Welcome to Snyder’s Soapbox! Here, I pontificate about matters related to Major League Baseball on a weekly basis. Some of the topics will be pressing matters, some might seem insignificant in the grand scheme of things, and most will be somewhere in between. The good thing about this website is that it’s free, and you are allowed to click away. If you stay, you’ll get smarter, though. That’s a money-back guarantee. Let’s get to it.
I launched this column shortly after the 2023 World Series and I have covered a decent assortment of topics here in the Soapbox, especially considering it’s a baseball column. After all, it’s not like I can discuss things like movies or music or something academic like pronouns …
Or can I?
Yeah, let’s talk about pronouns in sports. Specifically, we vs. they.
There’s an ongoing battle in sports fandom as to whether or not fans should refer to their favorite teams as “we” or if they must use “they,” as fans are not technically members of the team.
The easy and obvious and academic answer for many people is, no, fans are not members of the team they cheer for. As such, “we” isn’t proper. You are you and your favorite team is “they.”
Some fans will point out that spending a bunch of money on the team — via tickets, merchandise and even indirectly through paying to watch the team on cable or streaming — means they actually are part of the team, in a way.
I don’t necessarily buy this line of thinking, as there’s a clear line between a team employee and a consumer. If you frequent your local sports bar multiple times a week, that still isn’t the same thing as working there. I think you’d be hard pressed to find a customer somewhere 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” about their favorite teams all the time.
To those against this practice, I wonder about a bit of a loophole when it comes to schools. Whether it’s college or high school or even younger, I kind of feel like if you’re a member of the student body or faculty, “we” makes sense. Picture a student section during a high school basketball game. I’m certainly fine with someone from the crowd saying something like “we need a quick bucket here!”
Then again, they aren’t on the team. Right? I guess we’re back where we started.
One can easily get deep into minutiae on this subject. I know the people who believe it sounds stupid aren’t really going to ever change their minds.
I think something gets lost in the shuffle with this discussion: This is sports fandom, not real life.
For me, I accept and fully endorse saying “we” about your favorite sports team as nothing more than fan speak.
So 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 just makes the wins all that much sweeter. The bottom line, in my opinion, is that we don’t need to be so seriously discussing something like grammar/pronouns 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 a little kid and I’m never going to stop. I’m not ignorant enough to think I’m part of the Chicago Bears or Indiana Pacers or any IU team. I don’t try to claim I count since I spend money on the teams along with a significant amount of time and energy. It’s not the same. I’m not on the team, but I say we.
It’s just not that serious. It’s fan speak. Plus, if you don’t differentiate during a game between “we” and “they,” you can’t really use pronouns at all, otherwise no one will know what you’re talking about. Say it’s Bears vs. Packers and I want to say the Bears need to pass more. I say “they need to pass more.” Which team am I talking about? But there’s no mistaking “we need to pass more,” because I’d never in a million billion years say “we” about the freaking 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 for less than a year don’t necessarily have (and understandably so). Let’s zero in on college sports with the transfer portal. Let’s say you’ve been a “live-and-die” fan of a team for 50 years. There’s probably more emotional investment than a 19-year-old who just transferred in, right? That’s no insult at the players, either.
More than anything, this discussion on semantics ignores how harmless the use of “we” is. Fan is short for fanatic. We aren’t saying we’re sane about our fandom. We aren’t suggesting we put in the physical work the players do. We just love the team and desperately want them to win. We’ll keep saying “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 lay off people who feel differently.
There’s no need to police that and “correct” others. It isn’t that serious. It’s just sports fandom. Let’s us be crazy and lighten up, Francis.
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