From the smoky parlors of early 20th-century baseball to the digital forums of today’s anime aficionados, the impulse to pledge allegiance and wager emotional capital has been woven into the tapestry of fandom. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, fan clubs emerged as informal societies—often led by local sportwriters—where members exchanged handwritten newsletters and boundless enthusiasm. These proto-fanatics collected team ephemera: ticket stubs, pennants, and the earliest baseball cards printed on tobacco packaging. The act of accumulating these tokens stoked a culture of competitiveness among peers, akin to placing a zero‐stake bet on one’s favorite squad. By the mid-20th

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