I’ve written before that baseball is the perfect sport for nerds. Nerds need something over which to obsess and baseball more than fills that need. With all of its history, statistics and sabermetrics, baseball provides everything a nerd needs to form an obsession.
My baseball nerdom started in high school. Since I was born in Chicago I had always considered myself a fan of the Cubs. It wasn’t until high school, though, that I started watching their games in earnest. Back then almost every Cubs game was broadcast on WGN and I would watch them all summer long. My casual fandom of those early years has grown into full-fledged obsession as I now nerd out over the Cubs, their history, their players and their prospects.
And I’ve also gotten Alycia to nerd out over the Cubs.
As I’ve written many times before Alycia was a big nerd in her own right before ever meeting me. Before we ever met she read sci-fi and fantasy novels, she played video games and she was obsessed with Lord of the Rings. Before we met she wasn’t really into sports but, because she was a great girlfriend and now a great wife, she adopted the Cubs as her own.
She’ll sit and watch an entire game with me.
Alfonso Soriano was her favorite player before he got traded to the Yankees.
She could tell you what pitch Soriano was most likely to strike out on.
I feel bad that I didn’t make Alycia a nerd for a better team. In the time that we’ve been dating/married the Cubs have gone 442-497, 55 games under .500. They’ve been pretty terrible yet Alycia still proudly dons her Cubs attire even when we see them lose in person, like we did last night.
Thankfully love knows no bounds…even cursed baseball teams.
Do sports nerds count as real nerds?
Like me with NASCAR
great photo!!!! I’m missing dodger stadium.
It’s ironic that we both got to see our favorite teams play live over the past two days and they both lost. Being a sports nerd is a tough life – unrequited love!
There was a commercial for a baseball video game that showed the Cubs winning the World Series and everyone celebrating in Chicago. It all ended up just being some guy playing the game on his PS3. That commercial made me year up a little as I thought about what it would be like if the Cubs ever win.
Sports nerds have a level of social acceptability that sci-fi/fantasy nerds don’t (even now), and it drives me crazy. Probably because sports is big business.
Sci-fi and fantasy nerds are capable of losing their negative stigma as well. Harry Potter got so big that obsessing over the books and the movies wasn’t nerdy, it was just normal.
The same thing has happened with fantasy football. It was a nerdy thing to have your fake team but now everyone plays it so it has lost its stigma.