Welcome to Snyder's Soapbox! Here I pontificate about a matter related to Major League Baseball on a weekly basis. Some of the topics will be pressing matters, some might seem insignificant in the grand scheme of things and most will be somewhere in between. The good thing about this website is it's free and you are allowed to click away. If you stay, you'll get smarter, though, that's a money-back guarantee. Let's get to it.
Call them what you want. Fair-weather fans. Frontrunners. Bandwagoners. The dude in the early 2000s who was walking around telling people "I love my Patriots, Yankees, USC football, Duke basketball and Lakers!" Whatever name you give them, don't give them any shred of respect as sports "fans."
Yuck.
For a long time they really bothered me. I still will never respect that sort of fandom, but I've otherwise taken a turn into believing -- and I hope everyone will join me -- that they are not worth our efforts in hatred.
Just smile.
Why?
Because you know you're better.
Have you rooted for a champion at least relatively recently? And before that title, did you put in all the requisite suffering that all true fans go through? Remember how amazing it felt to cheer for a champion? I'll never forget it. It was one of the happiest moments of my life. I cried happy tears.
No fair-weather fan will ever experience that. In fact, they are depriving themselves of that sort of ecstasy. Going through years of suffering with a team only to see them finally win it all is 100% the fan version of the old, perfect quote, paraphrased:
One will never truly know the thrill of victory until experiencing the agony of defeat.
Spot on.
Had I abandoned the Cubs after, say, 2003, and then come back during the 2016 playoffs, sure, I would have been happy. I could have gone to the games and high-fived other Cubs fans and acted like I was along for the ride the entire time. I can't see any circumstance where I'm crying happy tears after Game 7 in this scenario, though. It was years of being beaten down that paved the way to finally come out in a tearful, joyful release.
No fair-weather fan gets to experience that and, again, they are only depriving themselves.
Why in the world would it anger me that a group of people has decided to deprive themselves of the absolute best part of sports fandom? My only message to any fair-weather fans, and you deep down know who you are: By all means, ruin your sports fan life on your own. I won't stand in the way.
A former coach of mine liked to use a quote that has stuck with me to this day: "Control what you can control."
It sounds weird, obviously, but it's very simple and something you can take with you anywhere. In baseball terms, it was meant to say we can't control things like the weather, the umpiring crew, the other team, the fans, etc. We can control, however, how we handle ourselves.
As I said, you can apply it anywhere in life.
In terms of the fair-weather fans, we cannot control what teams these people choose to claim they love. We can control our reaction to it and that should be anywhere from indifference to laughter. Maybe we should feel sorry for them? Whatever the reaction is, it should not bother us and it certainly shouldn't make us angry.
And if anyone ever accuses you of being one, meet it with a virtual yawn. You know better and you don't have to prove anything to anyone. If they want to make themselves feel better by saying you're a fair-weather fan, just laugh and walk away. Please, please, please do not give in to the Quiz Game (you know, when someone tries to run through a series of trivia questions in order to prove you aren't a true fan), as that's a total waste of your time. You owe nothing to these people. Be secure in your fandom. Again, you know better and that's what matters.
Most of all, don't sweat the fair-weather fans. They aren't worth our time. Best of all, they'll never get the highs that we get, as we've gone through all the lows and those only make us stronger and more appreciative as fans.
