The Fan

As a fan, I’ve always been more on the rabid than the polite side. Once as a kid I threw a baseball through a window when Craig Nettles of my beloved New York Yankees struck out to end a big rally. My father looked at me incredulously then and said, “What do you get if the Yankees win?”
Satisfaction, of course, but then there’s so much more. Even back then I knew that it was fruitless to try and explain to the half-hearted or rational fan what it feels like to root your team onto victory. As an emotionally over-the-top fan, I have to seek out others who view their team’s winning and losing in the same agonized, frenzied manner as I do.

A personal essay on what's it like to connect with a pro player and become avidly engaged in a match