Are You A “Fan?”

Ah, baseball, more specifically, Major League Baseball (MLB) or, as it’s often called, “Big Leagues,” or “The Bigs.” It is also often referred to as “America’s game,” but that designation is not as clear these days as professional football is now competing for that moniker. Some of you reading this might be wondering, and rightly so, why I, of all people, would be writing about baseball. I have said to many over the years that while I enjoyed playing the game as a kid growing up, I find watching it on television the “equivalent to watching paint dry.” Perhaps this has something to do with growing up in the 50s/60s in Montreal where hockey was the sport. I started skating and playing road and ice hockey before I ever had a baseball glove or swung a bat. When I started to play organized hockey at around eight years old, I dreamt of playing in the National Hockey League (NHL), until I asked my grandfather one day if there were any Jewish hockey players. His response, in his heavy Yiddish accent: “Irwin, Jews don’t play hockey, they own teams!” At ten years old, I didn’t quite know what to make of that. Montreal did eventually get its own MLB team, the Montreal Expos (1969), but by then I was nineteen and had been playing hockey and watching my Montréal Canadiens for far too many years to let baseball enter the picture. Even when I relocated across the country to Vancouver, which had its own hockey team, I was still religiously following and rooting for the Canadiens. Trust me when I tell you I took some flak for that! I may have “followed” the Canucks with respect to stats since I was living in the city, but the team would never usurp my allegiance to Les Canadiens. Never.

I now live in Los Angeles, California, a state that boasts five MLB teams in Oakland (A’s), San Francisco (Giants), San Diego (Padres), Anaheim (Angels), and Los Angeles (Dodgers). There are seven states with two teams (Florida, Illinois, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Texas), which means that eight states have nineteen of the thirty teams that make up MLB (63%). One might think that my migration to the south, and in particular Los Angeles, might have converted me into a baseball “fan,” but that is not the case. However, I am a bit of a sports “junkie,” so I do keep up with a variety of sports either in the newspaper or the many online sources that provide a dizzying array of stats and sports minutiae available 24/7. The key word in all of this, as well as above, is the word fan, an intriguing word if there ever was one.

There are multiple origins for this word, including, of course, the shortened form of the word “fanatic,” which comes from the Latin word fanaticus (“insanely but divinely inspired”). The dictionary defines this word as a “person with an extreme and uncritical enthusiasm or zeal, as in religion or politics.” Only when you scroll down to the informal definition of the word does it mention a “hobby” or “pastime,” like sports. If you have ever watched a professional sporting event, either live or on television, and seen adults dressed in ridiculous costumes and with painted faces imploring their team for a win, then you have witnessed fanaticism (a wildly excessive or irrational devotion, dedication, or enthusiasm.” Nevertheless, people can be a fan of a sport without necessarily having a team that they are fanatical about. My wife, for example, loves football, but she does not “have” a team; she just likes the game for the action, and the sounds the game produces. And one can also be a fan without being a fanatic. As a fan of the Canadiens my entire life, I never dressed up in the team’s colors, painted my face, and/or screamed till I was hoarse, watching my team; although I must admit to yelling at the tv in tense moments, if you must know!

The word is also said to be derived from the Latin word vannus, which means “winnowing basket” or “shovel,” used to describe a basket or shovel used for tossing and winnowing grain. There are some who believe that “sports fans were originally called fans because they fanned themselves, or because they were windbags.” I am not so sure about the “fanning” part, but “windbags” sure as hell fits. If you’ve ever been stuck in a room with a true sports or team fanatic, you know exactly what I am referring to. You know, the fan that can tell you not only who his team’s pitcher was for game six of the 1964 World Series, but also knows what color underwear he wore for that game! Fan has also been tied to the word “fancy,” invoking the description of an “intense liking of something, especially in the context of sports from the early 18^th century to the 19^th century. In the mid-19^th century, the term ‘the fancy’ became an Americanism to describe avid sports fans.”

So, why the protracted lecture on the word fan? The other night I was doing what I mentioned above, perusing the online sports sites and checking scores and stats for the MLB games played that day when I saw the following:

Even if you are not a fan of the game of baseball, it was hard to escape the ridiculous hype when Shohei Ohtani, a thirty year old Japanese baseball player, was signed last year by the Los Angeles Dodgers to a record-breaking contract. Actually, the more I think about it, “record-breaking” doesn’t even begin to describe what he signed: A ten year contract paying him $700,000,000.00. Yes, that is seven hundred million dollars! While this in itself is mind boggling, the terms of the contract are even more mind boggling. For the ten years of the contract (2024-2034) Ohtani will be paid $2,000,000.00 per year. The remaining $680,000,000.00 is scheduled to be paid out in $68,000,000.00 installments on July 1 every year from 2034-2043. Now this is what I call a “nest egg.” He is, by all accounts, a pretty amazing baseball player, and a rarity these days as he is a star at pitching, batting, and stealing bases, a very rare skill set for an MLB player, especially when you take into consideration that all MLB teams employ players at ridiculous salaries that might pitch only one inning in a game and do nothing else. Ohtani was on another MLB team, the Los Angeles Angels, before being snatched up by the Dodgers where he played for six years, earning a total of $42,269,259.00. Not exactly chump change, but when you consider that he will be paid roughly $26,000,000.00 more than his total earnings from the Angels for ten years after his playing days are over (he may choose to play past 40, but…). It does give one pause.

Fast forward to the other night and the game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Florida Marlins where Ohtani set a major league record with his 50^th home run of the season and his 50^th stolen base. No player has ever done this before, let alone a pitcher, even though after having elbow surgery in the off-season, he has not pitched one inning this season. When I watched the video of the home run and the subsequent reaction from the fans in the stands, I was blown away. It was a raucous standing ovation and the noise from the crowd was deafening, and it kept going on long after Ohtani disappeared into the dugout. As is often the case when this happens, Ohtani walked back out onto the field, tipped his hat and waved to the fans in a show of respect and appreciation for the recognition of his historic accomplishment. Nothing unusual about this, except for the fact that the 15,548 screaming fans that night were there to cheer on the Marlins, as the game was being played in Miami. Even if there were die-hard Marlins fans in the crowd (a tough sell when you look at their record and the fact that the ballpark was half empty), at that moment they became fans of the game and a player that made baseball history. And let’s not forget that these are Florida fans, cheering for a Japanese player who speaks through an interpreter. Just saying. Fans. It’s a complicated word!

Los Angeles 2024