Sports Fan Ethics

Being a sports fan is an existential choice. It involves a way of being in the world and relating to other human beings. The point of the game is being a fan involves a moral stance. It means acting in ways that impact others and the game. This  means it involves obligations and responsibilities. As a friend of mine reminded me,  spectators refer to "the team" and fans use the word "we."

This all became clear to me when I realize how early this all starts. Last week a major scandal erupted in Florida where the parents and fans of little league football had been indicted for betting on the games and hiring coaches who had criminal records amongst other things. Along with the incredible cost to the young student athletes and the horrible role models this provided, it reminded me again of how deep and important being a fan can be to many people, a link that can cause the craziness of Florida or a fun and important way to link to community and study and admire a form of human mastery.

Games depend upon rules. Athletes depend upon rules and conceptions of form and excellence. The very idea of winning requires rules that define what constitutes excellence, achievement and winning. The essence of competition builds upon the idea that rules govern behavior. Competition without rules reduces to war.

As I suggested, fans shape the environment and impact the athletes and competition. This involves them in the game and their influence, unlike spectators and audiences, carries a set of obligations; to be a fan is a moral stance about loyalty, commitment and participation.

I don't want to go overboard here, but as fans, people act, influence others and model for others. They infuse social gatherings with their presence and they pass on loyalties and relations to those around them.

Ideally a fan appreciates the team and sport and athletes. A deep aspect of being a sports fan lies in the aesthetic enjoyment (no true fan would use words aesthetic enjoyment) of the beauty and pure form of the sport they love. Being a fan involves people in communities of like minded people, so they can share common identity, emotions and conversations. Fandom through blogdom, bars and office NCAA pools demonstrates  and creates a subculture of identity, community and conversation. It enables people not only to vent and gloat but to discuss and appreciate the fine points of the form of the sport and the dimensions of its players.

All this suggests that the moral world of being a fan should involve respect for the game, players and fellow travellers. It means that fans can argue and shout and scream and holler, but it should occur within the bounds of norms of respect (these are elastic norms since some groups can use profanity laced diatribes and still laugh with and at each other). Simply by actions, taunts, movements fans force the athletes brain do do more and subtly can subvert the attention needed for a fine motor skill activity under active stress. Fan actions matter and influence games, no matter what athletes claim.

Fans have obligations to at least understand the game; you often see this dynamic played out in teaching younger fans the nuances or the painful experience of watching two people on a date, one a fan and the other bemused but trying hard to attend to the fan's nuttiness. You also see it among fans who can acknowledge the other team's excellence, "good play,"  "nice call," "good shot." You try to teach this to kids and neophytes so that they understand this is about both the sport and the team.

The problems emerge because of the identity pathologies of any community. Fans can become more committed to winning than the team or sport. The obsession with winning can be tied to collective need to feel superior (welcome to war again). The winning drive can coexist with another dynamic of identity--the we/they black/white world of asserting my identity and value by devaluing another. Racism depends  upon this dynamic, so does sexism.

One of the crucial borderland obligations of sports fans is how to treat opposing players and teams. If the fans have overinvested their identity in winning alone (if a fan arrives at the point where they cannot acknowledge a great play by an opposing player, they have crossed a dangerous boundary). (I must confess I have spent a decade booing and hating Alex Rodriquez for his betrayal of the Mariners and still cannot bear to acknowledge that he has any worth as a player or human being for that matter).

Here is a critical boundary area for fan. It is part of the oblgation to root for their team. Heckling and getting into the other guys head is more problematic but fits for a good fan. But as a coach friend of mine said "if you heckle, be clever, be good, but don't be cruel." We all know and appreciate good heckling, but more than a few fans personalize their screams or worse they invoke racists, sexist or foreign baiting (I am amazed at the number of mindless fans who shout "USA" when an international player is under pressure even when their own team may have three internatioanl players of their own, but who said consistency had anything to do with fans.)

One of the classic ploys, in movies at least, is for a coed to flash an opposing player to deflect their attention. A very clever and very subversive act occurred several years ago when California coeds created a fake coed identity named Victoria who engaged in on line chats with a UCLA player. At the game the Cal. rooters revealed the "Victoria" cheer and even quoted textings in their jeers/cheers/heckles. It ruined the players night and revealed a very clever and subversive use of the social web world of athletes.

However more than a few fans stalk players, abuse players and coaches mercilessly with profanity, racist and sexist catcalls and remarkably ugly comments to the players, coaches and administrators on line and through web sites.  I've sat by benches where fans spat on the players and those  nearby. The pseudo anonymity of the web as well as the fact that internet flames are not tempered by any sense of how they impact the people encourages the same sort of amoral or immoral behavior of being in a crowd. People lose their sense of accountability, respect and appreciation of both the sport, the humans and their own responsibilities. People who believe they are anonymous or lost in a crowd will do things they would never do if held accountable as an individual.

