CrashingTheGoalie

by Ron Spence

“A fanatic is someone who can’t change his mind,” Winston Churchill wrote, “and won’t change the subject.”

Sounds like the guys I watch nucks games with.

The name fan – as in a sports fan – came from one of two sources – depending on your bias.

One was the U.K., the other the U.S.A.

A guy named Francis Grose wrote in his  ”Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue“:

“The Fancy: one of the fancy is a sporting character that is either attached to pigeons, dog-fighting, boxing, etc. Also, any particular article universally admired for its beauty; or which the owners set particular store by, is termed a fancy article, as a fancy clout, a favorite handkerchief, etc; also, a woman, who is the particular favourite of any man, is termed his fancy woman and vice versa.”

The dictionary was published in 1785, and Pierce Egan, “the [so called] father of newspaper sports slang” wrote in 1818: “The various gradations of the fancy hither resort to discuss matters incidental to pugilism.”

This was from his publication Boxiana – and thus, in some three plus decades, boxing seems to have taken over the term.

“The fraternity of pugilists: prize-fighting being once recarded as THE FANCY par excellence. Hence by implication people who cultivate a special hobby or taste.”

The above was from J.S. Farmer’s and W.E. Henley’s compilation: Slang and its Analogues published in the 1890s.

Thus, the term had become general once again.

“The ‘fancy’ was long a class name in England and America for followers of boxing,” wrote  William Henry Nugent in 1929. “Baseball borrowed and shortened it to “the fance” “fans” and “fan.”

So, the British origin came from dogfighting, boxing, etc. and included other sports later on.

THE BOXING BARENESS – 1859

The American “fan” was specific to baseball.

As noted in a previous blog, baseball fans were originally called “kranks.” They had also been called “fiends” in the mid-1860s.

The St. Louis publication The Sporting News, used the term “fan” in 1887 and it spread to Philadelphia – where it was quoted in The Sporting Life. The St. Louis Browns travelled east to play the Detroit Wolverines in a 15 game “series of contests for supremacy” of the baseball world.

The series was played in: Pittsburgh, Brooklyn, New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Washington, Baltimore and Chicago, Detroit and St. Louis – so there was ample opportunity to spread the word.

By 1889, a “fan” was ”any spectator at a baseball game.”

One claim is that the word was the contraction of the word “fanatic.

In 1525, a fanatic was an “insane person“ from the Modern Latin “fanaticus,” meaning “insanely but divinely inspired.”

The fanatic went from divinely inspired to “extremely zealous” by 1647. He was coming up in the world.

*****

Ted Sullivan took credit for coining the word fan, but had two different versions of his story.

In 1883, the former manager and scout claimed that it was Charles Comiskey who called an enthusiast a “fanatic,” and shortened the word to “fan.”

But in his book – Humourous Stories  of the Ball Field - published in 1903, he claimed that Chris Von Der Ahe had trouble with the word “fanatic” and pronounced it “fan….”

“The first season I was with [Chris] Von der Ahe [the team owner], Chris had a board of directors made up of cranks who had baseball on the brain, and they were always interfering with me and telling Chris how the team ought to be run. I told Chris that I didn’t propose to be advised by a lot of fanatics. ‘Vat dat you call it? Fans, eh?’ said Chris. ‘Yes, fans for short. They’re a lot of fans, Chris,’ I said. The expression was a hit with me. Comiskey and the players took it up, and then the newspapers.”

Connie Mack’s explanation was simpler: he claimed that the word  was used to describe players who fanned themselves in the dugout during games.

Peter Morris also found a note from 1879 that showed scorecards with handles used to make them into fans.

Then there was a reference in 1893 in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

“Webster’s describes “fan” as a wind-producing instrument, a quality which makes it figuratively descriptive of a baseball crank….”

This describes my buddies when the nucks score.

It’s just that they haven’t had much cause to generate wind this season….