The Dance of the Phans

This past week, I went to a Philadelphia Phillies game. Now, I’ve often thought of sports games as sort of a dance. You have a twist here, a turn there, a pass, or a shot that is a feat of athleticism that you have no idea how they do it. It’s like a ballet — you have a twist here, a turn there, a pass or a jump that you have no idea how on earth a human could do that.

What I realized at the game, though, was that the crowd was also a form of a dance. Hear me out.

You have the dance on the micro level. The interaction between one dancer and another. The nutcracker to the little girl. The black swan to the white swan. The diehard fan to her friend who has gone to games with her for over half of her life.

Watch them. They know what one is going to do before she even does it. One friend will ask the diehard a question about baseball, say, for example, what a utility player is. The diehard is ready for this. She knows the question is coming, and she doesn’t sneer or talk down to the friend; she simply answers the question.

Later, the Phillies will hit a home run. At this time, the one friend will be trying to take the tag off the new sweatshirt the diehard phan has just bought.

(Yes, phan with a ph. This is Philadelphia; we insert ph wherever we can.)

Now, the one friend knows somewhere in the deep recesses of her brain that she better remove her hand from the tag because the diehard friend will be jumping up to dance and celebrate the homer. If…