Snyder's Soapbox: No one needs to pass a test to be a sports fan

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.

>This past weekend, the New York Knicks won the NBA championship for the first time in my lifetime -- the first time in many people's lifetimes, in fact. Though I'm trained to hate the Knicks for Pacers fan reasons, I was happy for a large number of Knicks fans (plus, I'm looking forward to the Pacers knocking the defending champs out next year). I also observed an awful lot of fan gatekeeping.

>This would be the whole "you aren't a true fan unless ... " guy. We've all seen it. Since this is technically a baseball column, let's discuss this through the lens of our sport. I'm a Cubs fan, as most readers already know. When the Cubs won the World Series in 2016, there was plenty of this gatekeeping nonsense going around.

>I sat in the bleachers before it was cool. Where were all the rest of these people?

>You'll also get the Pop Quiz Guy. You know, a person isn't allowed to act happy about a team or claim fandom unless they can answer all your trivia questions.

>Who won Rookie of the Year in 1989? Who took over at second base in 1987 when Ryne Sandberg was injured? (Jerome Walton and Paul Noce, respectively, thank you very much.)

>First off, not every person cares to be a diehard, psycho fan like we are. Secondly, without the non-diehard fans, sports would be a relatively lonely place. The ballparks wouldn't sell out. We diehard fans aren't the majority; we are the minority. If only Knicks fans who could name the starting lineup from, say, 2005 were allowed to watch, Madison Square Garden would have been two-thirds full for the NBA Finals...at best.

>Hell, maybe there are enough of us to fill stadiums/ballparks/arenas, but I'm skeptical. The overwhelming majority of fans enjoy casually following and having fun when the team is winning. And, sure, there will be fair-weather fans, but I've already discussed why we shouldn't care about them.

>To pull on a thread from that thought, the reason the highs are so high when your team is winning is that we went through all the lows. Sometimes really, really low. The non-diehard fans don't hurt like we hurt, which means they won't feel joy at the same level of intensity that we do.

>That doesn't hurt us. It doesn't affect us one bit. To each his/her/their own. If you want to go around believing you're a superior fan due to all the virtual scar tissue built up over years of sports misery, have at it. Go nuts. Do it internally, though. It's such a bad look to try to publicly shame other fans for allegedly not caring as much as you do.

>Plus, the more the merrier! Sports are supposed to be fun. When your favorite team is winning, would you rather see massive crowds where everyone is celebrating and chanting and generally having a blast or would you rather walk around checking everyone's fan credentials -- telling everyone they aren't "true" fans and, thus, shouldn't be acting as joyously as they are?

>C'mon. That's no way to live. Enjoy your team and quit gatekeeping. It's a bad look and incredibly lame. When your team wins, just enjoy celebrating with everyone else who is happy.