Fan, an enthusiastic devotee, usually a spectator, and used in the context of sports. The most exciting sport of baseball, the soft but emotional game of football, and the ever skillful game of soccer, are three of the main athletic events that claim to attract the greatest fans on earth. Has the true definition of fan survived the harsh times and increasing worldliness of today's society? While the truest form of the fan can still be found, they are seriously scarce at modern sporting events.
For countless years baseball fans have made the highfalutin argument that baseball is a game of tradition that has enriched American culture for generations. It is fairly ironic that baseball fans hope that a pitcher may have a no-hitter so they can experience one of the most riveting occurrences in sports. Great! You see 102 pitches in a seat for which you paid $40. 00, and not a single instance of offensive production the entire game.
I wonder if the center fielder was earning his 17 million that game. Further, that same fan who has come to watch the home team win, is cheering for the opposite pitcher to get that last strike out.Also, why is it that every spectator of baseball, regardless of his or her team, must get an autographed ball? Why can't they just encourage the player or express how much they enjoy watching the athlete? An autograph merely proves that you momentarily met the athlete, avoiding the unfortunate situation of your friends not believing you met the player without such evidence. The best fans are the ones that sit on the third base line, mitt under chair, holding on to the ignorant expectation that if a foul ball were to be lined at them, they would have adequate time to pick up their mitt, put it on, and catch the ball.
If a ball comes at you, get out of the way quickly! Really, activities such as studying the anatomy of a bullfrog's leg, reading the dictionary or watching your pet turtle make it from one side of the room to the next, may be just as enthralling as the sport of baseball. You must give baseball fans credit though; they somehow find the patience to sit through game after game of the most grueling, monotonous sport known to man.Next time your friend tries to make you feel guilty for hating baseball, recap for him what ESPN football commentator Beano Cook said in 1981 when the baseball commissioner announced that the US hostages released by Iran would all receive free lifetime baseball passes: "Haven't they suffered enough"" Football fans, on the other hand, are the diehard enthusiasts who best exemplify the definition of a fan. They travel hundreds of miles per season, cook hundreds of burgers and hotdogs out of the back of their Chevy Tahoe, exhibit gallons of paint on their body, and sit on rock-hard seats in anywhere from 0? o 105? F weather.
These same football fans run like Kenyans in a marathon from their parking spot 5 miles away that they paid $30 for, just to make it to opening kickoff. These fans spend hundreds of dollars in a fantasy football league in order to imagine they own an all-star team that, in reality, they have almost no influence on. On Sundays, these fans, if not at the game, can be found on the most comfortable sofa or Lazy-boy in the house, with enough refreshment and chow so that they don't have to get off their posterior for the next 6-7 hours.They refuse to talk about anything besides football until the last afternoon game's clock reaches 00:00. They devote 16 weeks, or 1/3 of each year, to concentrate on nothing but football.
So aren't these folks actually fanatics? However, at least these fans actually can care for a sport that has something worth caring about because there is something to be missed if one leaves the seat. While they may be a bit eccentric, at least they aren't mindless androids watching a baseball player step out of the batter's box after every pitch to adjust his jockstrap.Football fans, while slightly extreme, have a true passion for their sport, and further for their team. Soccer fans, the most ‘well-behaved’ spectators in all of athletics, are unwilling to jeopardize their view of the game of European football.
Truly though, soccer spectators, also known as soccer thugs, and soccer hooligans make the fans of American Football look like harmless goldfish attempting to consume their miniscule fish food. These thugs have caused so much violence at soccer games and such rowdiness outside the games that England was forced to create a Football Intelligence Unit.Hooligans cause violence on very large scales. Instead of employing their fists as weapons they have resorted to the buckles on their belts.
Who whips someone with a belt buckle at a sporting event? What am I supposed to tell my child when he sees one man getting thoroughly battered at a supposedly beautiful soccer game? The heads of the counter-hooligan measures in England have compared these mobs to the street gangs that are so prominent in the United States. But these crazy thugs claim that the sport of soccer is beautiful, it is an art for only the most athletically gifted on Earth.That is why they feel it necessary to bash an opposing fan's head in with their belts. Honestly though, soccer is dull. At best you will see an action-packed play maybe once every 35 minutes. Yet these thugs claim that their sport is great.
Yeah, phenomenal! That is, if you like to see a lower scoring game than you usually do in baseball. No wonder, the spectators of the finesse sport of soccer clearly feel an imminent necessity to invoke some sort of stimulation by causing a ruckus and pounding on the opposing teams' fans.Therefore, the next time you consider what sporting event to attend, consider the monotonous and almost nonexistent progression of the baseball game, the fact that you have as good a chance of coming home from a soccer game as you do getting a heart attack due to excitement at a White Sox game or the outright fanaticism of the football diehards. Then, if you do decide to go to one of the sporting events, please do not become the ridiculous sort of fan that we have come to know!
