Baseball fandom is a personal experience.  People become fans for many different reasons, and their interest waxes and wanes over the course of their life for different reasons as well.  For some people, fandom is driven by an intense loyalty to their city.  Others are motivated by an attachment to certain players.  Sometimes, people fall in love with a team as a child for no reason other than the color of their uniforms.  I, like many others, am a fan because I share this connection with my family.

My experience as a fan is not particularly atypical.  As a child growing up in Los Angeles, I was surrounded by Dodger fans.  I spent a few years of my childhood trying out being a fan of different teams, with my choices usually being motivated by whichever Little League team I happened to be on that season.  I always came back to the Dodgers, though, and I settled into rooting for them exclusively by the time I was about ten.  It gave me a commonality with people around me, and it allowed me to just sit down with my family and watch a game and root for the same thing.

To those of you who follow me on Twitter, my Dodger fandom is not a surprise.  But while I root for the Dodgers, the message of this story is applicable beyond my specific relationship with my favorite team.  Instead, it is about the fan experience.  Fandom is about more than winning, although winning is great.

Until this year, the Dodgers had not been to a World Series since 1988, so I had never experienced a journey like this one.  A 29-year drought may not seem like very long to middle-aged Cleveland fans, or to Brewers’ fans who have never seen a title and haven’t even seen an appearance since 1982.  But I had never seen one either, and so, selfishly, I equated my struggles with everyone else’s.

Last Thursday, though, I was able to watch a baseball game with my parents.  And I was able to watch the team we had rooted for together for over twenty years finally make the World Series.  Despite the unbelievable talent this team has had, the constant playoff failures had made me wonder if this team would get over the hump.  As an objective analyst, obviously, I knew that more playoff appearances meant greater chances.  But as a fan, I doubted whether I would actually see it.  I figured that any drought wouldn’t last one hundred years, but this was something I wanted to experience with my family.

I am not going to pretend to be able to tell anyone how to be a fan, nor am I going to tell anyone to be happy with settling for anything less than a championship.  But as the Dodgers lost four NLCS in nine years, I wondered if I had lost my chance to see this generation play in the World Series.  Maybe Clayton Kershaw’s back problems would derail the pitching staff, and maybe the development pipeline would run dry.  Maybe too many balls would bounce the wrong way, like when a Joe Kelly fastball broke one of Hanley Ramirez’s ribs in Game 1 of the 2013 NLCS.

As I thought about that possibility, and my experience with being a fan over the last few years, I came to realize that there were other moments I would treasure.  I spoke to my dad nearly every day during the incredible and surprising 42-8 run in 2013, and I shared the stressful experience of watching Clayton Kershaw close out Game 5 of the NLDS against the Nationals last year.  These are the reasons I am a Dodger fan, because of the shared experiences and commonalities, and they would not go away just because the team didn’t make a World Series.

I have now written for this website for over two years, and, as you might imagine, I have grown fond of the Brewers as I’ve followed them every day.  I don’t have the familial or geographic connection that many of you have, so I have become attached for other reasons.  I enjoy seeing the blue and gold ball-in-glove logo when the team breaks it out, and Ryan Braun’s swing remains a thing of beauty.  The Eric Thames experience is a lot of fun, as is watching this new crop of young players emerge and fight for their place on the big league team.

I watch Brewers’ games differently from most of you, but we all appreciate different aspects of the baseball fandom experience.  For some people, a championship is the only goal worth pursuing.  But for others, the journey of the season is part of the fun.  And the day-in, day-out experience of watching and rooting provides smaller moments of enjoyment that are worth treasuring.

Once in a job interview, someone asked me why I thought baseball had a special place in American culture.  I didn’t have a great answer for that, and I still don’t (and maybe the answer is that it doesn’t anymore).  For me, though, it is special because it is a constant presence from April through October.  For six months, your team plays basically every day, and watching or following becomes a daily habit.  I did this with my dad growing up, and even though I’m now off on my own in the world, I know that he is following along the same way I am.

Seeing my favorite team go to the World Series has been an incredible journey.  It’s a lot of fun, and this is a particularly engaging incarnation.  But I have also enjoyed following other versions of this team, and those have provided their own highlights.  Expanding my focus to the Brewers as well has encouraged me to think more critically about my relationship with the Dodgers, and as a result I have focused more on the smaller moments.

