Welcome to Snyder’s soap box! Here I pontificate every week on matters related to Major League Baseball. Some topics will be urgent, others might seem insignificant in the grand scheme of things, and most will fall somewhere in between. The best thing about this website is that it is free and you are allowed to click. But if you stay, you will become smarter. It’s a money back guarantee. Let’s go.
I started this column shortly after the 2023 World Series and have covered a decent assortment of topics here in the Soapbox, especially since this is a baseball column. After all, it’s not like I can discuss things like movies, music, or something academic like pronouns…
Or can I?
Yeah, let’s talk about pronouns in sports. More precisely, we against them.
There’s an ongoing battle in the sports world over whether or not fans should refer to their favorite teams as “we” or whether they should use “they” because fans aren’t technically members of the team .
The easy and the obvious and academic The answer for many people is no, fans are not members of the team they cheer for. As such, “we” is not appropriate. You are you and your favorite team is “them”.
Some fans will point out that spending a lot of money on the team – via tickets, merchandise and even indirectly by paying to watch the team on cable or streaming – means they are actually part of the team, in a certain way.
I don’t necessarily subscribe to this way of thinking, because there is a clear line between a team employee and a consumer. If you frequent your local sports bar several times a week, it’s still not the same as working there. I think you’d be hard pressed to find a customer anywhere saying something like “we have a great menu”, for example, no matter how good the mozzarella sticks are.
Sports seem to be different. People say “we” all the time about their favorite teams.
To those who are against this practice, I wonder about a small loophole regarding schools. Whether in college, high school, or even younger, I feel like if you’re a student body or faculty member, the “we” makes sense. Imagine a student section at a high school basketball game. I certainly agree with someone in the crowd who says something like “we need a quick bucket here!” »
Again, they are not part of the team. RIGHT? I guess we’re back where we started.
One can easily delve into the details of this subject. I know people who think this sounds stupid will never change their minds.
I think something is getting lost in the shuffle of this discussion: This is sports fandom, not real life.
For me, I fully accept and endorse saying “we” about your favorite sports team as nothing more than fan talk.
Many people view sports fandom as an escape. It’s entertainment. It’s supposed to be fun. Sure, we go through relative heartbreak many times, but that only makes the victories that much sweeter. The bottom line, in my opinion, is that we don’t need to discuss something like grammar/pronouns so seriously here in our world of sports fandom.
I’ve been referring to my favorite teams, informally when I’m with friends, as “we” since I was little and I’ll never stop. I’m not ignorant enough to think I’m a member of the Chicago Bears, Indiana Pacers, or any IU team. I’m not trying to pretend that I matter since I spend money on teams as well as a lot of time and energy. It’s not the same. I’m not part of the team, but I say we.
It’s just not that bad. This is fan language. Plus, if you don’t differentiate during a game between “we” and “they”, you can’t really use pronouns, otherwise no one will know what you’re talking about. Let’s say it’s Bears vs. Packers and I mean the Bears need to pass more. I say “they have to pass more”. Which team am I talking about? But there’s no doubt that “we need to embrace more” because I would never in a million billion years say “we” about the damn Packers.
Not only that, but many of us have been fans for decades. There’s an emotional investment there that players who have only been on the team less than a year don’t necessarily have (and understandably). Let’s focus on college sports with the transfer portal. Let’s say you’ve been a die-hard fan of a team for 50 years. There’s probably more emotional investment than a 19 year old who just transferred, right? This is not an insult to the players either.
More than anything, this discussion of semantics ignores how innocuous the use of “we” is. Fan is short for fanatic. We’re not saying we’re sane about our fandom. We are not suggesting that we do the physical work that players do. We love the team and desperately want them to win. We will continue to say “we”.
And if you don’t want to say “we” or “our” about your favorite team, don’t. It’s your choice. My request is to fire people who feel otherwise.
There is no need to control this and “correct” others. It’s not that bad. It’s just sports fandom. Let’s be crazy and relax, Francis.