Contagion is a psychological reality where the emotional and behavioral actions of one person can change the emotional affect of others. In economic terms bad fans drive out good fans. In social psychology the haunting example of the death of Kitty Genovese reminds us all that people will stand around while another person is murdered waiting for others to act. In fandom  this "bystander effect" encourages people to stand around while one obnoxious idiot spews invective to hurt the players and infect those around him. The picture here is of a young kid giving finger--is  this what we want to hand on as fans? Like racism, bad fanhood is learned and handed on.

Another crowd effect encourages the darkside of fans. Being in a crowd that feels anger and rage encourages people to feel release from their normal moral commitments. The crowd encourages a form of anonymity and people who believe they are anonymous will do things they would never do if alone and accountable. The soccer riots in Europe epitomize all these coming together. The recent killings of fans as people stood around and cheered resembled gang executions.

Moral and psychological life is strange. Every good aspect of being a fan carries a shadow. Identity, common fate and language, particpating with others in emotional expression, if turned ever so slightly, end up with vile cruelty to other teams, to human players and to other fans.

Being a good fan matters and carries obligations. 

Can a Team Pitch a No Hitter?

This week the Seattle Mariners pitched a no hitter against the Los Angeles Dodgers.

What does that mean?

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You can compare it with Matt Cain's fourteen strike out perfect game in the same week. Like many perfect games, Cain just dominated as a pitcher, and although perfect games occur much more often now than in the days when they would be spaced 20 years apart, they distill the essence of how baseball assigns ultimate responsibility to the pitcher. No one says the Giants pitched a perfect game; all the praise goes to Cain. Although no hitters are not nearly as impressive we usually say the same thing like Roy Halladay pitched the no hitter.

Our language assigns responsibility in no hitters and perfect games—the language resolutely pinpoints the pitcher as responsible for the game. Yet the reality is much more complex, and the Mariner’s no hitter reveals this complexity.

The Mariners fashioned a no hitter using six pitchers. As of Sunday they were still trying to whom to award the game ball? Only once in the history of baseball have six pitchers carved out a no hitter, Houston in 2003. It had never happened in the American League.

Only ten times in baseball history—345,000 games and counting—has this happened. Yet part of me feels cheated. How can a committee of pitchers pitch a no hitter? Where is the responsibility and clarity for the win and the no hitter?

There are two points here. First, a no hitter is important and very rare, but not a perfect game. In a no hitter, no one gets a hit. People walk and people commit errors. In the Mariner’s most imperfect no hitter, they issued three walks and Charlie Furbush committed a throwing error that let a man reach second base. In a no hitter more balls have been in play and more people have been on base. The probabilities of people scoring rises incredibly when folks get on base, so the role of team defense rises proportionately Hypothetically a team could lose a no hitter by walking in a man after loading the bases with walks. And being baseball it has happened. Twice teams have lost no hitters!

So Kevin Millwood left the game after six wonderful strong innings with a pulled groin. Millwood provided an example of when to leave a game when he called the coach out "I couldn't push off," he said. "It would have been stupid to stay out there." As I have talked about before, this  is a strong ethical reason to leave a game, not to protect oneself, but to help the team from one’s limitations.

The second point of the game is that the six headed hydra illustrates the incredible team nature of any no hitter. Pitch calling by the catcher; fielder placement by the coaches; execution under pressure—Brendan Ryan threw out a batter by a micro-step in the ninth inning; pitchers resilience and cool focus as the zeroes add up on the scoreboard, thee all contribute to the success. It helps to have individual initiative such as Ichiro’s steal to put himself in position to score along with late inning defensive substitutions.

No other team sport assigns responsibility for wins and losses to just one person. Football does not assign wins and losses to quarterbacks nor does volleyball to setters or basketball to point guards. The language of responsibility in baseball has its own history and reasons, but that is another story, but the staunch insistence upon how to talk about pitcher's accountability hides the real truth of the game.

A wag suggested that the Mariners issue a six headed bobble-head. It might be fun, but to get to the real truth this historical game revealed, it should be a a true hydra with new heads spouting for each one cut off, in this case 17 players.

The loquacious Brendan Ryan was spot on, “It was kind of fun to get so many people involved…It just felt like a really collective team effort.”

Ryan’s comment really covers any no hitter or any game; only our language of assigning wins and losses to pitchers hides that.

Mariner relief pitcher Charlie Furbush got to the essence of the issue “We got to all celebrate together because everyone got to do their job and be part of it.”   He just described every no hitter in history, whether pitched by one or six.

A team pitches every no hitter.

The Difference between Fans, Spectators and Audiences

I have a friend who attends all the basketball games at University of Washington. He endlessly works the sidelines. "Nice shot, Q." "Good D., Mac." He calls encouragement and criticism to the players which they often hear. He works the refs. "How could you do that Wanda!" "You owe us 2 now, Kathy." "Nice call, Bill." I watch him carefully because he epitomizes the nature of a true sports fan. Fans are not spectators and not audiences; just watch the participation of the painted school clad fans at the NCAA tournament.

