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Welcome to SB Nation Reacts, a survey of fans across MLB. Each week, we send 30 polls to plugged in fans from each team. Nationals fans, sign up HERE to join SB Nation Reacts.
If you put any stock in the results of the SB Nation Reacts voting, what fans of Major League Baseball dislike most about what they consider their rivals are the fans of the teams that the voters have to deal with online, at the park, and likely sometimes within their own families as they cheer on their preferred group of players.
SB Nation Reacts voters were asked this week what they dislike most about their rivals? Is it fan-based, historical, the opposing players themselves, the fact their rivals always win, or is it what they perceive as media bias? The results? [insert dramatic drum roll here]:
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Yep, the fans. It’s clear. And it’s hard to disagree, personally, after years of lame-a$$ “Gnats” jokes we’ve endured on Twitter, and countless opposing fans telling us to talk to them after the Nationals, “have actually won a postseason series!” How you like us now? What? What!?
Will the Nationals, and their fans, now that they won it all this past October, become sort of insufferable, like other teams that broke long droughts to win in it all in recent season (see: Red Sox, Boston, and the Cubs, Chicago).
If I’m reading this following graph correctly, the 2019 World Series champs aren’t among the most-hated franchises in baseball, but they are not universally loved either:
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The Nationals are also in just about the same spot when it comes to opposing fan bases who see the D.C. nine as their rivals:
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Which team do you consider the Nationals’ biggest rivals? The Phillies whose fan base once tried to “invade” Nationals Park on a regular basis, before the Nationals turned Citizens Bank Park into Nationals Park North over the last few seasons.
Their regional rivals from Baltimore? Or maybe it’s the Atlanta Braves, the divisional rivals who’ve won the NL East in each of the last two seasons (but lost in the NLDS each time)? Call us when you win a postseason series again, Barves.
Where are you on these questions? If you didn’t participate in the FanPulse survey this week, you can still sign up above or HERE.