Sports Fans: Born, Bred and Hard-Wired

The sports fan can be found just about everywhere, in all walks of life and in all parts of the world. What holds true across the board is a strong familial tie that expands with the bonds forged at home to the society at large.

And science has shown it gets wired into your brain.

A Life's Soundtrack

The two men cheered. They hooted and hollered; they high-fived and they hugged.

It may have been the best moment in each of their lives.

They were well into adulthood, but could have been any age on the spectrum that separated them by four years.

Brothers, doing what connected them then, connects them now and will continue to, essentially forever.

On this particular night it was baseball, but it could have been basketball. It is part of the fabric that weaves them together, sewn by something as simple as a voice on the radio.

“You always want a game going on in the background for the rest of your life,” Don said.

A game for Don would preferably be one involving the San Francisco Giants, who until fall 2010 left him disappointed, crushed but somehow more devoted.

It is those teams that rip your heart out that seemingly plant themselves more firmly, taking deeper root in the soul.

And it all starts so simply, as innocent as a windblown scrap of paper dancing across the outfield grass. It is the flash of blue from a jersey so brilliant that it captivates the wide-eyed youth and forever holds.

It is the basic sense of wanting to belong.

“I just wanted to be with my older brother,” Gary said.

Frozen in Time

And together they were that night in Seattle that Don said was one of the greatest moments of his life. Gary called it magical, one that Paul McCartney could not top. They would see Sir Paul in concert later that same night.

The brothers could just have easily been in the backyards of Central California with their dad’s transistor radio, a leather-bound, beat-up beauty lying nearby, with the comforting tones of legendary Giants broadcaster Lon Simmons floating along in the summer afternoon.

An isolated game described as they held bat in hand, glove on fist and the collective lineups of the 1971 Giants and A’s being played to perfection with every pitch.

But their arena was a local bar this night, and their heroes were on the TV screens laying wasting to the Angels in the World Series.

The Giants were superior and nothing seemed more certain to the pair than their team claiming their first title in 48 years.

That didn’t happen.

The Angels won the 2002 Series in seven games. Don, an aerospace sales engineer, who lives in Southern California now and did then, described it as hell.

Gary watched it unfold while at a conference in San Francisco.

It was their own personal tragedy shared with millions of like-minded fans and something that happens in every sport, in every season, in every city.

A Sense of Identity

The lure of fandom is nationwide and global. Sports and its followers are a galvanizing aspect of society.

“People have a need to link up with something more than the self, and sports provides that opportunity,” said Daniel Wann, professor of psychology at Murray State University.

That connection takes them outside into a larger sphere of folks aligned by shared emotions, shared loves and clear distinctions of where their world stops and the other team’s starts.

It also provides a definition, not only for their environment but themselves.

“The psychological parts are a need for affiliation, which is where it starts,” said psychologist Fran Pirozzolo.”That is a powerful need that all of us have to a certain extent, and so we affiliate with a certain group or team, and this stuff gets stored in the brain pretty deeply.”

So deep, that one’s affiliation for team becomes an essential part of who he is That is why you see a grown man wearing a jersey, the recent grad draping her alma mater’s banner across her cubicle.

“They’re letting you know -- this is who I am,” Wann said. “This is an important part of who I am.”

It is a link, too, that often begins at home with the father playing the key role. That is something Wann has found consistent in studies from Australia to Norway.

For Gary and Don, that bond bubbled up from their dad’s radio but also from an NFL TV promo that featured a game between Green Bay and Baltimore. Almost immediately, Don swore his allegiance to Bart Starr and the Packers while Gary hitched his wagon to Johnny Unitas and the Colts.

The parents noticed and it was something the brothers carried on for years.

“What I remember is that is my greatest Christmas gift, that stupid Colts sweatshirt,” Gary said of a holiday past, wedged firmly in the confines of his youth.

A Fan Forever

Their life’s soundtrack played from transistor to car radio, at home and on vacation, and later to TV sets on family visits to the Pacific Coast, and with that, the Giants were pinned firmly to their hearts.

But basketball also ruled supreme.

Their mom played basketball at Washington State and the game was the glue that helped cement the family calendar from November to April.

The college landscape, then, was dominated by UCLA, and the clan, like many in California, were pulled into the spiritual orbit of legendary coach John Wooden.

It ultimately pulled Gary as well. He traded sandlots for the hard courts as he got his grow on and played basketball in high school.

From there he left for UCLA and later medical school and to his current neurology practice in Seattle, where he is also on the faculty at the University of Washington and Seattle Children's Hospital.

“My choice of going to UCLA completely changed my entire future, and it was driven by UCLA basketball,” Gary said. “If Cal had had a better basketball team, I would have gone to Berkeley.”

While that may seem to be a conscious choice, Pirozzolo said a fan’s behavior is hard-wired to the emotional part of the brain.

“It’s locked in there,” said Pirozzolo, who was on the Yankees staff from 1996 to 2002 and with the Texas Rangers in 2009 and 2010. “Even before you know it, a symbol comes up and deep parts of your brain are working already, favorably or unfavorably.”

Don said he still makes it to San Francisco for a game or two each year and every time he said he feels like he’s dropped onto a strange orange planet.

But there is more to it than that.

“You have this feeling about your teams that they’re your brothers, almost,” Don said. “They’re family.”

Brothers, indeed.