How do you boil a frog?
ANSWER: Never drop a frog in a pot of boiling hot water. He or she will reflexively jump right out and hop away.
Always place the frog in a pot of cold water and then light the fire, bringing the water to a slow, but sure boil. He or she will get used to the gradual change. By the time the water temperature has reached a good cooking boil, the frog’s goose will be cooked and dinner will be served.
And what does the story of the frog in boiling water have in common with baseball fans who are called upon to watch a 100 plus losses per season team finish last for several years in a row?
ANSWER: Just about everything.
The seasoned fans are like the frog dropped into the pot of boiling water. Because they know how the winning game is supposed to be played, the veteran fans will have short patience with “rebuilding logic” and soon lose interest in a club that cannot hit, run, throw, or protect a lead in the late innings. After a max-time exposure of no more than three years to dead weight losing (as the hot water), the knowledgeable fans will either pick another team or just go away to pursue some other precious pastime. After three years, there must be some measurable signs of significant progress, or all is probably lost.
The rookie fans are the ones who are most in danger from the slow boil of bottom-feeder losing. Because they don’t know any better, many of the rookie fans may just stay with losing as the way things are. That’s what the old St. Louis Browns fans once did. Former St. Louis Browns pitcher Ned Garver still expresses his gratitude to the small, but quietly loyal Browns fans with these words: “Our Browns fans would not think of booing our club in 1951,” Garver says. “They wouldn’t dare. – We outnumbered them.”
Some Cubs fans today have gone so long since they last won that World Series in 1908 that they simply expect a guy like Steve Bartman to show up and mess with any opportunity they next seem to have. How can you be a rookie fan to the Cubs experience and not be negatively touched by the idea that losing is normal? As someone who is not a Cubs-hater, I would really welcome some true Cub fan feedback on that question. As one who always has marveled at the curious heart and loyalty of true Cub fans, I would welcome some Cub fans feedback.
And now we have some more rookie fans in our own City of Houston. Somebody needs to tell them that what they are watching in 2013 at Minute Maid Park is not the norm for championship baseball, but that we are trying like crazy to be patient. – If things are not radically better by no later than 2015, it will be time for Houston baseball fans to pick another leisure time killer.
I hear that dipping snuff is making a comeback, but you sure wouldn’t want to try that one in a pot of boiling water.
The Pecan Park Eagle 
July 27, 2013 at 11:55 am |
Tired of losing? Whatever happened to that “My Houston team come hell, high water or league change?” Houstonians are preached to that 4-5 years of embarrassingly bad baseball is what wins championships because they allow us to grow the Carlos Correas, Mark Appels and Carlos Rodons. So we put up with Hector Ambriz and Ronny Cedeno for now and listen to glowing reports about how our farm teams are performing in lieu of putting a competitive major league product on the field.
In a way, it’s a good thing most of us can’t get the Astros on tv and switch off Steve Sparks’ annoying voice after a couple of innings. I miss Bill Brown but it isn’t the same without J.D. and I miss NL ball but it isn’t the same when you have no dog in the hunt.
I’ve gone six months without cable and now I am adding it again for football season but I may just shut it off come February. I can find other ways to be amused and spend that $510 on other things. Since the only games I can get are the Rangers, why have cable at all for those months?
So, see Jim and Bud, I have a life outside baseball and it seems you’ve forced me into it but I’ve learned to adapt. By this time next year, I may have totally lost any caring for your product that you in your greed deny me. Such smart businessmen they are!
July 27, 2013 at 2:01 pm |
Here’s a response from a Cub fan. As a youngster and young man, I watched the team go through 20 years as a second-division club. But there were always heroes to keep us excited — Phil Cavarretta and Andy Pafko, then homer-hitting Hank Sauer, then Ernie Banks …
And I didn’t spend my time exclusively rooting for the losing Cubs. When the White Sox won the pennant in 1959, that was joyful to me. It was a Chicago team, and I was from Chicago. I don’t understand the rubric which has developed that you have to pick one team and hate the other. I even drove to Milwaukee to cheer on the young Braves when they were having their great years in the late 1950’s.
