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Last updated: Thursday, May 24, 11:59 a.m.
Sports

Column: Battling the bandwagon fans

By Maeghan Connor
Posted on Oct. 05, 2009, at 1:41 a.m.

Life wasn’t easy growing up as a Boston sports fan when I was younger. Things were more likely to go wrong than right and it was a part of the lore to end up crying at season’s end.  Before 2001, when the Patriots won the first Boston championship of my lifetime, I was just another tired sports fan with little to no hope.

Everyone knows the stories.  Despite some promising runs, I had relatives who were born and died without ever seeing a Red Sox World Series win. I heard stories from my father about seeing Larry Bird play at the original Boston Garden while I watched the likes of Antoine Walker struggle to even make the playoffs.  My brother even had a portion of his wall dedicated to pictures of his favorite Patriots players under a little sign he made that said “Wall of Shame.”

Being a frustrated sports fan was all I knew, so when the Patriots started their stretch of three championships in four seasons, I didn’t know what to do with myself. When the Red Sox made the final out of the World Series in 2004, I cried, and when the Celtics won the championship in 2008, I smoked a victory cigar with my dad, just like he did in 1986 when they last won.

These moments in my life mean more to me than they should, considering they revolve around a series of games, but that doesn’t change them.  Yet eight years on from that first championship that rocked Boston, being a Boston sports fan is difficult in a new way.

Fair-weather fans are expected any time a team meets some success.  In Boston, every team seemed to come together and play well within the same span of years, brining the idea of the bandwagon to a whole new level.  You see it at any game you go to now.  At Fenway this past summer, I saw people sit in some of the best seats you can get texting throughout entire innings, never once looking up.  But it is to be expected at this point.

What is new to me, and frustrating beyond belief, is being accused of being a fair-weather fan after living and dying with these teams since I was born.  I wish I could say it wasn’t made harder by being a female sports fan, but the term “pink hats,” which has come to be synonymous with the bandwagon, says it all.

They are just sports to some, but to me and many others, they have come to be a part of our identities.  It may seem extreme to compare my fandom to someone else’s morals or beliefs but it is who I am, and I know I am not alone in these thoughts.  I was raised to know I am Irish, I am Catholic and I am a Boston sports fan. I don’t intend to let anyone doubt that.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 5th, 2009, 1:41 am. You can follow any responses to this article through the RSS feed.

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  • Alison

    I feel your pain. Being a Boston sports fan is difficult on a couple of levels. We were the underdog for such a long stretch, no one really worried about our teams getting too far. Now that we have some recent championships under our belts, we’re the city, other places love to hate. We’re the New Yankees. I hate that. We did our time, we had our hearts broken – Year after year. We’ve earned this day in the sun, without anyone elses derision and scorn. As for people texting at games….I have season tickets to the Red Sox and I think there should be an entry exam for the games. If you can’t answer some questions about the team and the season and some about the roster, you shouldn’t be allowed to get in. There are far too many ‘real’ fans who would appreciate the seat in Fenway.

  • kl

    I am a long-time Boston sports fan and I too have gone through the good times and the bad with my teams. I am also a female and know more about my sports than most of my male counterparts. Although I now reside outside of New England, I watch all of the games on satellite and still consider myself a diehard Boston sports fan. Not once have I ever developed a superiority complex towards those fans who are new to the game. They should be welcomed, and not insulted by being called “bandwagon fans.” We were all new to the game once. Furthermore, there is no mystery to an enlarged fanbase when a team does well. Success breeds more fans. That’s sports, my friends. Why does everyone get upset about that fact?

  • gramfan

    Great column. In my 73 years of loving and crying over the Sox
    its been a long tough ride. I agree that the recent “fans” don’t
    understand what it really means to love a team. It’s especially
    hard to watch an away game and see some of those “new” fans
    and their boorish behavior. No wonder fans in other cities hate
    us. Now it’s time to settle down, cross fingers and toes and pull
    the team through the post season again.

  • http://theremtreport.com Kathy DiRosario

    Agree it’s a sad situation but other teams’fans only dream of such a problem. Think of Cubbie fans. I’m a retired military spouse and after more than 27 years of worldwide travel I have to tell you the Sox along with the Celtics, Pats and Bruins always kept us connected to home. I treasure the tears of both defeat & victory because as you stated they become part of who we are in life. I live in Las Vegas now and we headed to Friday’s postseason game with the Angels to cheer the Sox to victory. Life is too short to worry about the phonies so don’t sweat the small stuff! God Bless our troops & Go Sox!

