209. UNWAVERING SUPPORT - Why Do We Do It?

Last week saw Opening Day in the MLB and I watched with that sense of hope that always comes at the start of a sporting season as my chosen baseball team, the Boston Red Sox, triumphed over the Texas Rangers 5 - 2. Perhaps this might be our year!

The win felt all the sweeter given that in the other sport I watch, WSL football, my team, Aston Villa, are just currently one point away from relegation, have gone through three different managers this season, and haven’t won a match since December.

However, the joy didn’t last long. In the next two games in the series, Texas came back fighting, winning both decisively. Although a fourth match tonight might at least make it a 2 - 2 tie, I can already feel my hope has gone. The psychological knock of early defeat when other teams are picking up nothing but wins can’t help but sour one’s belief in their team, even though a lot can change across a whole season.

The problem is that, although in theory, a lot can change, so often it does not. The last few seasons early Red Sox woes, seen from Opening Day onwards, were a great indicator of their lack of success across the season. Likewise with Aston Villa, last year a terrible first match and a disappointing second were an accurate picture of how the rest of the season would go, never quite getting things together and ending up lower in the league than we had the year before. At what point does the unwavering support of fandom become pure delusion? With over a hundred games left to play in a long season, perhaps it is too early to write the Red Sox off for the 2025 season, but last weekend was the first Aston Villa women’s match on my season ticket I didn’t attend simply because it felt like it would be a waste of my time. Watching the match at home, and the team’s terrible performance and 4 - 0 loss, I felt utterly vindicated in the decision - but I still couldn’t shake a strange sense of guilt. Had I done something wrong by choosing sense and reason over unwavering support for the team?

Often at football matches I hear fellow fans singing that they’re “Villa ‘till I die”, and it’s a song I never sing along too. That kind of blind commitment seems insane to me. Don’t get me wrong - I can’t really see myself supporting another team after being raised going to Villa Park (albeit against my will at first), most of my friends supporting Villa, working in Aston for a decade, and them being the first team I fell in love with. But at the same time I can imagine something so awful happening with the club as an institution that I would choose not to support them anymore. A questionable owner, perhaps? A rejection of the women’ team I support? The unveiling of a terrible institutional scandal? All these things make any brand loyalty one with a caveat: this is a two way agreement and you need to keep up your end too. It is quite conceivable, though a Villa fan today, even without betraying the team for anyone else, I might die no longer “Villa”.

The same feeling has been true with the Red Sox. Adopted much later in my life, my love of the BoSox came after years of propaganda from Stephen King, my mother moving to Cape Cod, and Massachusetts stealing my heart. But growing up with a mother from New York and family there, my early years saw me a fan of the Red Sox’s sworn enemy, the New York Yankees! ‘Fan’ here is used in the loosest of ways, as I never really pursued the Yankees, just found myself adorned in their merchandise as relatives bought me gifts from Manhattan. And the games were on, and when they were, I rooted for the Yankees because that seemed the right thing to do. Red Sox are a real choice I have made and a team I, again, can’t see myself ever not supporting. But still, even here, my loyalty can be questioned. It would be hard to say I’m “Red Sox ‘till I die” because after some fairly poor showings over the last few seasons, the expense, time-commitment and time-delay that makes being an international fan of MLB had taken it’s toll. It wasn’t until Opening Day that I decided to renew my membership to watch the games this year. I was already feeling a sense of futility. I could follow the team online without the heartbreak of spending so many games annoyed and disappointed.

But I did renew in the end. Just as I shall get another season ticket for Aston Villa women next season, despite their appalling performances this year (and even if the ticket is for the Championship instead of the WSL!) As a philosopher though, I do wonder about this strange, irrational behaviour. Showing faith and support in something (a team) that continually lets you down. Ignoring all the evidence of your senses and committing yourself all over again each game, each month, each season. Even believing that titles and championships you’ve never been close to achieving will, this year, be in your grip.

What makes it so weird is that these things - sports - are often meant to be our entertainment. Our hobbies and amusements. Yet supporting a team who are doing poorly means the few hours of entertainment you permit yourself to watch them are spent frustrated and bitter. Yet still we keep coming back.

Essentially, fandom is another one of these promises we make with ourselves and keep simply because of a notion of personal integrity. We keep the promise because we know we should, and we know we should simply because we have made the promise. This is what promise keeping is. A vow to do X. Not a covenant, contingent on the actions of someone else, but a one way agreement: I shall commit myself to you simply because I want to. In sickness and in health. Through good times and bad.

Those of us who are in long-lasting relationships know that this is the true secret of a successful one: simply choosing to make it successful. To not see a bump in the road as the end of the journey. To know that commitment is a choice we make with ourselves and that it is entirely in our power to be there for the thing we commit to regardless of what it gives back to us.

Which is not to say no relationship needs to end. It still remains impossible to meaningfully commit to being “X ‘till I die” given there will be some red line for all of us which cannot be crossed without consequences. But it is to say that perhaps some of us need to commit to far more important relationships in our lives than those we have with our sports teams as seriously and as doggedly as we commit to those sports teams, rather than seeking perfection only, and when things go a bit imperfect, fleeing at the first sign of difficulty.

I commit to my struggling football team and my underperforming baseball team not out of blind faith, but out of a choice informed by their true capabilities and the hope that we can ride out these bad years and get back to something better eventually. I commit because I have made a promise and I keep that promise even though it is only with myself. It is both absurd and precious. Nothing and everything. And my life is made richer by both the highs and the lows that come with it.

Go Red Sox!

UTV!

Note: After writing this post Sunday morning, Aston Villa beat Liverpool 2 - 1. Their first WSL win in 2025!

Author: DaN McKee (he/him)

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