Meg Rowley recently compared sports to art, and this analogy struck me because it mirrored the development in my own thinking about how I interact with baseball.  Each of us sees a painting or a sculpture differently, just as we engage with music differently.  Art is personal because it speaks to us on an individual level, and so do sports.  We get enjoyment from different aspects of the game and for different reasons, and it is this individuality that explains why the sporting experience is different for everyone.  I am sharing my story here, but it is not the only story worth telling.

These differences should be celebrated, as they are part of the human experience.  The small moments can be as important as the larger ones, and they keep us coming back in hope of the one big celebration.  I have now gotten to share that experience, but it doesn’t invalidate those daily memories.  In some ways, those smaller days outweigh this one, because my constant enjoyment is what kept me coming back, and it is what will keep me coming back.  Counting on World Series berths for enjoyment is exhausting; watching the team wearing jerseys with my city on it play every night is not.

Photo Credit: Dennis Wierzbicki, USAToday Sports

Over the last several years, I’ve become increasingly invested in the minor leagues, and particularly in the diverse groups of dreamers and washouts that populate a minor league roster. At times, I think I’ve almost forgotten that the major league team exists. It was nice, this season, to be reminded of that.

It was nice to follow the Astros this season, too: they’re an easy team to like. It’s fun to see a club emerge from a multi-year rebuild in such noisy fashion; it’s fun to drive downtown and see a generational player like Jose Altuve laying a claim to baseball history; it’s fun to win!

The Astros and the Brewers also share a deep and interesting bond. GM David Stearns came to Milwaukee from the Houston organization, as did Domingo Santana, Brett Phillips, Jonathan Villar, and Josh Hader. Meanwhile, Mike Fiers and Nori Aoki suited up for Houston this year. On the surface, the clubs have a lot in common.

Prior to this season, the two teams shared something else, as well: Strikeouts. In 2015, Astros batters struck out 1,392 times, good for second-most in baseball. That year’s Brewers whiffed 1,299 times, good for tenth most. The next year, both teams’ lineups generated even more breeze. The Brewers ranked first in the majors with a staggering 1,543 strikeouts, thanks in part to the heroic efforts of (former Astros first baseman) Chris Carter and Jonathan Villar. Houston was fourth in baseball with 1,452 whiffs of their own.

But something was slowly shifting in Houston. Between the starts of the 2016 and 2017 seasons, the Astros added bats like Yuli Gurriel (11.0 strikeout percentage in 2017), Nori Aoki (11.8), and Josh Reddick (13.3). They imported Brian McCann (14.5) to handle primary catching duties. Alex Bregman, in his second season of big league action, trimmed his strikeout percentage from 24.0 to 15.5. George Springer, who once looked like a prototypical 3 True Outcome outfielder, has cut his whiff rate from 33.0 in 2014 down to 17.6 this season. Jose Altuve posted a career worst strikeout rate of 12.7, well lower than every qualified Brewer batter. While Milwaukee struck out more than ever in 2017, leading the majors with a record 1,571 Ks, Houston pulled off a remarkable about-face. They ranked last in the majors in strikeouts, with a modest 1,087.

Brewers fans (and baseball fans in general) heard time and again this year that strikeouts don’t matter. Baseball is becoming more extreme than ever, with strikeouts and home runs spiking across the board. And yet, the Brewers and the Rays, the whiffingest teams in baseball, experienced well-documented troubles pushing runs across the board. Meanwhile, the Astros took the next step by parting ways with some of their most strikeout-prone players and teaching the rest of the roster how to put the ball in play. If it were some other team, it might be tempting to dismiss these results as some sort of fluke. But these are the Astros, who have built a reputation as one of the more cutting-edge organizations in the game.

Time will tell if David Stearns deploys a strategy similar to that of his previous organization. To his credit, the Brewers roster has youth on its side. Domingo Santana, Travis Shaw, and Orlando Arcia—all caught somewhere between “rookie” and “veteran” status—saw improvements in their strikeout rates from 2016 to 2017. In another few years, Santana could be making the George Springer adjustment while Lewis Brinson (18.2 whiff rate at Class-AAA Colorado Springs this season) settles in as a star centerfielder. By then, it could be the Brewers bringing in free agents to reshape the organization’s identity. Imagine DJ LeMahieu sliding into the keystone in 2019, for example. Contact-oriented prospects like Lucas Erceg and Mauricio Dubon may also be competing for roster spots if they’re not cashed in for a mid-season pitching acquisition.

Until then, Brewers fans will likely have to live with the whiffs. But take heart; a few seasons ago, it was the Astros threatening to break strikeout records. It wound up working out pretty well for them.

Photo Credit: Thomas Shea, USAToday Sports Images