I’ve never enjoyed baseball. I always found it to be the most boring, uneventful sport, and I struggled to stay awake when my friends dragged me to games. I attempted being a manager for the baseball team in high school, and even then I skipped almost every practice.
Last year, I got sucked into the hype of the Royals because a cute boy took me to a game. (I’m the worst, I know.) It was a great game and the energy from the crowd was amazing; I decided that maybe baseball isn’t the worst sport after all.
After that game, I started keeping up. I jumped out of my chair screaming when the Royals won the wild card game. I celebrated with a bar full of strangers when we became ALDS champions. And when we lost game seven of the World Series, I cried. I bawled my eyes out in public over a sport I never cared about.
This year, I knew we were ready. I knew we had built a team that was more than capable to take the title and was back with a vengeance after their stinging loss last year. I knew that we were going to have no mercy when it came to taking the crown.
When we won the World Series last night, Kansas City erupted. Mobs of ecstatic fans rushed the streets, fireworks exploded over the sky and it seemed as if the city was glowing a royal blue. This city has the greatest fan base the country has ever seen. And yet, amongst all of the celebration and praise, there is still that accusation snaking through social media: that some of us are just bandwagon fans.
To the sports world, bandwagon fans are the biggest injustice to a team. It is believed that they only care about a team when it is successful, that they don’t support a team when it is losing and that they don’t deserve to call themselves true fans.
I can’t name more than five players on the Royals team. I can’t tell you their record, even for this year. I cant recall any major plays or highlights from previous years, nor can I spout off any player’s stats.
I can tell you, though, that this team got a song banned throughout the state of California because they were so intimidating. I can tell you that the same song, a number one hit, was named after a magazine cover that featured a Royals player in his jersey.
I can tell you that countless articles have been written about how Royals fans have tremendous sportsmanship. I can tell you that Kansas City went from being the butt of Wizard of Oz jokes to one of the most respected cities in the country. I can tell you that Kansas went from boring flyover state to home of the Royals, where our famous fountains flow Royal blue.
I can tell you that the bond between myself and the packed crowd in Quinton’s the night we lost game seven was unimaginable. I can tell you that I cried into the shoulders of people I didn’t know because we felt we had both lost a huge piece of ourselves.
I can tell you that chills ran down my spine when I heard we had won the World Series and my heart raced when I heard people rushing through my apartment building to sprint downtown as fireworks erupted over their yells.
Above all, I can tell you that I’m a bandwagon fan. I never cared about baseball until the Royals proved to me why I should. I jumped on a bandwagon that made me see why we call baseball America’s pastime.
I have supported our boys through devastating losses and through remarkable wins. I will never make another bandwagoner feel as if they don’t belong in the greatest fan base in the country. Why wouldn’t I want more people cheering on the Royals’ journey, a Cinderella story about a team of underdogs becoming the world’s leading champions in baseball?
Congratulations, boys. The crown is yours.