Posted on January 15th, 2006 by Scraps.
Categories: Stuff, Sports.
Mariner fans in the blogosphere¹ are fortunate to have possibly the best single-team baseball blog around, USS Mariner. Over the last few days, Derek Zumsteg has been writing a wonderful series of articles explaining Mariner fandom from a variety of philosophical positions:
Mariners fandom, as seen through Materialism
Fans without a team are in a state of anarchy, almost unbeing, restless and chaotic, a life almost not worth living. It is natural then that these fans seek out teams that they can follow and believe in, even in places where their favorite sport is not popular. Otherwise, they may fall into cheering at silly, trivial things, like the changing colors of traffic lights, or racing clouds.
This proclivity to fandom is a piece of our nature, and we seek out the sensations of being in the audience for a game as surely as we do water or food. Our joy at a team's victory and our discomfort at our team's losses are both products of the body and motivate us to find ways to grow closer to a team or to distance ourselves from them and seek a more pleasing team. Our perceived choice in the matter is little more than an illusion, and we will reliably look to whatever choice best satisfies our desires....
Mariners fandom, as seen through Logical Positivism
True fandom is grounded not in the unquestioning belief in a team and the infallibility of everything it does. The meaning of our fandom is built on
verifiable facts, stacked one on top of another. Each fact must be verifiable, and so the fan must be both scientific and suspicious. Emotional ties are neither true or false, but meaningless.A fan might acknowledge that Edgar Martinez is an outstanding hitter, deserving of induction into the Hall of Fame, based on his accomplishments. But an argument that he is a clutch hitter would be discarded, as that's not a clearly verifiable claim....
And my favorite, Mariners fandom, as seen through Post-Structuralism
We are not fans, and being fans is not part of us. "Fan" is a socially and culturally-defined role that we fill at certain times. During these times, we are different people, with different values, desires, dislikes, all the way to different social systems.
We may act as fans in ways that we would not act "normally" (which is to say, occupying other roles). We may have fan-friends who we don't associate with outside of those times when we occupy the fan role. Encountering those people unexpectedly creates tension and unease unless we give in and return temporarily to our fan role, and act in a manner appropriate to that role.
[T]he post-structuralist fan . . . looks at the game and sees the events in terms of power and knowledge, and the social constructs that imply and impart identity.
Instead of arguing over methods of player evaluation, they instead see the clubhouse as a panopticon, where the manager exercises his power as a proxy for violence against his players, and the game itself is a barely-concealed analog for the crowd-pleasing gladitorial combat spectacles staged thousands of years ago.
"Milton Bradley exercises micro-political resistance," this fan might say, "and the structural factors repress him."...
God bless Derek Zumsteg.
¹ a silly but amusing word I use with no shame.
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