Loving the losing baseball team

In advance of Tuesday's Major League Baseball All-Star game, CU Boulder history professor Martin Babicz offers thoughts on why some fans remain loyal to baseball's perennial losers

Every season, one Major League Baseball team earns champion success in the World Series while the rest place behind. And within that second group are a few teams that are the absolute stinkers of the league.

Think the Colorado Rockies in 2023, with just 59 wins versus 109 losses-and with a record of not scoring better than fourth place in their division for five years in a row.

Why do some fans stay loyal to such losers?

Martin Babicz, a University of Colorado Boulder associate teaching professor of history, has some ideas. An instructor in the Department of History, the Stories and Societies RAP (Residential Academic Program), the Creative Minds RAP and the CMCI RAP, Babicz teaches a course called America Through Baseball, which examines American history since the Civil War, exploring how the social, cultural, economic and political forces shaping America were reflected in the national pastime. He's also the co-author of the 2017 book National Pastime: U.S. History Through Baseball.

Growing up in New England in the 1960s and 1970s, Babicz had plenty of chances to see Boston Red Sox and New York Mets fans lament their losing baseball teams on an almost-yearly basis. It's given him insights on why fans stay loyal to losing teams, what factors can cause fans to lose faith in their teams and what he sees as the value of having a team to root for-no matter how bad they are, which he discussed with Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine.

Question: In sports, Americans generally love winning teams. Why do you think some people stay loyal to perennial losers?

Babicz: That's a good question, and I've thought about this on and off for years.

Baseball teams-in fact all sports teams-are local institutions. The Broncos, for instance, are a part of the fabric of Denver, just like the Rocky Mountains or Casa Bonita. But it is more than that. Sports teams are also family institutions. They are a part of our DNA, as support for the team is often passed along in a family from one generation to another. And just like a family won't reject a child who is not as smart or as good looking as his siblings, it also won't reject a sports team that is not as good as its competitors.

I think the Chicago Cubs and the Boston Red Sox might provide an illustration, as they both have very loyal fans. In 1998, both the Cubs and the Red Sox qualified for a wild-card playoff team. The wild card, which at the time was a relatively new thing in baseball, is a playoff berth awarded to a team that did not finish in first place.

Both the Red Sox and the Cubs had reputations for going on a very long losing streak of not winning the World Series, and there was some concern in baseball about what would happen if either of those teams ended up winning the World Series. Would the sport lose some of its luster among those fans? Would the teams lose some of their following?

Well, neither team won it in 1998, but the Red Sox won the World Series in 2004, and the Cubs won it in 2016-and it didn't damage the teams at all. Winning hasn't hurt their popularity, so it's not like you have to be a loser to be loved.

But if you look at the history of baseball, there have been baseball teams who did not do so well.

Think about the Washington Senators, the St. Louis Browns, or the Philadelphia Athletics. They went decades and decades with lousy teams and yet baseball remained popular in those cities. …

Question: It sounds like if a team has deep roots in a city, that can be a strong factor on whether fans will generally remain faithful?

Babicz: Yes, fans tend to remain faithful to teams that have deep roots in the community. Support for the team-even a losing team-becomes routine, almost ritualistic.

Take opening day, for instance. Some fans develop habits of skipping work or school and attending opening day every year, no matter how good or bad the local team is. And for many fans, tuning in the game on the radio is something they do whenever they are doing yardwork or work around the house, and they'll continue to tune in, even if the team is lousy. And, of course, when an opportunity presents itself to attend a game, they'll take it, even if they think their team won't win.

And as I said, support for a sports team is often passed from parent to child. But if there wasn't a team when your father and mother grew up, then there's nothing to pass to you. …

If you look at football, Denver got a football team in 1960, and Miami got a football team in 1966. In those two markets, football had several decades to get established and to build a fan base before they were competing (for fans' attention) against baseball teams. So, I wonder, had Denver gotten a baseball team in the early 1960s, would that team be as popular in the media as the Broncos are?

It really surprises me that almost every night it's the Broncos who lead the sports news-even when it's not football season. And it's not like that in some other markets; it's certainly not like that back east. Football is popular there, but the other sports get their day as well.

Question: Which professional baseball team has the worst record? Were they able to eventually turn things around?

Babicz: The worst team ever was the 1899 Cleveland Spiders. They won 20 games all year, but that was in the 1890s. The National League had a monopoly on teams and there were 12 teams in total. After that season was over, the National League decided to cut back to eight teams-and one of the four teams they eliminated was the Cleveland Spiders. So, they never had the opportunity to recover.

