Congratulations?
Maybe I’m weird for this, but…
I get a little uncomfortable about getting congratulated for the Giants win.
It feels wrong. I didn’t do anything. I paid a lot for tickets, and rushed out of work to get to games. I was loud at games and at home and at bars. But there was nothing I did that required any level of skill. And despite being a big fan, I’m unconvinced that anything I did affected the outcome of anything.
So why am I getting congratulated?
I always envision congratulations for babies and graduations, for getting engaged, and having the engagement survive until marriage.
But not for being a fan of a winning team. That’s not something to be congratulated on.
And all the congratulations come from people who are not hardcore fans. Some of them are fans in general, who pay attention to the results, but that’s all. The dreaded casual fan, or not even a fan at all.
Internally, I wonder if there’s a veiled insult there. That they view me being a hardcore fan as being foolish, and that a sarcastic congratulations is some way of placating me, or acknowledging that for once (or thrice), my October didn’t end in disappointment for reasons that they think I shouldn’t care about. Or that they, without the burden of team loyalties, think there’s some skill to picking a team that wins. (Ironically, many fans of any other team seem to think that because I root for a team that won, I must be a bandwagoner.)
But in the end, I know they’re just trying to show some positive reaction of some kind to something that I went out of my way to enjoy. It’s an awkward way of doing it, but that’s better than what some do. So I smile, and say thanks, and move on trying not to feel too awkward.
But if you are one of these casual fans, allow me to give this tidbit of advice. We don’t congratulate someone for watching the San Francisco Symphony, or the latest Hollywood blockbuster. We got to watch an awesome event. Don’t congratulate us because you think it is a singular kind of enjoyment only we fans can feel.
Tell us that you’re happy for us, because I hope you really are. Tell us that the winning of the World Series was awesome, because it was. Share it with us. Because that, more than anything, is what being a sports fan is really about.
