Booing the home team and other issues that question your "fanhood."

[LoudClearVoice]

Last night in the Tigers-Red Sox ALCS Game 5, Tigers fans at Comerica Park were booing Prince Fielder to the point where he was asked about it after the game.

So, this thread raise the age-old fandom question: Is it acceptable to boo your team? Are you a "real fan" or "true fan" if you boo your team or players on your team?

It also leads into a slew of related questions: Are you more of a fan if you boo your team when they don't perform or call for a coach to be fired or underperforming player to be traded or if you support everything the team and every player, no matter what.

As a fan of Detroit Sports, I'm been through the booing of the home team with the Lions and Tigers. I think there is absolutely nothing wrong with booing your own team or players. It doesn't make you any less of a fan. If you spent your hard-earned money on tickets to the game and your team is not performing, you have every right to boo them. I think people need to take a step back and look at what it means. It means you're telling the team that they are not playing well and you want them to play better. If you weren't a real fan, why would you care if they played poorly?

On my second point, I think if you don't call for a coach to be fired or bad player to traded or if you can't admit when a player on your team sucks, then you're actually less of a fan than someone who does. I've been criticized by Lions fans we call "slappies" (people who blindly support everything the team does and every player no matter what) as saying that I'm not a "real fan" or that I'm a bandwagon fan because I tell it like it is. If a guy sucks, I can admit it. If a player needs to be traded or released, I can admit it. I feel like I care so much about my teams that I want the best product out there and if we as fans don't boo (or call for changes) then we're not "part" of the team as many fans feel and our money is being wasted. The great part of being a fan is feeling like you are part of something and that you as fans can make a difference.

Anyway, how do you all feel about these issues?

 

[Slash-LN]

I myself don't see a problem with booing players that aren't playing well.
I don't think not booing them makes you any less of a fan though.
I've never gone to a game and booed the team or anything even if they're having an off night.
I haven however been very vocal (online at least) that the Titans need to get rid of Ryan Fitzpatrick. I don't think it makes me any more or less of a fan than anyone else.

I do think there is a line that shouldn't be crossed and Texans fans crossed that line when they cheered after Matt Schaub got hurt. I think that's really tasteless and those people are dicks.

It's obviously not the first time it's happened and won't be the last but I just think there's no room for that in sports.

Boo the guy all you want. They can handle it. Don't cheer when they get hurt and don't cross the line with the comments you make to the players. The death threats and making rude comments about their families an that kind of thing isn't needed.

 

[LSN80]

If we can cheer our home team when they're doing well, why can't we boo them while they're doing poorly? Aren't we still, in negative fashion, showing support? We, as human beings, are genetically negative people, so it's essentially in our nature to boo when our team is doing poorly.

I've lived in Pennsylvania my entire life, be it mostly Pittsburgh, but Philadelphia for a time(2 years). And to me, there are areas where both cities cross the line from booing heavily to downright crass behavior. As I said, we're genetically negative, but that doesn't give one cart'e blanch to do as one pleases as justification for poor behavior. It's there in Philly and Pittsburgh alike. Where Pittsburgh fans get drunk and nasty towards their team, Philly fans get drunk and nasty towards one another. Both can be equally boorish and foul, and I'm not claiming one city(It's Philadelphia ) to be worse than the other. Simply put, my point is this: There's justifiable booing of one's team, and unacceptable behavior by fans when their team is performing poorly.

Being a Pirates fan my entire life, I feel I earned the right to boo them. After 20 years of losing, poor drafting, darn dumb trades to slash payroll, and ill-advised free agent signings(Derek Bell, anyone?), I feel it my right. When my best friend lived in town, we'ld try to go to one game a homestand, at a time where the Pirates were going through a particularly rough stretch. The team had traded away its core(Jason Kendall, Brian Giles, and Aramis Ramirez) and they were just awful. And as fans who cared about our team, we booed the heck out of them. For me, a true fan isn't one who only cheers them regardless, it's one who stays with them through the good and bad, and reacts accordingly.

The only thing that shows one doesn't care? Ambivalence. A fan who tunes out when their team is poor, or sits with hands folded during the same showing no reaction at all.

 

[Poop Master Flex]

I think there's nothing wrong with booing your team or players if they aren't playing up to snuff. It's natural to trash your team when they aren't playing well just as its natural to cheer on your team when they are playing well. If you are booing your team it just shows you're passionate about the team and want them to do good.

Personally I find it much more annoying when a person chooses a new team when their team isn't playing well, I think that makes you much less of a fan than venting your frustrations with your team. My cousin is bad for this, his whole life he cheered for the Penguins until Calgary went to the finals, all of a sudden he's no longer a Pittsburgh fan and he's Calgary all the way (this was when Pittsburgh was beyond awful and in Alberta it was the cool thing to like the Flames). This makes me laugh every time because if he just stuck with his team he would be cheering for one of the best teams in the league instead of a team that's just starting to rebuild (although the Flames are doing much better than I expected so far). To me it not only shows he's not a Penguins fan, but he may not be a Flames fan either as he comes off as more of a bandwagon jumper than anything else.

For 20 years I've been a Bulls fan, Red Wings fan, Cowboys fan, Yanks fan and a Stamps fan. Now Red Wings and Yanks have been good almost every year but the other 3? Not so much. Even when everyone around me turned their backs on the Bulls when Jordan retired I stuck by them all the way and that loyalty is paying off. I would boo the Bulls, I would trash the Bulls play but I stayed a loyal fan the entire time, even though they went 4-5 seasons straight as the worst team in the NBA. To me that's what a fan is, someone who sticks by their team no matter what. My teams were all on top when I started cheering (that's fine as its common when you start watching as a kid) but what makes you a real fan is whether or not you stick by your team no matter what, no matter how they play, no matter what new fad team comes into existence, no matter if the head coach gets busted for trying to injure the other team, no matter what BS may happen in regards to that team.

Some are a fan of the sport (as in they have no alliance, they just like watching the sport) but in order to be a fan of a team you got to stick by them or else you really aren't a fan of any team.