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On the Day I Became a True Reds Fan…

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…Great American was filled with vermin. These particular vermin were wearing blue shirts, typically festooned with a red “C” and including some form of adolescent bear. Roughly 70% of the occupied seats of Great American sported these vermin, such that the crowd as a whole cheered lustily on behalf of the visiting Cubs, rather than the hometown Reds.

I can understand why the crowd at a Tampa Bay Rays home game cheers for the Yankees. There is substantial migration from New York to Florida, and these migrants retain, to a great degree, their New York identity. This hardly absolves them of the crime of Yankee fandom, but at least I can understand, if not excuse. I am utterly unwilling to believe, however, that there has been a considerable migration from the north side of Chicago to the greater Cincinnati area. This forces me to conclude, therefore, that these “Cubs fans” are in fact Cincinnati residents who have determined to cheer for the Cubs rather than the Reds. And herein lies the rub; why would one ever decide to cheer for the Cubs, who have for the last century been the consistently worst managed team in baseball, rather than the Reds, who have won five world championships since 1919?

The only answer I can come to is a certain form of moral depravity that fetishizes defeat, and that has nothing whatsoever to do with enthusiasm for the game of baseball. In short, Cubs fans are not baseball fans; rather, they are fans of defeat. This preference of defeat, as I have previously noted, leaves the prototypical Cubs fan bereft of emotional debit when the Cubs lose; whereas a typical sports fan feels “bad” when her team loses, defeat is expected by the morally depraved Cubs fan, and consequently exerts no emotional toll. Indeed, a Cubs World Series victory would produce cognitive dissonance that would probably be too great for Cubs fans to bear, resulting in attendance of no greater than 70 persons per game at Wrigley the following year.

And so on this day, I was forced to endure an untold number of arrogant, dickish Cubs fans who cheered as the Cubs marched to a 3-1 lead. And then the Reds dropped three on Kerry Wood in the bottom of the ninth, which left me deliriously happy. The Cubs fans surrounding expressed no noticeable reaction to the defeat.

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