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Thread: My year of sports fandom!

  1. #71
    Senior Member SteveinMN's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ultralight View Post
    My sports spiritual guides seem to be, while still mostly supportive, a bit irked by my fandom. I can't quite explain why...
    Maybe because they perceive a bit of fair-weather fandom?
    Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome. - Booker T. Washington

  2. #72
    Senior Member iris lilies's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ultralight View Post
    Yeah, it might be contrived. But I lots and lots of things in life are contrived.

    What is so wrong with an excursion into the lives of the common people?
    Well, it is good to see a little of that old Ultralight moxie showing through. Poking us on the interwebs, way to go! We are just rubes, intellectual peons doncha know.

    I was beginning to think that your illness had removed some of that desire to rile us up.

  3. #73
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ultralight View Post
    Yeah, it might be contrived. But I lots and lots of things in life are contrived.
    Not the fun parts. Or the sacred parts.

  4. #74
    Senior Member Ultralight's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by iris lilies View Post
    Well, it is good to see a little of that old Ultralight moxie showing through. Poking us on the interwebs, way to go! We are just rubes, intellectual peons doncha know.
    Come now. I never said you were rubes or intellectual peons! haha

    Quote Originally Posted by iris lilies View Post
    I was beginning to think that your illness had removed some of that desire to rile us up.
    Believe me. It has mellowed me out a lot. Which sucks...

  5. #75
    Senior Member Ultralight's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by SteveinMN View Post
    Maybe because they perceive a bit of fair-weather fandom?
    Fair question Steve. But thus far the only teams I am following are the B-more Orioles and the C-bus Clippers. Both of these teams have losing records. The O's are approaching last place!

    Had I chosen to support the Red Sox then you might call me fair weather.

  6. #76
    Senior Member Ultralight's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by LDAHL View Post
    Not the fun parts. Or the sacred parts.
    I am intrigued. Please elaborate.

  7. #77
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ultralight View Post
    I am intrigued. Please elaborate.
    You don’t agendize wonderment

    You don’t put “fall in love” on your list of things to do

    You don’t step into tradition like a spray-on tan

  8. #78
    Senior Member Ultralight's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by LDAHL View Post
    You don’t agendize wonderment

    You don’t put “fall in love” on your list of things to do

    You don’t step into tradition like a spray-on tan
    First point: Write a book, LDAHL! I mean this. Write one.

    Second: I mostly concede your points. But is it possible that what starts out contrived could blossom into the genuine?

  9. #79
    Senior Member Ultralight's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by LDAHL View Post
    You don’t step into tradition like a spray-on tan
    Okay, how would you suggest one step into the tradition of baseball fandom, for instance?

  10. #80
    Senior Member Ultralight's Avatar
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    I have noticed over the past week or so a certain irritation from my sports spiritual guides. When I am talking about sports with them – perhaps a specific game that was recently played or some historical event that happened at a game or a record set by a player, they might get annoyed
    .
    My knowledge of sports is rapidly building and the long dormant sports knowledge I had picked up here and there from my childhood is moving to the fore. Together with my ability to quickly understand and put into my own usage the jargon of sports I sound quite like an old sports fan.


    Combine that with the general aesthetics of sports fandom – a cap on my head, some magnets in my cubicle, and a bumper sticker, and what you have is an indistinguishable sports fan. Indistinguishable from whom? Well, virtually any fan, of course.


    This indistinguishability unnerves and annoys "true" fans because it reveals what an artifice their fandom is.


    If any Joe Schmoe can arbitrarily pick a baseball team, buy a few pieces of merch, learn about the game, its history, and about the team’s players and suddenly be indistinguishable from lifelong fans then "true" fans are thrust into an existential crisis. What is the meaning of their fandom? Is it valid? Is it even real?
    Sure, a “true” fan could say: “But UL is not a real fan. He is just a Johnny-come-lately!” Or they could say: “He is only doing this for one year. His fandom is fake; it is contrived!”


    This may assuage their existential malaise but it can only do so on a service level. What my sports spiritual guides have seen in me becoming a fan cannot be unseen. The thoughts and feelings they had as a result of my fandom cannot be un-thought or unfelt. The best they can hope for is that I become a fan – a “true” fan – by the end of the year. This would sublimate and adequately rationalize their lifelong fandom. This would make their emotional and temporal and financial investments seem worthwhile. All in all, the only thing that can make them feel justified would be my continued fandom beyond Spring of 2019.

    Thoughts?

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