Question Are there any corollaries between winning and losing teams and the impact upon game attendance?

Babicz: Some interesting numbers can be seen with the New York Mets. New York City lost two teams in 1958, when the New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers moved to California. And so the Yankees were left to dominate New York baseball until the Mets were created in 1962.

The first thing that just amazes me, and it doesn't make any sense, is that if you look at the attendance of the Yankees in 1957, they drew 1.5 million people. The following year, they drew 1.4 million. Why would the Yankee attendance go down in 1958, if they no longer have competition? And the Yankees won the World Series in 1958, so it's not like they were no longer a good team.

So, that's the first thing that surprises me. But the second thing that surprises me is what happened when the Mets came to New York in 1962. That first year, they were absolutely terrible, but they drew 922,000 fans. But in 1963, the Mets, who were still a bad team, drew over a million people-and the attendance at Yankee stadium fell to 1.3 million, even though the Yankees were still pennant winners.

And in 1964, when the Mets were still a last-place team, they drew 1.7 million fans while the Yankees-who won the American League pennant that year-only drew 1.3 million fans. So, this last-place team is drawing 400,000 more fans than the American League pennant winners. And by 1969, when the Mets finally won the World Series, the Yankees drew just over a million fans, and the Mets drew 2 million fans.

I find those numbers interesting in that there's something else going on in addition to not having competition or just being a winning team. … My thought is that baseball fans in New York, at least some of them, felt betrayed when they lost the Giants and Dodgers, and then they rallied to the Mets, even though they were bad for so many years.

Question: Is there any evidence to suggest fans will stop being loyal to their losing team at some point?

Babicz: Well, the example of that is in the San Francisco Bay area right now, where the Oakland Athletics are leaving Oakland after the end of the season. Last year, the Athletics were the only major league team to draw fewer than a million fans; I believe there were about 800,000 people who went to an A's game last year.

Now, in the Bay area, they already have the Giants, so there is another team there. But there is also frustration by many Oakland fans, who blame the team owner for not trying in good faith to stay in Oakland. So, you have to consider how much that has to do with the decline of attendance.

The other city that we saw lose a lot of fans was in Montreal, and that can almost completely be traced to the 1994-95 baseball strike that canceled the World Series. The Expos had the best record in baseball at the time and a strong fan base.

Many fans really expected Montreal to make it to the World Series, and perhaps even win it, but it was all scratched when the strike took place and the World Series was canceled. A lot of Expos fans felt betrayed, and they did not return to the game the following season. After a few seasons, Expo fans were still no longer supporting their team.

Major League Baseball later transferred the Montreal Expos to Washington, D.C., where they became the Washington Nationals.

So, it wasn't so much having a losing team as it was this sense of betrayal. And I think there's some of that in Oakland as well. That may be a bigger factor on (fan loyalty) than having a winning or losing team.

Question: Some teams were losers for years-even decades-and then eventually turned things around. Does that mean Rockies fans should keep the faith, or is that asking too much?

Babicz: I've thought about that since I moved here from the East Coast. So, the Rockies aren't in the playoffs. I'd say, 'Be excited that you have a baseball team and go to the games.'

In the first 68 years of the 20th century, only one team in each league qualified for post-season play, and from 1969 to 1993, only two teams in each league qualified for post-season play. Baseball is about a lot more than just making the playoffs.

I think back to being a kid, remembering those Red Sox fans who would keep going to Fenway Park year after year even though the team hadn't won the World Series since 1918. The other thing I think about is, although I grew up in southern New England, I was born in upstate New York, and one of the cities that competed with Denver to get a Major League Baseball team was Buffalo.

When MLB announced the Rockies and the Marlins as the expansion teams, Buffalo didn't get a team. In fact, other than during the pandemic, when the Toronto Blue Jays played in Buffalo-because Canada wasn't admitting people from the U.S. into Canada-Buffalo hasn't had a Major League Baseball team in over a hundred years. I'm sure fans in upstate New York would love to have a baseball team-even if it was a losing team.

Now, you may think, 'The Rockies are a terrible team.' True. But at least there's a team. Those fans in Buffalo don't even have a major league team to root for.

Just because your team doesn't make the playoffs is no reason to give up turning out to support your team. With playoff berths, there's always a chance … next year.

Top image: Rockies fans react to a play during a game between the Colorado Rockies and the Arizona Diamondbacks at Coors Field on Aug. 16, 2023.(Photo: Grace Smith/The Denver Post)

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