As someone who got married at a baseball game, I feel like I can stake a small claim to this label.

Only a small one, though. When I was a kid, the only sport anyone in my family watched was college football, and even that was sporadic since we didn’t have a TV for a long time. Nobody ever took me to ball games, and the only reason my family saw to listen to them on the radio was for Vin Scully’s voice and expertise—and then we moved to Illinois. I played softball there, but still didn’t watch other people play. My dad was a baseball duffer; I think maybe he liked the Cubs as a kid and got disillusioned. Florida didn’t have a ball team when we lived there, so it wasn’t until I got to college and back into Dodger territory that I picked up on it as a spectator sport. I went to a lot of games in my 20s but I confess the main attraction was to see who could win our Beer an Inning contests. (Paradoxically, the winner generally felt lousy the next day and the loser drove everyone home—hey, I never said I was a role model.) When my parents also moved back to California, my dad would take me to the occasional Angels game, so they became my team. Then I had a roommate for a while who worked in the sports department at the same paper as I did and was pretty into the game, so I got a lot more knowledgeable really fast.

This worked out well for me when I moved back to Florida. The (then Devil) Rays were in their first season, and I dragged a friend of mine with me to a game before I’d even moved into my house. It was the first indoor game I’d ever been to, and I was delighted by the air conditioning until I realized that I needed a sweatshirt in the third inning.

I didn’t realize that night that I would be going to a LOT more games at Tropicana Field. See, I met this guy with season tickets … and the rest is history.

So yes, the real fan is my husband. His loyalties are to the Red Sox. I joined that cult in exchange for him joining the USC football cult. But his love of the sport goes deeper. He watches any game that’s on. He sees things I can’t. He can rattle off stats like a mad man and trace the history of bad umpiring from Higham to Hernandez.

When we took the kid to see the first Captain America movie in 2011, there’s a scene at the end (c’mon, it was almost 15 years ago, I’m not spoiling anything) where Cap realizes the seemingly safe hospital he’s in is a sham because he recognizes the ballgame airing “live” on the radio is one he’d attended in 1941. It is a testament to my husband that our 8-year-old son didn’t bat an eye at that. Of course this man would remember every play of a game he’d attended several years ago; doesn’t everyone’s dad do that? No? Omigod, Dad is Captain America! (Captain America is, in fact, Dad’s favorite superhero, but the baseball thing is not why. It’s the squeaky clean patriot aspect.)

In Diner, another of my husband’s favorite movies, one character is a rabid football fan who refuses to get married if his bride-to-be doesn’t pass a rigorous test about the Baltimore Colts. I am fortunate that my husband did not subject me to this (for any sport, including USC football); I would have failed miserably. The only bit of bar bet trivia he ever made me remember was that Warren Spahn was the winningest left-handed pitcher (and still is, so it’s nice that he gave me one that holds up) with 363, which was also the number of his career hits.

But we did get married at an Angels-Yankees game. We (usually) celebrate our anniversary at a game. Opening Day is our version of a religious holiday, although we have decided that the Midwest is not a good place for this and now these observances also require pilgrimages to places where it is warm or domed or both.

I don’t know if you can be a real fan without that instant recall of both lineups in the 1967 World Series (a truly problematic year for my husband, who grew up in a house full of Cards fans).  I’m getting better at it, but I don’t think I’ll ever really qualify. I’ll just keep celebrating.