I’ll spill the beans now for those who haven’t already guessed it: I don’t think the Toronto Blue Jays are going to go to the playoffs this year. (My pessimism runs a lot deeper than that, actually, but that’s a topic for another day.)

Some notable commenters on the Blue Jays don’t think much of this character of opinion. It seems that, if I have a negative outlook on the Jays, then I am therefore a garbage clown, which means that I

a) am stupid,
b) am a jerk who wants to spoil other people’s good times, and/or
c) derive satisfaction from the Jays’ losing, or at least from being the first one off the bandwagon.

(There is, by the way, little effort made to distinguish between someone who speaks their mind in a restrained and intelligent way and the dolts who tweet stuff like, “HAHA JAYS SUCK!!1! NICE BULLPEN GUYS LOLLLLL”.)

I’m not really interested in debating the first two points; there’s enough of my writing visible here and there on the internet that you can make up your own minds about them if you’re interested in putting in the time.

The third one I’ll touch on briefly. Yeah, there’s a little bit of satisfaction that you get when it turns out that you were right about something; I think we all know that. But I’d trade it in a second for a division title. (As for the bandwagon thing, I haven’t been on the bandwagon since 2009 at the latest, so it’s kind of an irrelevant charge at this point.)

The idea here seems to be that, if you’re an optimistic fan who is enthusiastic about his or her favourite team, you can shout that from the rooftops, but that if you have the bad taste to think it ain’t gonna happen, you should shut up and keep it to yourself.

What are the responsibilities of a baseball fan?

Legally, none; obviously. Just because you like baseball doesn’t mean you have to do anything.

But let’s say you want to take your fandom of your favourite team seriously. Is there a way to do that that you should take, as opposed to some other way? What would that involve? Maybe

– attending as many games in person as you can manage, and buying tickets from the team instead of from a scalper
– not booing the team’s players
– voting for the team’s players for the All-Star Game
– staying positive about the team’s chances
– buying and wearing team merchandise

…something like that?

No.

I don’t really think there is even a hint of an obligation to do anything like that. Look: the one most valuable thing about baseball, the one thing that is at the base of all the billions of dollars that these teams are worth, is the fans’ interest in the game. Without that, everything else goes away. The Toronto Blue Jays depend entirely on the thousands or millions of people who take an interest in them, and they know it, or should.

So if you’re a baseball fan, your attention, your caring, is something that is very much in demand, and as such everybody wants to control it. The teams themselves want to control it, the media wants to control it, even other fans (for some reason) want to control it. But it’s yours. You control it. Nobody gets to tell you that this is what a baseball fan is and you have to be that; however you want to do it is the kind of baseball fan you are.

Therefore…

If, as a Blue Jays fan, I am unwilling to substitute anyone’s judgment for mine, then that’s that. And if, as a Blue Jays fan, I feel like voicing that opinion, then that also is that. And if you don’t like it, you should, because you can do the same.

So here we go: for the past 20 years, the Jays have had some talented players surrounded by enough mediocrities to hold them back from winning anything interesting. And they haven’t won anything interesting. In 2015, they will have some talented players surrounded by too many mediocrities. Why should we expect a different result?