Not all Cub seasons have been bad since they last won the pennant in 1945. The team won its division in 1984, 1989, 2003, 2007, and 2008.
I’ve lived in Maryland for over 40 years now, and I’ve seen the Orioles in the World Series and I was happy to see the Nationals make the playoffs last year, though they didn’t last long. The Cubs are dreadful this year, and I’m probably paying less attention to them than I ever have. But whenever I encounter a fellow Cub fan, we have an instant bond over the names of the Cubs players who strove to perform well at Wrigley, even if the outcome was not what was hoped for.
July 27, 2013 at 3:30 pm |
We don’t really need help from Cubs fans on this. From 1962 until 1980 we spent most of our time rooting for a second division team. And it took us 43 years to get into a world series, where everything that could go wrong did go wrong. We have a big ways to go to match the 68 years the Cubs haven’t gotten to the series, and a bigger ways to go to match their 106 years of not winning a series, but it can be done. There always are benchmarks to shoot for.
July 27, 2013 at 4:31 pm |
All three pervious comments are terrific, but I’m particularly with Bob Hulsey’s first two sentences. They touch on a special peeve of mine. If being associated with only winning teams every year is your sole criteria for choosing something then sports is not for you. Personally I see that sort of behavior as the surest sign of a shallow person who I probably don’t need to get to know.
Certainly there are die hard fans of the Heat and 49ers. I know some of the them. But a bunch of the folks wearing Heat and Niners gear today were wearing Lakers and Cowboys gear in years past. These people are front runners and have no loyalty. That’s nothing a true fan of any team should ever do.
In baseball there is a slightly different phenomenon with Yankees caps. I believe that it started as the same front runner behavior in the 1970s and early 80s but has since become a bizarre warped cultural attachment to the NY logo because they see celebrities wearing the cap. And the celebrities got the cap in the first place because they see other “cool” people wearing them. I think many of them are fans of a logo and not of the team or even the sport of baseball.
My point then is that true fans of all teams need to get to know losing. In fact, I’d go so far as saying that the frequent failure in baseball, where getting a hit 3 out of 10 times is considered excellent, is among the best character building that life has to offer. It’s why most true baseball fans are good people. Hear that Astros fans? Count your blessings.
July 27, 2013 at 10:40 pm |
Mike:
You bring up some points that were critical to my experience as a post WWII kid fan of the Houston Buffs and, although I cannot speak for others, I think my experience was pretty common to our era and this geographic area:
(1) We were Houston fans, first and always. We weren’t taught to always expect winning, nor were we educated to accept losing. As in life, both came our way and, as in all things, one felt a whole lot better than the the other. At the end of the day, however, you could not change your skin. You were still a Houston fan – no matter what happened that year.
(2) Baseball taught some of us that life is very much like the long season of the game. It takes ability, commitment, patience, heart, hope, and faith to get anywhere with anything that’s important to us. – Have you had any experiences lately that fit that mold?
(3) Thirty per cent agreement can even carry a relationship a long positive way if two partners, in marriage, business, or friendship, can find a way to give each other the right to be seventy per cent different in all other matters. It’s when one person has to control the other that things break down.
(4) As in life, we just need to ride with whatever happens and learn from it, as long as we remember one important difference: We are responsible for all the choices we make about our responses to life. We are not responsible for who owns our baseball club and the choices they make about how “our” Houston team runs things. We can still go to games at the same rate, whether we win or lose, or we can choose to do as Mr. Hulsey suggests he next year may – and find something else besides Astros baseball to fill the time. No matter what he decides, from what I see of him, he will still be Bob Hulsey, a man who makes choices on the basis of substance, not whim, most of the time. – He’s no “Yankee cap” wearer.
