Satellite

My family wasn't big on professional sports when I was growing up. If my father had any favorite sports teams, I wasn't aware of them, and my own interest in sports was somewhat borrowed from my peer group. Accordingly, I would like teams based on the colors of their uniforms or whether I liked the sound of their name. Being a native of Chicago, I eventually settled on being something approaching a fan of the White Sox, but living in the suburbs of Seattle, I cheered along with everyone else when the Seahawks won the Super Bowl. If I watch a game with friends, it's more about socializing with them than it is because I care about what's happening on the field, court or rink.

The new season of Michael Lewis' Against the Rules podcast is about sports fandom, now that he's finished with the Sam Bankman-Fried story, and I was listening to the first episode. I found it informative, mainly because I (like, I suspect, a lot of people who aren't sports fans) think of fans as being randomly crazy but don't give it much thought outside of that. But if this first episode is any indication, it's going to be an interesting look into the dynamics of group identification.

My own group identities tend to be rather weak. While some three-quarters of Black Americans "say being Black is very or extremely important to how they think about themselves" I'm in the other quarter. Being a transplant to the Seattle area, I don't identify strongly with it. And while I, like most people, have a clear partisan lean in my voting behavior, I don't have a real partisan identity.

Being content in these rather distant orbits, I haven't taken the time to understand why other people find their much closer connections to their chosen groups important to them. With any luck, Mr. Lewis has done this work for me. I look forward to finding out.