  • meaghan

    I try to think of it this way. Success has introduced new people to the games we’ve grown up loving. Some of them don’t really understand, but some do. I’m assuming you’ve seen Ken Burns’ documentary, “Baseball.” During one section, former Red Sox pitcher Bill Lee has this beautiful monologue about what it’s like to walk into Fenway for the first time. Who am I to take this experience away from others? Unless you’re wearing a black or pink hat. Then all bets are off. Team colors or nothing.

  • Peggy Baxter

    The “pink hats” reference in this column caught my eye. There have been women Red Sox fans for generations. Finally, the sports collectibles world has caught up with this fact and begun manufacturing items in women’s sizes and colors.

    I’ve never heard men criticized for wearing faded denim caps with frayed khaki brims; or camouflage hats; or hats with little red socks all over them; or whatever else some entrepreneur decides to produce. Commentators should get over themselves in their assumption that women in pink hats are “janie-come-latelys.”

    Also, have you noticed that – on Mother’s Day – baseball players from both American and National Leagues wear PINK!? Jason Varitek outdoes himself in pink gear that is then auctioned off to benefit the Susan G. Komen Foundation. Nobocy better question Jason’s devotion to the team or his masculinity!!

    I’ve been a Red Sox fan for all of my 61 years – at least the years since I was old enough to know that baseball existed. I watch every game; I remember crying when the ball went through Bill Buckner’s legs, etc., etc.

    The night we won the Series in 2004, I was celebrating with my sister, who was in the early days of a diagnosis with a life-threatening condition. I’m happy to say that she has also enjoyed the 2007 World Series win, and that we talk during each game of the season. I’m hopeful that she and I – in our PINK HATS – will enjoy an equally satisfactory post-season in 2009.

  • Jared Handspicker

    Being another life-long Boston Sports fan, I tend to agree on both sides of the fair weather fan discussion. In the end, they are what they are, and will come and go as the seasons change. We should learn to simply relish these times, when Boston/New England-based teams are in a more successful mode.

    That said, I seem to recall, when the Sox were always struggling, the Celtics and/or Bruins usually made some playoff runs, even back-to-back. It may be due to my bias, but I remember few seasons where NO Boston team was at least making some level of run towards making the playoffs. There were, surely, years when no pro team in the area MADE the playoffs, but there was (it seems), always one team that had a chance to make the playoffs. It’s nice to relish the years when we don’t have to fall back on “Just Wait Until Next Year!” However, it’s those sorts of years that will, most likely, in time, weed out the fair weather/band wagon fans. I hope and pray what we now have going lasts for decades, but I’m a true Boston fan… optimistic to the end, but pessimistic over making positive predictions…

    I can certainly recall sharing “Plunkett to Vataha (sp?)” with some college friends, who were totally oblivious to what that meant, and they were from New England. I remember “the plays” that kept the Sox from seaonal victories, the ups and downs of both the Bruins and the Celtics. I can even remember when the Patriots changed from Boston to New England, but sort of felt at that time, it was quite appropriate. Now that I live in NH, after 20 years of military service, I can understand some of the Red Sox Nation mentality. In our case, it expands well beyond New England, but within these northeast states, of course, it’s far stronger a feeling and sense of pride.

    I grew up just 6-7 miles from Fenway, and attended many pro games in my childhood and youth. Cost and travel keep those numbers much lower these days, but the “fandom” level is still up there, and waiting to see who we’re going to face in each consecutive playoff round, this year!

  • gina

    Most Celtics fans are bandwagon jumpers. You watched the Antoine era . I went to games during that era. I didn’t just check a score and call myself a fan. Now a days the Bob Ryan fans call themselves fans because they listened to him bad mouth players but newsflash that isn’t a fan. Unless you supported the team when they weren’t winning you are indeed a bandwagon fan.

    Same with the Patriots and Bruins and even the Red Sox.

    Just because you become a fan of a team during a World series run doesn’t mean you are a bandwagon fan. I might have become a fan of the Celtics when I was watching Larry Bird but I kept watching and going to games when I could during their hardest years. That is what a real fan does.

    As for the Sox. Born into it. I was born and raised a fan and I sat through the years we weren’t very good.