From: mjs@fc.hp.com (Marc Sabatella)
Newsgroups: rec.sport.baseball
Subject: Re: In Defence of Fair-Weather Fans
Date: 13 Oct 92 19:36:37 GMT
Article-I.D.: fc.Bw2rt1.E2r
Reply-To: marc@hpmonk.fc.hp.com
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Fort Collins Site
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: In Defence of Fair-Weather Fans

I expected to agree with this article, but I have a few problems with it that
I'll get to later.  My take on it is, I like to see good baseball, so yes of
course I'll temporarily become a "fan" of any team that is playing well.  I
don't have a problem with this.
 
: Most people are like me, but for some reason they think they have to allege
: loyalty even when their team is losing. Why bother? We all know that fewer
: people attend games played by losing teams, fewer people watch televised
: events of losing teams, and fewer people buy the souvenirs of losing teams.
: Why hypocritically claim die-hard loyalty as a virtue and not practice it? Why
: not just admit that we like to cheer for winners?

The ones who claim die-hard loyalty are not the hypocrites, for the most part.
They are the ones who attend the games even when their teams aren't doing well.

: Be honest now. When your team is winning, how much channel hopping do
: you do? Heck, even during commercials, I'm reluctant to switch to another
: channel since I like to see my team win. 
: 
: But when my team is losing, like most other so-called fans, I begin to wonder
: what else is on tv. I begin to browse through mail-order catalogues. I give
: serious consideration to fixing myself a sandwich.

Gee, I'm precisely the other way around.  If my team has a comfortable lead,
I can turn the game off satisfied if I have something else to be doing.  If my
team is behind, I want to stay tuned for the comeback.

: It's fun to cheer for a winner, and it's not fun (except in some perverse
: situations) to cheer for a loser. How many people were there, cheering for
: [ list of losers deleted ]

Mere numbers say nothing of virtue.  Are you saying that because not many cheer
for losing teams, it is not virtuous to do so?  I'm not saying it makes it
virtuous, either - it simply has no bearing on "viruousness".

: And I, quite
: frankly, see nothing wrong with these shifting allegiances, since the seeming
: fickleness of consumers spurs managers and owners into trying to produce
: better products.

This is the argument I expected to see, and I agree with it.

: It would often be the case that if we continued to show loyalty
: to a team (or product or whatever) regardless of how bad it was, people would
: have a substantially reduced incentive to improve.

I don't think this follows.  It also takes money to improve, these days, so
unless you are putting butts in the seats, you won't be able to improve easily.
Therefore, the virtue (such as there is) of remaining loyal to a particular
team is that you enable it to improve itself, which makes everyone concerned
happier.

If you want to see a team improve, loyalty may well be a good thing.  But this
does not imply it is a bad thing to root for or claim to be a "fan" of a team
you are not loyal to.  I do it all the time.  I enjoy, as you say, watching a
team do well.  And if you must look at it financially, then yes, it does give
a successful team incentive to remain so.  But if a team has nothing but
so-called fair weather fans, it may not survive the 90-loss seasons.

: So in fact, all you die-hard fans, you are doing little more than promoting
: mediocrity, and that is nothing to be proud of.

Wrong.  The best way to promote mediocrity in a team is to cut off its income,
and that is precisely what having nothing but legions of "fair weather fans"
do.  I think a team should have both loyal supporters, that keep the team going
in rough times, and fair weather fans, that provide the financial incentive to
resign the star free agents when they are doing well, in order to thrive.

--
Marc Sabatella
marc@hpmonk.fc.hp.com
Newsgroups: rec.sport.baseball