(5) Most of us here will be Houston fans until the day we die. It will take time and individual choice to tell us how many seasoned Houston fans will keep going to games at MMP over the next five years, but I expect attendance to be be fully affected by the ebb and flow of losing and winning. – Most fans prefer the winning flow to the losing ebb.
(6) Have a nice weekend. I understand there’s a 30% chance of rain.
July 27, 2013 at 4:51 pm |
Ronny Cedeno and Carlos Pena were released early this week. Cosart and Villar, products of the Ed Wade era, have made some exciting debuts. We have a farm system full of excellent prospects whose names most of us don’t even know yet.
Jeff Luhnow in his opening remarks to the fans, said I’ve been in baseball 8 years and have 8 championships (St Louis, major and minor leagues) and I don’t chose to stop winning now! He is fulfilling his promise by already continuing what Wade started and having the second best minor league record in all of baseball last year. Unlike the Cubs, who never seem to have a consistent plan, Astro fans who are paying attention have all the reason in the world to feel optimistic about what is developing on the field in front of them.
I watched the rebuild of the 80’s with Bagwell, Finley, Biggio, Caminit, Gonzales and others making their debuts and am enjoying seeing who will develop this go around. The real demise of the Astros came when Gerry Hunsicker was mysteriouly let go, much to the delight of the Tampa Bay fans; but we have something in place now that should provide us positive results sooner than later.
Now if they would only move those ugly left field signs and let us enjoy the beauty of the ballpark while they play!
July 27, 2013 at 11:55 pm |
I started listening to the Colt 45s on the radio as a kid. As a teenager one year I made it to 67 home games. Over the years I found it impossible to be anything but a Houston fan no matter how bad they were. However…living away from Houston for more than 20 years now is probably a factor, but I have also experienced a sort of gradual erosion of my sense of loyalty. I have come to feel that whether it is a business or not, there must be loyalty on both sides. There needs to be some sense of caring about the customers. I finally felt that the team had not held up their end of things for too long. Something snapped, and I went through what I would describe as a sort of baseball fan’s divorce that I felt completely justified in. Having said that, I should also say that it wasn’t really a conscious choice; I just found that I had finally reached the point where I had no more feeling for the team. It won’t come back, either. Like I said, being away for 20 years probably makes a difference, but now the Astros are just another team to me, and being in the other league with new uniforms makes it also seem as though I don’t even know them. If I ever get to live in a major league city again, I’ll adopt the local club.
August 11, 2013 at 12:25 am |
Peter – Thanks for your very thoughtful and measured comment. The trip to Philadelphia and other things have really distracted me from reading it through in a digestible mode, but that changed for me today. I get what what’s happened with you and I do think it’s something that could happen to any of us over time. Loyalty is a two-way street, in love and life, home and business. If it dies on one side or, over time, proves itself a false loyalty, either way, the other side almost has to fall – for the sake of sanity. We’ll just have to see how this current situation with the Astros plays out for many of us over time. As you probably know, the opposite of love is not hate, but apathy – and the relationship between this Astros group and its fans is ripe for the breeding of apathy these days – or so it feels and seems.
July 28, 2013 at 1:21 am |
That bit about the frog is a myth. See http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/3041/if-you-turn-up-the-heat-on-a-frog-in-water-so-slowly-it-doesn-t-notice-will-it-eventually-boil-alive
July 29, 2013 at 1:01 am |
Cliff:
As I think you really understand, all concrete analogies are not there as absolute scientific facts, but they are clear enough to support a more abstract point. Forget the frog. Try the same point this way. – Next time you shower, turn on the hot water only, Let it get really hot, Then get in and see how long you stay. – Next get into normal cold or luke warm water, whatever floats your boat and then slowly turn off the cold water as you gradually move to all hot. Odds are that you won’t stay until it kills you, but that you will stay longer than you did on the first try.
Looking forward to meeting you in the very near future.