Fandom — a choice or an illness?

Roger L. Simon is wondering whether his own Lakers fandom (and perhaps fandom generally) is a form of mental illness:

Sometimes fandom almost feels like a mental illness. During the playoffs, I can spend more time thinking about my team than my work, family, or anything else. Part of the reason I am writing this article is that it, at least, combines thinking about the team with work. And I have checked LakersGround and ESPN twice while writing it, even though the article, no magnum opus, is at this point barely seven short paragraphs long. Surely there is something wrong with me.
But what is it? Am I just some aging white guy anxious to identify with six-seven black dudes who can slam-dunk backwards? I hope it’s not that pathetic. But even so, I worshiped Mickey Mantle when I was a kid and he was shorter, white, a bit pudgy and, apparently, something of a drunk. (Parenthetically, I am much more willing to excuse athletes their personal foibles than any other public figures — as in the Mr. Bryant mentioned above.)
So what is it? Arrested development? Testosterone poisoning? So far I have no full explanation for this insanity…

I can’t speak for anyone’s experiences with fandom except my own, and while I can hardly be called a Lakers fan in the truest and purest sense, I did live in California for 28 years, and felt enough kinship with the Lakers that it lingered on after I moved here to the East Coast. Being a naturally contrarian sort who does not take kindly to being told who to like, I was not about to abandon the Lakers simply because of an unfortunate happenstance involving the geographical location of my personal living space. So during a historic showdown between the Philadelphia 76ers and the Lakers, I tried in my own rather lame way to be a loyal Lakers fan.
The way people reacted, you’d have thought this was an act of treason. No seriously. My memory of what happened was vivid enough that I blogged about this near-fatal act of would-be Lakers fandom a couple of years ago:

In the Philadelphia area, there are sports fans who do not take kindly to criticism of their opinions or teams. I remember that not long after I moved back to Philadelphia from California, there was huge local hysteria over a showdown between the Philadelphia 76ers and the Los Angeles Lakers. While riding through Philly in a friend’s car and thinking it was funny to hear people cheering in the streets for the Lakers, I thought it would be equally funny to evoke (in an imitative if insincere manner) a little pro-California cheering. I opened the window and yelled “GO LAKERS!”
According to my friend who was driving, this was not a good idea at all! He yelled at me to shut up, and said he was worried for our safety, and about his car getting damaged…

That is no exaggeration. As the Sixers had not been in the NBA Finals since 1983, there was near-hysteria in the streets, what with the flags and everything, and I think waving a Lakers pennant in the Philadelphia streets at the time would have been a bit like waving a Danish flag in Karachi during the Muhammad cartoon controversy.
Whether any of this is mental illness, who knows? At the time I was merely exercising my First Amendment right to self-expression, brought on by being homesick for California. The question of mental illness could be argued both ways. Who was crazier? The fanatic 76ers fans in their own city streets, or a displaced Californian who dared to defy them?
Not being a sports psychiatrist, I won’t hazard a guess. Besides, even if I were a sports psychiatrist, wouldn’t I be in a conflict of interest?
Of course, now that I’ve been in the Philadelphia area for eight years, I take a broader view of these things. So even though I am a loyal person I have to say that if the incident repeated itself today, I’m not sure I’d feel the emotional need to yell “GO LAKERS!” (It is possible that living in Philadelphia has caused my testosterone levels to change and I’ve become more submissive to alien fandom influences, but I haven’t had that confirmed medically.)
But what if I move back to California? Is fandom permanent condition? Is it portable? Or is it changeable? Not to get heavy or political, but doesn’t this beg the question of whether fandom is chosen? So, if I move back would I then become an ex-Sixers fan? What is a former-Lakers fan returning from Philly to the old fold? An ex-ex-Sixers fan?
Right now I’m feeling like a lapsed Lakers fan.
Maybe I’d be ex-lapsed.


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2 responses to “Fandom — a choice or an illness?”

  1. John Avatar
    John

    I literally had to have a bottle of Rolaids by my sofa during the Pens Stanley cup semi’s. I can’t even watch the finally without the acid dissolving my stomach.
    GO PENS!!!!!!!!

  2. SFC SKI Avatar
    SFC SKI

    If you are a Celtics fan, you are completely rational, if you are a Lakers fan, unfortunately you appear to have a mental illness.