Tell me about "your team"?

The Game Room
1

Most sports fans have a team that means more to them than any other. I want to hear who and why.

For me, it’s the New York Yankees.

I was born in the Bronx in 1967. My parents, who were both raised there, moved us to New Jersey shortly after I was born. By 1976, when the Yankees lost to the Reds in the World Series, I was 9 years old and not quite into baseball enough to remember it, except for George Foster, for some reason. Anyway, by 1977 I was a semi-serious Yankee fan, and I distinctly recall Reggie’s 3 HR performance in the WS. It wasn’t until the following season however, that I became a serious fan. I watched almost every game that year. The early swoon. Billy Martin/Bob Lemon. Gator (what a season!) The Comeback. The Boston Massacre. As an 11 year old, it was magical. But nothing compares, for me, to Game 3 of the World Series, and my favorite-ever Yankee, Graig Nettles. Holy Cow. Play after diving play, bailing out Guidry (who didn’t have his best stuff.) I’ve never seen anything like it. My whole family jumping off the couch each time he saved a run. Did I mention they were down 2 games to nothing at that point? Saved the whole damn season is all he did.

So, why do you root for your team?

2

For equal time, I’m a die-hard Mets fan.

I wasn’t exactly born that way; I started following sports in 1961, and in the New York area you had no choice of baseball team. I really didn’t pay any attention to the Mets their first few years. But in 1965 I was in summer camp. I didn’t follow baseball at all, and after the Yankees lost the series again, I was ripe for a change. I knew the Mets wouldn’t lose a World Series because they’d never get in one.

I’ve been following them every since. Certainly the 1969 season cemented that. In 1972, I thought i’d lose interest in baseball again, but with the Mets getting in the series again, I was hooked for good. There have been some great moments (1986) and some horrible ones (2007) as well as terrible trades, poor free agent signing and Art Howe. But it’s hard not to give up on a team with an unofficial motto “Ya Gotta Believe.” As a Mets fan, you learn that winning isn’t anything that important; loyaty, hard work, and magic is.

For a great moment, it’s watching the ball going through Buckner’s legs.

I also follow the Jets, though not to the same degree. I was a fan since about the same time and watched every game in their Super Bowl season. Since then, I’ve learned about their strong commitment to mediocrity. It’s fun watching the Jets each year because you know they’ll never be great.

3

I’m a Bills fan. I’ve been that way for almost my whole life, even though I’ve never lived in Buffalo. My stepfather, who is from Buffalo and worked security for the Bills before he met my mom, is the one who made me a Bills fan. I root for the Sabres in hockey for the same reason.

I root for the Yankees for two reasons. First off, when I moved to Columbus, my parents had Clippers season tickets, and they were the Yankees farm team at the time. I got to see Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams, Andy Pettitte, Mariano Rivera…basically, all the players who made the Yankees of the mid-to-late 1990s awesome, I watched come up in the early '90s. I didn’t really care about baseball all that much, though, until I lived with a guy for several years who was a HUGE Yankees fan. Those two things combined turned me into a Yankees fan.

I don’t particularly like the NBA, but they’d make me leave the state if I didn’t root for LeBron James.

4

Another Yankees fan here. Although I was born in the Bronx, for various reasons I didn’t become a serious fan until the 1970s.

My family (father and grandfather) were traditionally Giants fans. When the Giants left for San Francisco I was only six, and hadn’t yet become a sports fan. My family wouldn’t root for the Yankees under any circumstances, but switched to the Mets when they came along. For me though, they were just too much of a joke in their early years for me to become a fan.

In any case, by the late 60s and early 70s, when I was in college, it just wasn’t hip to be that into sports. I was much more interested in music. Hardly anyone I knew was a sports fan, and I wasn’t too interested in following a team.

That changed when the Yankees began to get good again in the mid 1970s. At that time I was in grad school at the University of Colorado in Boulder, and enjoyed playing up my Bronx background amidst all my tall, blond, ski-bum fellow students. :slight_smile: I watched most of the Series games from 1976 through 1978, and particularly enjoyed the 1978 run against the BoSox.

