This. You cannot have more than one favorite team. There is no room for sports bigamy.
Thank you for including “I don’t like baseball” as an option.
PS - Al Kaline rules.
The Twins are my team. I have favorable feelings for the following teams: Mariners, Giants, Rockies, Blue Jays, and the Nationals. I hate the Cubs, White Sox, Marlins, and Braves.
That right there is as authentic a Cubs experience as there is.
I hear you. I grew up in the SW burbs surrounded by grumpy White Sox fans. My dad was a die hard Cubs fan. In my ambivalent and somewhat contrary youth I was known to bounce back and forth without truly staking a claim to either side. I attended more White Sox games in the old Comiskey as a kid due to proximity and cost, but the Cubbies were on TV at home. In the early 80’s I had both the Winnin’ Ugly Sox and the Leon Durham Cubs playoff appearances to watch. I preferred the Hawk Harrelson brand of buffoonery as a teen over the Harry Caray variety.
It all changed when I got a job, a car and a fake ID. Those first few trips to Wrigley were more fun than I thought sports could be. It was like tailgating inside the stadium! Sports are so much more fun under the sun without all the distractions, advertising and unrelated nonsense, and with that there was no turning back.
Today I’m a die-hard Cubs fan and I root for anyone playing the Cards. I have not quite come to hate the White Sox team but man do I hate their fans.
Braves fan from way back when they really sucked. And yes, we are glad the Chop chant bugs the heck out of other team’s fans.
As it should be.
Just to be clear, you’ve since repented for ever having a positive thought about Hawk Harrelson, right?
My father chose to resolve the issue by moving the family from 9600 South all the way to Des Planes right after I was born.
Well, no. I’m a Steve Stone fan and have been for 15+ years. I eventually grew to enjoy Harry Caray and Ron Santo the way you enjoy your slightly punchy grandpa, but I require a certain degree of clarity and coherence in a 4 hour baseball broadcast. With regard to Hawk, he’s certainly over-the-top and he’s gotten worse in the last decade or so, but he at least brought some baseball insight along with his schtick. Growing up in Chicago I suppose we’re predisposed to crazy homerism, so Hawk’s game call isn’t particularly troubling for me. However, refer back to what I said re: Sox fans.
I’ve lived in Colorado since I was about six years old (I’m now 43); the closest team to us was the Royals and I remember hoping that George Brett would bat .400 in 1980, but there weren’t any games on the radio or television that I could follow. In 1984 and at the age of 15, I started following the Cubs because I had a summer job that had me home at noon and in time for the Cubs’ daytime games on WGN (cable television had just come to my town; to this day, whenever I see or hear a reference to the Cubs, the Empire Carpet commercials start playing in my head: “Call five-eight-eight, two-three hundred, Empiiirrre”). I remained a Cubs fan until the Rockies began play in 1993.
I really wonder how many Cubs fans not located in Chicago (and there are more than a few) can attribute their allegiance to cable television (if Wrigley Field had been lit in the mid-80s, or if Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium hadn’t, I’d probably have been a Braves fan because of WTBS).
Huge numbers I’m sure, but the Cubs and Cardinals were the “West Coast” teams for close to 50 years before cable TV and WGN. If your farmer relatives in Kansas and retirees in Arizona were baseball fans they picked a side and stuck with it and then passed it down to their kids. Wide ranging Cubs fans predate WGN.
Also, I don’t think the Cubs broad popularity was entirely borne of chance. Had the Braves and TBS played more day games they might have gained a few fans, but the whole Cubbie mystique with Wrigley and the curse and the bleacher bums and Brickhouse and Harryy made especially good TV. The Cubs were on a lot, but they made for damn good TV compared to Green Acres and Andy Griffith reruns. Not sure the Braves or many other teams could have gotten the same support just be being at the right place at the right time.
I hear ya. That’s one of the reasons I like telling the story. It wasn’t even a case of the wind blowing out. It was a cold April day. The Cubs just got clobbered. The Braves hit 3 home runs in the top of the first and led 7-0 before the Cubs even came up to bat.
I saved the write-ups and box scores from the Tribune and Sun-Times–still have them.
That would be me. My sister and I spent summers with my Dad. He had cable and my mom and stepdad did not. So, what’s a 12-year-old going to do all day when Dad is at work? (Nighttime was for watching Cinemax…but that’s another thread.)
It was either watch game shows, lame re-run sitcoms, soaps, or the Cubs. I fell in love with the team. You watch every day, get to know the players. Summer after summer it was the same thing.
And Steve Stone is still the best (most interesting and knowledgeable) baseball commentator I’ve come across. But I tell you, I’m really liking Jim Deshaies this year.
I snorted my iced tea out of my nose when I saw that TheChileanBlob was both a Braves fan and didn’t like baseball. 
BTW, Reds fan since a childhood of watching Charlie Hustle, Johnny Bench et al. Attended plenty of Cubs and White Sox home games as well and several each of Indians and Tigers, but Cincinnati was where it was at.
See, that right there is the power of Ted Turner’s Superstation WTBS. People all over the US were subjected to daily Braves games, and as such, the Braves are one of those teams that have fans everywhere. Also have people who hate them almost everywhere too. A few years ago I was in LA on business, and it happened to coincide with my Bravos playing at Dodger Stadium. Blew the budget on some good seats, and watched the Braves clobber the Dodgers. Yes, even across the country, the Tomahawk Chop Chant could be heard in the stadium.
The Indians are the team of my heart; the Diamondbacks are the team of my city. When they meet (which isn’t often), I root for the Indians. But I’ve seen a lot more Diamondbacks games over the last 15 years.
Yankee fan checking in. Born in the Bronx and life-long fan going back to one of the teams bad periods. It is fairly easy to be a Yankee fan as an adult, they only had one bad period in the late 80s & early 90s. Otherwise they at least compete every season and I guess that goes back to about 1973.
One of my first memories is of Mickey Mantle day in 1969. The team was pretty bad when I first started watching but got much better by the time I really knew the game.
I didn’t bother voting for them but the Cubs are by 2nd team. (a distant 2nd). I don’t really follow them the way I do the Yanks but they are my #2.
Just thought I’d point out that only one team has fewer than 2 votes–the MIGHTY MIAMI MARLINS, with ZERO.
Figures.
I grew up in the Pittburgh media market during the Pirates’ glory days of the late Seventies and early Eighties, and loved them at the time, but have been living in Cleveland since the mid-Nineties, so I’m a kinda fair-weather Tribe fan.
O’s and, somewhat grudgingly, the Nationals.
I don’t really follow baseball, but I grew up with the Cubs on WGN and my hometown has had a AAA affiliate of the Cubs since 1981, so I am a Cubs fan by default.