From SportsWorld:

You could say this comes from winning – bandwagon fans, I’ve heard people say – but I would argue that winning is only part of it. All those years when the Royals were terrible, laughable, ridiculous, sure, it seemed like nobody cared. But it wasn’t so. People cared. There was just no way to express it. How many times can you scream? How many times can you feign enthusiasm? How many times can you complain about the unfairness of the game or the incompetence of management or the ineptitude of players before it all becomes a giant bore?

But they cared.

State of Belief