Fanaticism

It's Saturday, and I've already been up for nearly an hour. I woke up in the middle of the night, gasping from a bad dream. When I later awoke at six, I was too nervous and full of anticipation to get back to the sleeping. And why? All for the love of a game.
I grew up in a sporting household. My dad is a crazy baseball fan, counting the days until pitchers and catchers report and often taking the first day of the season off work in celebration. My mother loves her American football, and shows it through wild displays of emotion and lectures to the refs and coaches. And then, of course, there's the boyfriend, who nearly lives and dies with the Seattle Mariners. Yet somehow I managed to stay a bit removed. Yes, my baseball fandom is greater than most, and you'll find me paying attention to nearly every game. But this...this is something different.
This is me deciding, in June of 2008, that I needed to pick an English soccer team to follow. I've always liked soccer, I've been an anglophile for as long as I recall, so choosing a Premier League team seemed appropriate. Albeit random, since I'd never seen a match and didn't have a friend's team to adopt. I had some guidance on who to stay away from, however (the Big Four), and from there I chose Aston Villa. I loved their colors, I thought the name oddly romantic (I still have no idea where it comes from), and their little manager Martin O'Neill was just adorable.
But now, something has come over me, and I've become claret and blue. I don't know how it happened, but it's too late to change now. Others have jokingly suggested I take on Chelsea as a team (it's who GYM supports) and it seems more likely that I could just cut off my right hand. I have no way of describing this phenomenon. In fact, if you're someone forced to live or closely associate with anyone who is a fanatic of any sport, I suggest you pick up a copy of Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch. His descriptions of fanaticism are incomparable.
For now what you need to know is this: if Villa are playing, I'll be awake, even if it is six am on a Saturday.