I've been finding it hard to write lately, so I did what I usually do when that arises and tried to think of a baseball post to write up. Laboured over that for about two weeks, and the end result wasn't quite the "professional" standard I aspire to on the WordPress, so instead it goes up here:
Something I struggle with is the urge to gatekeep being a baseball fan constantly. In my heart of hearts, I don’t want to, and I want to make sure that being a baseball fan in Toronto is fun and welcoming because sports can be such a toxic mess, but every time somebody I know hasn’t been a fan that long says something I find mildly annoying, it drives me up the wall. I understand that this makes me sound like an asshole, but I exclusively direct this attitude towards men if it makes you feel any better.
Most of these fans came on board with the Jays during the 2015 playoff run, which captured the attention of Toronto in a way that no baseball team has done since. Maybe only the 2019 Raptors have done the same thing? I was as excited as I could get about sports during that Jays stretch run, but I also wondered how I would deal with the bandwagon since that was a phenomenon that I hadn’t dealt with yet as a baseball fan. I expected to be holier than thou, much like I am at this moment, but I found it to be a great experience. Ticket prices shot up, but the atmosphere at the park and around the team was fantastic, and there was more energy than ever before.
Those years of playoff contention proved to be short, though, and it wasn’t long before the team tended back toward its familiar place in the middle of the American League East (somehow, the Orioles shot down to the basement even faster than us?). I found it much harder to deal with these new fans as they navigated the usual routine of the team being mediocre. Fans seemed to live and die with every game the same way they had when the games mattered more, and I wanted to shake people and tell them it was okay to tune out Steve Pearce at-bats.
I wonder if part of me is changing too. I also had a period where I cared too profoundly and dramatically about each game when I was younger and single and didn’t have as much to do, so it might just be a phase that everyone goes through when they’re finding their own identity as a baseball fan. You’re always going to look back to seasons past during the summer, no matter the vibe.
More and more, I find myself inching closer to my dad as a baseball fan. I used to carry such a massive chip on my shoulder about advanced stats, but now I find it so tedious when they’re brought up on the broadcast. Rather than living and dying with each pitch, I find myself pulling out and looking big picture. It doesn’t matter if Vlad (and Teoscar and Lourdes and Kirk and Chapman) are slumping right now because, to quote my dad quoting Earl Weaver, we do this every fuckin’ day.