Spectators watch. The Latin root of the word emphasize "seeing" and "watching," sometimes in a disinterested way. Spectators can be very sophisticated, watchers know the nuances of acting or playmaking and enjoy the finesse and fine points of the game, art, spectacle. You can often recognize them as they lean forward with intent stares and moving eyes. But in a sports context they remain passive in their interaction with the game; they watch, analyze and appreciate. (of course there are spectators like those who watch too much beach volleyball who gaze and oogle rather than watch and see, but that is another story)

Audiences hear. Again the Latin root gives it away; audiences listen to the audio dimensions of the world. Symphonic audiences provide an archetype; they listen in intense attention enraptured by music. Sophisticated listeners hear theme and variations and transpositions and understand and appreciate the nuance and mastery of musicians whether at Cleveland symphony or Green Day or Sugar Land concerts. Some listen with their whole bodies and you can see their  metronome feet or hands move  or they sway with their whole bodies. Sometimes they hum or mouth or sing along with the music or voice; many modern musicians invite this form of participation and the audience jumps in.


An experience like Cirque de Soleil creates both audience and spectator with its multidimensional world of sound, site, action, fancy, music, acting, gymnastics and sheer virtuosity. But at the core, the spectator and audience member remain receptors of the experience.

Sports fans participate in a different way. The linguistic roots are obscure for this uniquely American term but seems a shortened form of fanatic. That should warn us right away.  Linguistically, fanatics are "inspired by god, mad, enthusiastic" and carry a lot of frightening connotations that suggest fans move beyond reason and analysis into a different realm. The regular soccer riots and deaths in Europe do nothing to dispel these linguistic and emotional roots.

Sports fans create and shape the experience of sports. They are not passive receptors but active parts of the game itself. They influence action on the field of play. As my friend demonstrates, true fans participate in the sports. Go to a college game and you find bands blaring, student sections hollering and waving hands. Fans desperately impart emotional energy, support and distraction whenever they can. At football games they cheer so loud they force teams to wear radios or use sign language to convey plays. In basketball games they augment runs and try to break the other team's momentum or concentration.At races runners can literally feel and be moved by the energy from the fans.

Fans matter so much that sports often has a "home field advantage" largely created by the fans in the stands. Student sections and fans heckle and try to get inside players heads; they work to take players out of their games or reinforce their own players. They work referees as hard as any sideline coach. Leaving aside the litigation about who owns the "12th. man," a number of teams rely upon their home fans to give them a home field advantage. This advantage grows from the fan's emotional contagion and the comfort and the support it imparts to players. The fan base can infuse energy and hope in emotionally flagging moments as well as provide an endless stream of invective against other teams. Sports fans actively shape the environment in which athletes play as well as interacting in some obscure way with players and teams, for good or bad.

I've often commented upon how individuals who follow sports teams link an aspect of their identity to the team's presence and actions. This identity carries over into memory, but it also affects off field behavior. Fans sit in front of TVs with other fans wearing paraphernalia and talk, socialize and scream at TV suffering when their team suffers and exalting when their team excels. More than a few of us have been known to bow our heads or fold our hands in supplicant prayer--we know God has better things than to attend to a Mariner's game--but we do it anyway.

If you want an interesting lesson into the fanatic psychology of American sports culture, just peruse the hundreds of thousands of blogs devoted to teams and sports or follow twitter about teams and players. The vast majority carry rants and raves and expletive laden infantile comments upon teams and the going ons. But a surprising number (witness this one) offer thoughtful and interesting commentary upon their teams, sports or culture. The world of baseball is laden with sophisticated blogs like Fangraphs that link remarkably obsessive and smart individuals (who clearly need a life) who bring to bear passion and sophisticated analytical imaginations to offer fascinating ways to analyze and understand their beloved sport.

This baseball blog sphere now interacts with the world of professional assessment of players as well as leading to more interested and engaged fans for teams and sports. It offers an opening into sports for the life of the mind as well as the life of identity, aesthetics and deep appreciation of the form and achievement of human possibility.

Fans are different and that difference has some important implications for how they should act as fans. Being a sports fan is an existential choice. It involves a way of being in the world and relating to other human beings. The point of the game is being a fan involves a moral stance. It means acting in ways that impact others and the game. This  means it involves obligations and responsibilities. As a friend of mine reminded me,  spectators refer to "the team" and fans use the word "we."

I think being a fan involves taking oneself seriously and how we act in relation to our team but also to other teams and to other fans. At the core, we share a common appreciation of the sport and its own dynamics, but because fans often link their identity to their teams, the very ugliness that communal loyalties can unleash can climb out from fan tribal loyalties. So being a fan involves not just passion but, as I have written in another post,  being responsible  and self-controlled in your passion and loyalty.