Let’s be honest. No one wants to be around someone with a cold or the flu because if they are contagious you don’t want to get what they have. The same goes for teams that lose all of the time. Yes, there are always those diehard fans that will sit in the room with the sick and dying knowing full well that they just might get infected but their loyalty goes beyond the losing.
Winning is also contagious but in this case everyone wants to get ‘infected.’ This is where the bandwagon fan comes from. However, from an organizations stand point winning being contagious is important for building towards the future.
You want to know what every major league baseball team does the spring training after they win the World Series? They open the doors for every player in the organization to walk in and hold the trophy. Every player from the 18 year old playing in the Rookie league, to the former major league player who is trying to make it back to the show in AAA, holds and admires the trophy before them.
Seeing the trophy sets goals for the organization. Once someone sees what it means to win, they push even harder to get there again, or for the first time.
To reinforce this goal of winning the trophy is taken to every stadium of the minor league affiliates to not only show off the previous year’s accomplishment but to also remind the players why they sit on a bus for 12 hours, sleep in crappy hotel rooms, and eat fast food way too often.
It’s to be the best at what they do.
This past Saturday the San Francisco Giants 2012 World Series Trophy came to Keizer, OR. Players and fans brushed past the trophy constantly being reminded that winning is contagious and that if you want to be a winner you need to be around winners.