The San Francisco Giants fans were yelling like crazy, slapping high fives and jumping up and down. Two things in particular were amazing about this scene. The first was that they were sitting in the rain as they did this. The second is that they were not watching any game. They were sitting in the seats of AT&T park a couple of months before the first game of the season would be played there.

I had the chance to spend a day last week as an extra in a series of San Francisco Giants television commercials. Using twitter and facebook the Giants rounded up 300 fans with nothing more than the promise of getting in a commercial. There was no promise of payment, tickets or even lunch (although about 5 hours in at 2pm they did pass out hot dogs and sodas). It is at times like this that I am reminded that we get our word “fan” from the root word “fanatic”. The day was cold and dreary and quite often being in the commercial meant sitting in center field yelling while the camera was at home plate. They would move us from section to section sometimes for the same commercial we would be sitting in 3 or 4 different places that the digital effects wizards would merge to create a larger crowd in post production.

I don’t know if you have had a chance to watch a commercial, a television show or a motion picture being filmed, but let’s just say that somethings can try the patience of even baseball fans. Eventually the skies opened and it began to rain. The crowd of extras diminished to around 100 by then, but isn’t it amazing to think of a business that can find 100 people willing to sit in the rain to help it out? Does your business have fans like that? I have a volunteer who is a listener of the Amateur Traveler podcast who has been transcribing various episodes. Now I might sit in the rain for a brand I like but I can’t imagine doing transcription. Another podcaster I know, C.C. Chapman of Accident Hash, was surprised when his listeners put together a 5th anniversary episode for him to celebrate the long running show.

At one point Giants pitcher Sergio Romo came and sat in the stands with the fans in the rain. He was not in that particular commercial, just another face in the background with a Giants cap on. It was a class act from a classy guy and when he comes into the game this year you can bet I will be cheering him on. I want him to succeed. I want his team to succeed. After all, I am a fan… and you know what that means.

It seems over the last few years main stream media has increasingly taken the position that main stream media is “professional” and that bloggers and podcasters are “amateurs”. When did “amateur” become a dirty word? I am an amateur, after all I have a podcast that proudly proclaims myself the “Amateur Traveler“. But what’s so bad about being an amateur?

The word “amateur” does not mean a beginner or someone who is bad at doing something, or at least it did not originally mean this. An amateur was someone who did something for the “love of it”. A century ago it was the professional who was under a cloud of suspicion as someone with impure motives.

Lets take the example of Jim Thorpe, sometimes called the “greatest athlete of all times”:

At the tender age of 24, Thorpe sailed with the American Olympic team to Antwerp, Belgium for the 1912 Olympic Games. Remarkably, he trained aboard the ship on the journey across sea. He blew away the competition in both the pentathlon and the decathlon and set records that would stand for decades. King Gustav V presented Thorpe with his gold medals for both accomplishments. As stated in Bob Berontas’ “Jim Thorpe, Sac and Fox Athlete”: “Before Thorpe could walk away, the king grabbed his hand and uttered the senta3ence that was to follow for the rest of his life. ‘Sir,’ he declared, ‘you are the greatest athlete in the world,’ Thope, never a man to stand on ceremony, answered simple and honestly, ‘Thanks King.’”

Thorpe’s glorious Olympic wins were jeopardized in 1913 when it came out that he played two semi-professional seasons of baseball. The Olympics Committee had strict rules about Olympians receiving monetary compensation for participating in professional athletics. Thorpe, who stated he played for the love of the game and not the money, was put under the microscope. Ultimately, it was decided that his baseball experience adversely affected his amateur status in the track and field events. His name was removed from the record books and his gold medals were taken away.

When Scientific American used to run a column called the Amateur Scientist from (1958 to 1978) they were not trying to encourage stupid people to build proton accelerators in their basements (Accelerator, proton. how to construct, 1971 Aug, pg 106). They were instead harkening back to the days of the renaissance man (or woman). It used to be encouraged for people to dabble in science out of a genuine interest without regard to what they did for a living. And why not, the most influential theory of the 20th century was proposed by an amateur scientist who worked as a patent clerk.

Mark Spitz was an amateur athlete as were all Olympic athletes of his day. One could be an amateur and still be the best. Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens are professional athletes. Jose Conseco was a professional athlete so a professional may not show professionalism any more than an amateur needs to be amateurish.

It is not my intention to try and swing the pendulum back to the days of Jim Thorpe or the early days of the internet when any hint of commercialism was seen as wrong. Rather we should see that whether or not a person is paid for their endeavors is not the sole measure of the value of their work. Edward R. Murrow was a professional journalist, but so was William Randolph “You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war” Hearst. A professional journalist can make making money their sole goal or they can aim somewhat higher.

So let’s not, as if we could, strive for an internet void of commercial interests but instead evaluate work based on value and quality remembering that the Ark was built by an amateur, the Titanic was built by professionals.

I am going to wager that not everyone woke up this morning to a special section in their home town newspaper chronicling the home run history of Barry Bonds.

On this day in 1931 The “Star-Spangled Banner” was adopted as the national anthem of the United states. So before 1931 baseball games started with that awkward pause before “play ball!”.

On this date in 1973 Baseball’s American League adopted the “designated hitter” rule which allowed another player to bat for the pitcher, starting the slow decline of the American civilization. Disco also came out of the 1970s, clearly those were the days that tried men’s souls.

And there was much rejoicing from Giants fans over this good news:

On this day in 1964 the Warren commission concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone to kill president John F. Kennedy.

On this day in 1998 Mark McGwire hit home runs 69 and 70 to break the home run record long held by Roger Maris.

Coincidence? I don’t think so.

Fever Pitch is light romantic comedy with Drew Barrymore and Jimmy Fallon about a couple who meet and fall in love in Boston during the baseball off season. Only later does Barrymore understand just what it means to be a baseball fan and a Red Sox fan at that. This movie ended up being more sweet than I expected.

The best story about the making of the movie is that they were filming this during the year that the Red Sox won the world series, but of corse they did not know that the Red Sox would win. So at the end of the movie when they realized that the Red Sox might win they had to scramble and get a film crew and the two stars to the World Series. The shots of them running out onto the field were real. Of course it helps that it is a Fox movie and that the World Series was being televised by Fox Sports. Having that footage they were then able to make the necessary re-write of the script that included the fate of the team without having to spend enormous amounts of money recreating the events.

I enjoyed this article after just watching Fever Pitch last weekend. We already knew that Red Sox fans were fanatical, but you don’t expect them to be saying “oh it’s only bleeding a little and it is only the top of the 7th”. From the Washington Post:

For a brief moment the crowd thought that Barry Bonds had hit home run number 704 tonight at Pacbell Park. But after the scoreboard started to flash “704″ the 2nd base umpire signaled a double due to fan interference. We all booed but the call was correct. A fan had reached down below the top of the wall to try and catch the ball. In any case the evening was electric and the moment was terrific. Barry helped bring the crowd back into a game after an awful awful start by Kevin Correa.

It was only luck that I was able to be at the game as we share season tickets with a group of people and we arranged to get these tickets months ago.