For a guy who says he’s not a fanatic…

The Canadian Oxford Dictionary defines a fan as “a devotee or admirer of a particular activity, performer, etc.” with the example “hockey fan.’ It adds that it’s an abbreviation of fanatic. The first definition of fanatic is “a person filled with excessive and often misguided enthusiasm for something.” A second, informal definition of fanatic is “a person devoted to a hobby, pastime, sport, etc., and the example used is “curling fanatic.”

Despite following, playing and reporting on sports for much of my life, I would never define myself as a fan, let alone a fanatic. Perhaps the closest I came was during the early years of the WHA Winnipeg Jets, when I shared season tickets with a group of friends and admired the play of the Hot Line of Bobby Hull, Anders Hedberg and Ulf Nilsson.

You won’t see me at a Jets game dressed in white like the fanatics who participate in playoff White Outs to support their team. I follow the adage that white is not to be worn before the May long weekend or after Labour Day.

On May 19, a new book titled Big Fan was released with the subtitle Two Friends, 82,490 Miles, and the Wild, Wonderful Sports We Love. The authors are television writer, producer and director Michael Schur, the winner of three Primetime Emmy Awards, and sports journalist Joe Posnanski, who was twice named the best sports columnist in America by the Associated Press sports editors.

I can’t write a review of Big Fan, as the copy I ordered hadn’t arrived at press time.

The promotional blurb states that the authors “travel the world in a hilarious and heartwarming celebration of fans and the things they love: baseball, basketball, chess, darts, football, futbol, Indigenous North American stickball, pickleball, WWE, Taylor Swift, Star Wars, and more.”

They have been ringside at WrestleMania in Las Vegas, sang with the maniacs at the World Darts Championship in London, cheering penalty kicks with 65,000 fans in Liverpool, and once watched eight straight hours of football at a Buffalo Wild Wings in Dallas. They even watched a chess master play, in dead silence.

I have been thinking about my own experiences with fandom. One weekend, when an English friend and I were in Minneapolis, Nebraska was there to play a Big Ten football game against the University of Minnesota Gophers. Downtown Minneapolis was filled with boisterous fans dressed in Nebraska red, who frightened my friend. Having never been to a college football game, I convinced her we should attend. What we saw was a great example of American college football fans supporting their teams.

In 2002, at the British Open in Muirfield, Scotland, devoted golf fans followed their favourites despite the conditions. Round three was played on a Saturday and not long after I arrived, a violent storm with sideways rain and winds over 60 km/h hit the course. Some lucky fans found protection under tents. The forecast had been for rain, so I’d brought a plastic raincoat with me, which several fans offered to buy at a nice price. The fans wanted to see Tiger Woods and other top golfers, and the weather didn’t stop them from getting back on the course once play resumed. The conditions did affect Tiger, who shot a 10 over par 81. This non-fan was back on a train to Doncaster long before Tiger finished his round.

Major League Baseball team the Tampa Bay (Devil) Rays has traditionally not had a strong fan base, largely owing to the fact its stadium, Tropicana Field, is an unretractable dome that is in St. Petersburg, rather than the city of Tampa. That changed in 2008, when the Devil Rays reached the World Series against the Philadelphia Phillies. I was there as part of the sellout crowds of more than 40,000 for the first two games. The Rays learned that they had more fair-weather fans than they realized. Season ticket holder Jim Twitty, who lived in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., got me my tickets. During the regular season, when he had time off from his pharmacy job, Twitty, a serious fan, would drive across the state to watch his team.

The loudest and most excited baseball fan group I remember being part of came at a weekday doubleheader at Wrigley Field in Chicago, in late August 1984. I was there with several of my Touring All-Stars slo-pitch teammates, as we had gone to Minneapolis and Chicago, after playing in the Can-Am Games in Fargo. The Cubs beat the Cincinnati Reds in both games to remain in first place in the National League’s East Division. After the games, their devoted, but long disappointed, fans around the stadium and in the Cubbie Bear Den bar, across from Wrigley, seemed to believe the Cubs might be good enough to make in the World Series for the first time since 1945. The Cubs did win the division but lost to the San Diego Padres in the National League championship series.