13 October 2023
Bradley Glubo had trouble sleeping the night before the first day of the rest of his baseball life.
But once he did, the 8-year-old Ellicott City boy said, “I started dreaming about the game. I dreamed about Adley and Gunnar hitting home runs.”
Rutschman, Henderson and their teammates embedded themselves into the waking and sleeping hours of many an Orioles fan this season and into the American League Division Series, which goes into Game 3 tonight with the Orioles down 2-0 and facing elimination.
But, research suggests, if a team finds its way into your heart around the age of 8, it could remain there for life.
“It’s a crucial time,” said Bob Heere, a professor of sports management at the University of North Texas.
He and others who have researched sports fandom say this age sits at a sweet spot for developing a deep alliance with a team, usually through a parent, most often a father, siblings or friends.
Sports teams are a vehicle for socialization and connection, Heere said, even before a child fully understands a sport or has the attention span to watch a several-hour game.
“It connects you with your community, through your team,” said Heere, who has researched the power of team identification and loyalty.
Even when a team goes through droughts and disappointments — hello, Orioles! — fans will stay true, he said. Their devotion may go into a more dormant stage, but without dying entirely, Heere said.
“We choose a team because it represents our community,” he said. “If you abandon your team, you feel like you’ve abandoned your community. Almost nobody will say, ‘Oh, the Orioles are horrible, I’m going to be a Yankees fan.’
Throughout Camden Yards this weekend, multiple generations of Orioles fans were living proof of an allegiance that has stood the test of time, bottom-scraping seasons and all.
“You are growing up with great baseball,” Ben Glubo, 43, said he sometimes tells his son Bradley. “I went through the dog days.”
It’s all part of the lessons of the game, and the inheritance that he has been waiting to hand down to his son.
“As soon as he was born, it was something I dreamed about,” Glubo, a mechanic, said. “It’s been great sharing my love of the Orioles with him.”
Consider it done. Ask Bradley just about anything about his team: What it’s like to be an O’s fan this season, how he liked meeting up-and-coming minor leaguers like Jackson Holliday, why his favorite moment this season was Ryan McKenna’s walk-off home run in June, and he has a one-word answer, punctuated by a hop: “Amazing!”
If it were up to these young fans, the O’s division-leading 101-win season will take them all the way to a storybook ending.
“I hope they go to the World Series,” said Callen Whetzel, 8, of Kingsville, “then win the World Series.”
Should that happen, the deal could be sealed for a lifetime membership in Orioles Nation. If you’re an 8-year-old boy and your team wins the World Series, it increases the chance that you’ll be a fan for life by 8%, the most of any age, data scientist Seth Stephens-Davidowitz wrote in an op-ed for The New York Times in 2014. (The pattern is less clear for female fans, he found.) After age 12, he found, the chances of lifetime fandom begin to drop without disappearing completely.
There are variations, of course, from precocious children who latch hard onto teams earlier, or older kids or adults who bond more belatedly. And the 29 other teams that don’t win the World Series in any given year still make and keep fans.
Should the team exit the postseason early, all is literally not lost as far as keeping fans from straying.
“Success doesn’t hurt and can only help,” said Matt Bernthal, who researches fan behavior and chairs the marketing department of Florida Southern College’s business school.
But the glow of winning can eventually “wear off,” he said, and that is when all the other factors of fandom kick in, such as the familial connections and the team’s efforts in maintaining community bonds, during the offseason and through the losing seasons.
Bernthal, speaking Sunday night after hosting a Minnesota Vikings-Kansas City Chiefs party, is his own case study. Now 56 years old, he grew up in Central Florida when the closest team, the Miami Dolphins, might as well have been in another country, so at age 7 he became a Vikings fan because his older brother had latched on to them. He stuck with them even after their glory years in the 1970s.
“It was an unshakable bond,” he said. “Just like the Orioles, it’s not easy being a Vikings fan.”
He and Heere agree that the Orioles were smart to start their “Kids Cheer Free” program, which allows any adult buying an upper deck seat to bring along two children under the age of 9 at no extra charge.
“A stadium visit has an enormous impact in hooking kids,” Heere said. Running around the park, seeing the mascot, just the whole spectacle makes for fun and memorable experiences, he said.
“It’s a great environment,” said Simon Hoffberger, 9, of Baltimore County.
He’s been to about 30 games this year, meeting up Saturday with other members of the Little League team on which he is a shortstop, just like his favorite Oriole, Henderson.
His teammate Jude Di Mattina, 9, of Patterson Park, says he’s been a fan for three or four years, “once I figured out baseball.” But this year? Special.
“This season’s crazy!” he said. “It has been awesome. It’s crazy to be at a postseason game.”
Like a true fan that she is, Arden Shilling, 8, who lives in Canton, said her favorite game is the last one she went to. She comes to the park with her father, Hale Shilling, 43, a general contractor, who calls it “a nice bonding experience.”
“I like watching them play baseball,” she said. “I want the Orioles to win.”
“She likes a different snack every inning,” Dad adds with a smile.
Ryan Carter, 51, dates back to the Orioles’ Memorial Stadium days, even working for a time in the team’s ticket office.
“I’m elated. It’s just a special time, especially to bring him to a playoff game,” said Carter, 51, a patent lawyer, who had brought his son Drew to Game 1 of the ALDS Game. “It puts a glow on my face.”
Drew, who gives his age precisely as 7 3/4, said he’s been a fan “probably since I was one month old.” This year, though, is when he both got to start playing baseball himself and see his team in the playoffs.
It was the first thing he thought of when he woke up Saturday morning.
“I need to change because I’m going to the game,” Drew said. Into a jersey of his favorite player, Cedric Mullins, he went — “He’s fast, and he hits well” — and he and his dad headed from Park Heights to Camden Yards.
“The O’s are doing really, really good, and it’s really been fun to watch,” said Nate Richa, 9, of Lutherville as he and his dad, Mark Richa, 41, a real estate agent, checked out the plaques on Eutaw Street where home runs have landed.
He generally plays left field on his baseball team as his favorite player Austin Hays does for the Orioles. His favorite O’s memory so far is one he is having in real-time as he enjoys the first game of the divisional series. Why?
“Because sometimes it’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing,” he said soberly.
That draws a smile from his dad, who serves as an occasional reality check to remind him that not every O’s team will be as thrilling as this one.
“We’ve talked about it,” Mark Richa said, noting how his “years and years” of Orioles disappointment ingrained in him that no one knows when “it’s going to happen again.”
But when you are 9, it’s all possible.
“We need to get a couple more runs,” he said Saturday, when alas they never materialized and the O’s lost 3-2. “We might get in the next round, and hopefully go from there.”
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