Humor & Life Quote by Robert Benchley

Sports fandom is one of the few socially approved ways to be perpetually aggrieved, and Benchley nails that truth with a comedian's scalpel. The line is built like a mock piece of advice, but it plays as an indictment: if you show up to cheer, you might as well pack your outrage in advance. "Prepared to take offense" is the operative phrase. It turns offense into a hobby, a readiness posture, a kind of emotional equipment as essential as a ticket stub or a lucky cap.

Benchley is writing from a pre-24/7-sports-media era, which makes the observation sharper, not quaint. Without hot-take television or social feeds to stoke the fire, he still recognized the underlying engine of fandom: identification so intense that every call, every slump, every cheer from the other side feels personal. The hometown team becomes an extension of the self, and the self, conveniently, is always under attack.

The joke also punctures the myth of the "good fan" as purely loyal and uplifting. Benchley suggests the opposite: loyalty expresses itself through suspicion and grievance. If the team wins, someone "didn't respect" them enough, or the victory wasn't clean. If they lose, it's the refs, the weather, the manager, the universe. The humor works because it's uncomfortably accurate. He frames outrage as a choice, even a ritual, exposing how sports can function less as recreation than as a weekly permission slip to feel wronged in public and call it devotion.