. Deep down they too love their team and the game, but years of disappointment and the injuries inflicted during the current season have made them jaded shells of their former Left-leaning selves. Some Far-Righters are former Far-Lefties, as the slope from eternal hope to eternal sports depression is a slippery one. In fact, I would say the path from Far-Right to Far-Left is one that few fans are able to undertake because of the permanent damage done on the way down. Far-Righters are never fully satisfied with the team, even after success. They’re unable to simply enjoy a win; they usually are too busy looking for the next disappointment just around the corner. Even winning a championship only gives the team a short reprieve from the Far-Righters. If the team underperforms after that season, many will return to their old habits. They are the realists and subversives of the Nationals faith.
In between these two extremes, which make up a minority of each team’s fanbase, is everyone else. If you wanted to quantify it, the Far-Lefties would be 1, while the Far Right would be 10. Each team’s majority fanbase would fall in a different place and all the data would create a bell curve of sorts. For example, I would say the average rating for a Red Sox fan would be 7.5 or 8, because they take baseball too seriously in that town. In Milwaukee, I’d say the average would be a solid 3 or 4 because they love their team and they really love their team winning. You’d be surprised how many optimistic fans there are out there in those cities that aren’t big market towns. For Washington, at this point I would say our average was somewhere around 6.5 due to this season’s cutbacks and underperformance. Personally, I’d put myself around a 5. I love the Nats and will always be a fan, but I also realize there’s a need to make progress over the next season to justify this season (and maybe next season) of austerity.
So with that said, you can see from the blogs like Nats 320, Capitol Punishment, Federal Baseball and BallWonk and the comments on their posts where many Nats fans stand on the scale.
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