Photos by Juan Ocampo/Los Angeles Dodgers
By Jon Weisman
It’s easy, even conventional, to think of a team’s rooters as something like a singular, cohesive voting bloc, which is why we have terms like “Dodger fans” or “Red Sox Nation.” And fundamentally, Dodger fans do share a common goal, a common dream. We are Dodger fans, they are Giants fans — over there are Angels fans and Padres fans, and so on from one side of the continent to the other, all of us wearing our colors and our pride in an annual baseball Olympics.
But within a fanbase, just like within a city, state or country, there are deep divisions, with different politics, different attitudes and often a real struggle to connect, whether played out in ballpark conversations or on social media. We’re factionalized and entrenched in our beliefs, and our common passion seems at times only to intensify the divisions rather than bridge them.
After the Dodgers serpentined through an 8-5, 14-inning, 51-player, 334-minute, 467-pitch loss to the Washington Nationals on September 3, I found myself frustrated more by these inner conflicts than by the Dodgers’ inability to come out on top. The loss was painful, the anger more so.
Not everyone feels this way. Depending how you follow the Dodgers, depending on what you read, how much you interact on Twitter or comment rooms or how like-minded you and your friends are, these divisions might barely exist for you, if at all. Depending on your personality, they might not even matter.
But if you navigate the different, conflicting worlds, a day like September 3 rubbed the edges raw.
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