Last week the Royals beat the Yankees thanks to an walk-off home run from Alex Gordon. After the game Royals manager Ned Yost was upset that only 13,847 fans were in attendance. On the surface his complaint makes sense. You would think that fans of a team in playoff contention for the first time in 29 years would be busting through the turnstiles to cheer on the hometown nine. However, that whole "not making the playoffs since 1985" thing has a way of dampening enthusiasm. As a fan of another underwhelming team (the Brewers) I have to side with the Royals fans on this one. This is especially true after the Crew's recent 9-game losing streak reinvigorated my empathy for fans of tortured franchises.
This season the Brewers set a club record for consecutive days in first place (150). This streak ended on September 1 and, thanks to the 9-game skid, the Crew find themselves 3.0 games back of the Cardinals in the NL Central. Though they hold a 1.0 game lead on the second wild card, their collapse feels so catastrophic that it's almost impossible for a Brewers fan to envision a scenario where the Brewers make the playoffs, let alone win another game. It's gotten so bad that I cannot bear to watch or even periodically check the score. That's right: my favorite team is so agonizingly terrible right now that I am ignoring them. But there is more to my growing indifference than this recent losing streak.
Collapses are a Milwaukee Brewers specialty. In 2004 they entered the All-Star break over .500 and finished the season 22-53. The 2007 team led the division by 7.5 games in June, but a 9-18 August positioned the Cubs to ultimately take the division. There is also the 1987 squad, aka "Team Streak," which started the season 20-3 before a subsequent 2-18 stretch of awfulness essentially removed them from playoff contention. And if you look beyond this incomplete history of collapses you'll find generally terrible baseball teams. All of this considered, why would the default outlook of a Brewers fan be that of optimism? This brings us back to the Kansas City Royals.
When you follow a losing franchise you are conditioned to expect losses. Four months of winning baseball does not change this, it merely makes you anxious about the inevitable day when the winning will stop. Far too often this fear becomes reality and your natural expectation of defeat becomes even more ossified. This is why you cannot be upset with Royals fans for not attending games or any other tortured fan base for being fatalistic in their indifference. It's hard to get excited when you cannot bring yourself to believe that your team is actually any good, even when they have a winning record.
Being a devoted sports fan involves an emotional investment and sometimes it's better to settle for no return than put all of your capital into what seems like a pouch of magic beans. It may seem irrational for a fan base starving for a winner to be indifferent during a winning season, but to the tortured sports fans of the world it makes perfect sense.