Between 1981 and 1985 I lived in New Zealand, and was able to get almost no baseball news. Because of this deprivation, I became an even more serious fan when I came back. In 1986 I lived in NY, and saw as many games as I could at the Stadium. Now, although I don’t get to NY during the summer every year, I see a game whenever I can. (Fortunately here in Panama I get the post season games, and they cover a lot of Yankee games because of Mariano Rivera.)

5

Diehard 49ers fan, since age 6. I grew up in a Portland, OR suburb, so young football fans pretty much had their choice of teams.

My story is that in 1985 my father was on a business trip in or around Palo Alto, CA shortly before the 49ers were about to play the Miami Dolphins in Super Bowl XIX, which for some reason was being played in Stanford Stadium. He brought back some pennants promoting the game and let my older brother and me pick. My older brother chose the Dolphins, so naturally I picked the 49ers.

When they won I decided they were my team forever. I had no idea at the time that my mother and her father were insane 49er fans living in Marin County in the 50s and 60s.

Ten years later, when my dad got a new job in the Bay Area in 1995, our moving day was the same day as Super Bowl XXIX. We had to listen to the 49ers whip the Chargers while driving south on I-5. Now that I’m right in their territory, they haven’t been back since.

6

I’m a Blue Jays fan, first and foremost.

  1. I love baseball as much as life itself.

  2. The Jays are the local team.

That’s all the reason I needed. Now that I have 30 or so years invested in being their fan, through good times and bad, I always will be a fan.

7

How did I become an Arizona Cardinals fan?

I grew up in Columbus, Ohio in the 1970s. As a kid, I loved the NFL. I used to write to all the NFL teams asking them to send me a schedule and a team picture. The St. Louis Football Cardinals were the most generous team. They always sent me a thick envelope full of pictures, stickers, magazines, and other memorabilia.

The NFL broadcast schedule in the 1970s usually featured the Browns or the Bengals in the 1 PM game and then the Cardinals/Vikings/Cowboys in the 4 PM game.

I checked out a biography of Jim Hart from the school library.

I followed the Cardinals off and on until the Jake Plummer years. I went through the embarrassment of Buddy Ryan.

Then, the NFL and satellite TV became friends. I was a regular at a sports bar in Columbus and I got the owner to put the Cardinals game on a small tv in the corner. Finally, I could see every game.

I had a couple of moves here and there. I spent a few years in Dallas and ended up listening to the Cardinals on satellite radio or NFL.com.

I ended up moving to Phoenix, which was a career disaster, but a football dream. I can now watch my Cards on my plasma tv every week. Last January, I went to the NFC Championship game and was in tears when I shouted with thousands of other Cards fans, “Super Bowl, Super Bowl!!!” I still remember running around my apartment screaming, “Do you believe in miracles, YES!!!” when the Cards took the lead in the Super Bowl.

The Arizona Cardinals aren’t a joke any more. 30 years of fandom has paid off.

8

I was never really a sports fan. I started to watch American football about the age a boy becomes a man so that my father and I would have something to talk about together. If there wasn’t so much familial resemblance I would swear I was adopted - we just weren’t much alike. I wanted to find a way to connect, so I started watching football and I started rooting for the Steelers - because that is who he rooted for. Even though he has passed, I still enjoy watching them and rooting for them.

9

Substitute “Indians” for “Blue Jays” in the above and that describes me.

10

For me, it’s the Montreal Canadiens. I’m not sure how I came to root for them. I was born in Central Ontario in 1979, and my family, or at least those that follow hockey are all Toronto Maple Leaf fans. spit I guess when I first found out about the NHL in 1987, the Leafs were terrible, and Montreal was a perennial contender(actually the defending champion, although that was unexpected), if not the mortal lock to win they had been throughout much of the 70s.

