On Being a Real Fan

I get annoyed when people say that they are fans of a team and then can't name a single player. This most recently happened to me last night when I was having a discussion with one of my friends who claims to cheer for the Red Sox. I realized that he had no idea what he was talking about (kind of like some of the commenter's on this blog) so I asked him to name a single player....well he did name Curt Schilling, but that came after a mental wrestling match. This mentality is especially frustrating when wannabe fans claim to hate the Yankees. Any true Red Sox fan has a list of reasons to hate the Yankees (somehow even Billy Buckner was the Yankees fault) and vice versa. But for those fair weathers the excuse is always either that they hate the Yankees "because they win all the time" or because "they spend too much money." Any baseball true baseball fan knows that the Yankees don't win all the time, and there are plenty of other clubs around the league that spend, or could spend a ton of money on their pay roll.

Personally, I have been a Yankees fan for as long as I can remember what baseball was (and that was during the 80's). Since I am sure that fair weathers don't remember the Yankee teams of the '80's, to put it plainly....we stunk. Poor Donny Baseball played throughout that era and retired just as the Yankees were beginning their new dynasty of the '90's. But that is what it takes to be a true fan. You have to watch the team year after year, disappointment after disappointment, but refuse to ever give up on them no matter how many times they miss the playoffs. There are always a ton of people who jump on a winning teams bandwagon after they win a championship, (and the Yankees certainly had their share before they became the team everyone loves to hate) but I swear the fair weather red sox fans are the worst. In contrast the real red sox fans, even though I hate them, at least are knowledgeable about the game and have the memory of suffering year after year. But the new brood encompasses all of the bad things about cheering for Boston. They wear pink hats, know nothing about the team (most still think that Jonny Damon plays for Boston), and ignorantly yell Yankees suck at the drop of their aforementioned pink hats.

I could rant on about this forever, but the main point is this....before you yell something stupid about the Yankees, or tell me how much you love whatever team you pretend to love...at least have the common decency to be able to name more than one player. I'm not asking you to know who played second base in 1942 for the Giants, just a basic common knowledge and a little respect for the game.