After taking a few weeks to try to catch up on my school work, getting used to a new job, and happily announcing that I will be a dad in April, I felt it was finally time to start a series that is easily going to be one of my all time favorite topics to discuss; my favorite and least favorite types of fans.
Now as every can easily tell I am a huge baseball fan but I am the first to admit that at times baseball can be a bit slow and even boring. However, the thing I’ve realized is that the fans around you, and not always the players on the field can determine how enjoyable a game is. You know its true. Sitting next to ‘the know it all’ who actually doesn’t know anything about the game can make you wish you had spent the extra $5 to sit in the regular seats; the “whats happening now” fan that even though a force out has been explained to them on every out of the game so far they still don’t seem to get it; the “I could have been a pro had my coach not hated me and never played me in high school” fan who still doesn’t realize that their coach didn’t hate them, they just weren’t very good; the “Heckler” who can be the reason you love to come to baseball games, or the reason you wish you had just watched it on TV; the “Die hard fanatic” who will root for their team even if their team hasn’t made it to the playoffs in their life time.
Although I will touch on each of the previous fan types in the coming weeks the fan I want to touch on today is the “Cheer leader.” This is the fan that whether they are at a baseball game, basketball game, hockey game or a football game they really have no clue whats happening in the game. The only thing they care about is trying to start the wave, which I must admit is really fun if you have a full stadium doing it, or they are trying to get the different chants going.
Now I love a good chant when it corresponds with whats going on in a game but really do we need to chant Ichiro!!!! every time he ties his shoes? A good cheer leader knows to pick their moments and their chants in order to get the most out of their effort. Running up and down the rows of seats trying to get the wave going for 20 minutes isn’t the best use of your effort. Really when the stadium holds 50,000 and only 5,000 people are at the game, do the math.
Now the “Cheer leader” fan is not the only type of attempt to start chants, they are simply the fan who fails the most. Now I’m not saying these fans shouldn’t go to games because some times they are good for a laugh, all I’m asking is that they understand that yelling defense, when the home team is batting, probably isn’t the best timing for the chant.