Chablis Don't Cheer

A columnist for the Tribune criticized Cubs’ fans on Thursday for not being more excited about their team going to the postseason.  He implied a connection between a blasé attitude and “fans [who] were drinking wine on the patio of the boutique hotel across the street” from Wrigley Field.  Indeed, much of Wrigley Field and the surrounding blocks is pitched to the enjoyment of those the columnist called “fans with supersized wallets.”  Those folks are definitely in short supply at Guaranteed Rate Whatever, though you can bet your last dime White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf would welcome that crowd with open arms.

What this and other columnists largely ignore is the fact that professional sports in America has become an expensive proposition.  I’d say a good rule of thumb is that the more money fans make, the more education they’re likely to have.  People with law and/or graduate degrees learn polite behavior along the way that’s hard to let go of at the ballpark.  Put another way, do dot-com billionaires cheer during a game or hire people to do it for them?

Chicago may be different than other cities, I don’t know for sure.  Maybe blue-collar fans are willing to put down lots of money to see the Bears, Bulls, Hawks and Sox, alone or in some combination.  Or maybe those teams have well-educated fans who revert to their more uninhibited selves once they settle in for a game.  Chicagoans do tend to behave differently than folks in other towns, and my daughter recently worried I’d get into it at Guaranteed Rate Whatever with a Tigers’ fan.

Another thing to remember is that infectious cheering, at least for baseball, depends in part on the presence of kids; the more of them you’ve got at a game, the louder it likely will be.  Alas, for the Cubs the days of class trips to Wrigley Field are pretty much a thing of the past, if not altogether extinct.  That’s sad and may hurt the Cubs twenty years down the road, but right now the Ricketts are fine with relatively quiet wine connoisseurs filling their park.  In sports, you cater to the crowd you want.