Twenty-three years later, I have a treasure trove of memories, some even from the late 90s, our worst period in about sixty years. Of course the 1993 Stanley Cup will always be foremost, at least until they win another one. But there’s also the closing ceremony of the Forum in 1996 and the massive ovation given Maurice Richard. There’s also Saku Koivu’s return from lymphoma in 2002 as we clinched our first playoff spot in four years. And there’s two memorable upsets of the hated Boston Bruins; first in 2002, when we were the 8 seed and knocked off the number 1 Bruins; then again in 2004, when we came back from 3 games to 1 down, capping it off with a 2-0 shutout in Boston. There’s a lot more, but those are my favourites.

The Habs are my team, and so it shall remain.

11

I’m a Packer fan.

My father was from Green Bay, but I was born in California, and lived in suburban Chicago until my 10th birthday, when we moved to Green Bay (my father wanted to be in the same town as his now-widowed mother).

Before we moved to Green Bay, I had paid very little attention to sports; I wasn’t an athletic kid in the slightest. But, once we were in Green Bay, there was very little way to avoid football…there’s not much else in Green Bay, after all. :slight_smile: And, I got to start attending Packer games (my father now had access to the season tickets that’d been his father’s).

The Packers became something that my father and I could enjoy together, and he enjoyed teaching me about the game. Now, this was the 1970s, and the Packers were frequently pretty awful, but I still became a diehard fan. Up through the early 1990s, in fact, I was pulling for a mediocre-to-bad team, more often than not.

Watching the Packers play in Super Bowl XXXI was truly surreal…I’d been watching Super Bowls since I was a little kid, but I’d never seen the Pack play in one. When Desmond Howard returned a kickoff for a TD to seal the game, it was the most exciting moment, as a sports fan, I’d ever experienced.

My family’s season tickets are in my name now – despite the fact that I’ve now lived in Chicago for 20 years. I have a share of stock in the Packers. My father and I still talk on the phone after every game.

12

Boston Bruins. Always.

I’ve never lived outside of MIchigan.

Huh?, you say.

Started in the late 60’s when I was but a lad. Rest of the family (brothers, Dad, grandparents) were die-hard Canadiens fans, but I thought the Bruins sweater looked cooler, so I went my own way.

This was when they were horrible, pre-Bobby Orr (who, of course, became my hero). Coincidentally, they got real good a couple years after I adopted them.

Back then, a Bruins game would come on TV in my area once a year, if I was lucky; that was a magical event for me.

I still get a nice, warm feeling inside when I see that logo.

13

St Louis Rams

First game I ever remember watching was a Rams game,I was four or five.They became “my team” at that point, and still are.

14

I grew up in Chicago not a huge sports fan but my entire family were big NFL fans so I watched a lot of games. Not being particularly invested I was one of those insufferable douchebags who roots against the home team simply because they’re the home team.

As a teenager the family moved to Connecticut and I stopped watching football. Until my senior year in highschool, when a good friend who was a huge Giants fan infected me with excitement for the team over the summer, so I decided to give it a try that season. I started watching in the preseason, through a 10-0 start only to lose the starting QB, was riveted by one of the hardest hitting dominations over the 49ers in the conference championship, and finally awed by the purest contest of disparate styles in the greatest Superbowl ever played.

Of course there was no turning back. 1990 was a damn fine year to become a Giants fan.

15

I can’t explain why I’m not a big fan of pro sports. Especially because I LOVE college football. I guess it may be because I have a reason to love one team in sports, and they’re a college team rather than a pro team.

It’s the Longhorns for me. My daddy went to UT when he was in college, and no matter where we lived he would do his best to catch every game on TV. Trying to watch Longhorn football in Rhode Island in the early 90s was about as tricky as buying Blue Bell ice cream in the same locality. Austin was always the homeland for us: it was where we would go when Dad retired, it was where we’d come from, it was the only place right-thinking people would really want to live. :stuck_out_tongue:

And so I went to UT as a college student. Never went to a single football game while I was there: other things were too important to me. I’ve only become something of a football fangirl in the last couple of years, and while the Longhorns have always been my team, I have to admit it was the 2006 Rose Bowl that pushed me over the line into proper Texan appreciation of the game. Before, the game was a mystery to me; now I can sit next to my father and critique calls and predict strategies with reasonable success. Oh, and call the referees corrupt bastards. :wink:

It’s even more of a family thing because Dad was in the Navy when I was a kid and I got to see very little of him. Every day I got to see him, everything we did together was a special treat. I love my mother and I get along with her, and because our hobbies coincide pretty well we do a lot of stuff together. Dad and I have more searching to do for our common ground, but we appreciate it when we find it.

16

I’m a Texas Rangers fan. Despite how bad they can be, they have moments of brilliance and I became hooked during their '96 win of the pennant. They came close again last year and I’m optimistic about this year. If only they’ll get the pitching they need.

17

If I could only pick one sports team to root for, it would be the Philadelphia Eagles.

I’ve never lived in Philadelphia. I’ve never even been in Pennsylvania. I grew up in Arizona and have lived here for almost all my life.

I remember when I first became an Eagles fan. It was during third grade, when our teacher split the class into groups and had each group pick a mascot. We chose the eagle. When I went home that day, I happened to see on T.V. that there was a pro football team called the Eagles! I thought it was just a weird coincidence until I saw Randall Cunningham play. To this day I’ve never seen a smoother athlete. He just moved better than anyone else did. I was captivated. I’ve been a fan ever since.

(Okay, I kinda rooted for the Vikings when he played for them. But I always caught myself checking the Philly score and feeling dirty when I paid attention to another team. No harm in flirting)

No other team has had as long a history with me. I followed baseball teams as my favorite players played on them (Athletics for Rickey Henderson, Mariners for Ken Griffey Jr.) until the Diamondbacks came along, who were the home town team, and I have liked them ever since. Winning the Greatest World Series of All Time against the team I root against more than any other didn’t hurt either. I actually had to choose a basketball team to root for because I had absolutely no inclination towards any team. That was fun. None match the passion I have for the Eagles though.

18

I’m a Miami Hurricanes fan living in Milwaukee. I had no ties to the team, university, or city, and never made it to Miami until 2002, but they’re the only thing in my life that’s maintained an interest to rival that of immediate family. I was born in '78, and I lived far from major media centers and didn’t know much about sports til I moved to Milwaukee in '85, so I missed out on the Greatest Game/Upset of All Time in the '84 OBC. I can’t figure out exactly why I like them. I think I liked the color orange quite a bit as a kid, and I know for a fact I liked the show Miami Vice, as much as a young boy could back then. My mom watched it, I liked the theme song, and Sonny and Tubbs seemed “neat.” I think I also liked the name Vinny (Testaverde). So, I watched “my” beloved (out of the blue) Hurricanes play PSU in the Fiesta Bowl on 1/2/87, and was crushed when they lost. Ever since, they’ve been my team. Miami-FSU will always mean the most, because I didn’t see a game against the Gators until New Year’s 2001, and ND took us off the schedule (as the Gators did a few years prior). From 2000 on, I’ve seen most of the games thanks to Miami’s success, their national audience, and College GamePlan, and finally made the pilgrimmage in '02 for a come-from-behind win against FSU. Since that great game, I’ve seen them 4 more times, with a record of 1-3, including 3 straight losses by a combined score of 54-23. Not exactly Hurricane football.

Greatest moment: the 2002 Rose Bowl win over Nebraska- after the sanctions and SI’s “Why the U of M should drop fooball” cover story, along with FSU’s late-90s dominance, being a national power seemed a far-off dream. Ed Reed and Ken Dorsey made the dream come true.

Favorite players: Michael Barrow (as a mlb, I was in awe of his 19-tackle performance against PSU in '92), Ken Dorsey, and Dan Morgan.

19

I have two real loves in sports, but even then, there’s a hierarchy.

I have always and will always love my St. Louis Cardinals, no matter what. Even when we had some really down years, I was proud to be a fan of the Birds on the Bat. Winning a World Series for the first time in my lifetime was a sweet moment for me, even more so because I grew a playoff beard and watched the Tigers put on the kind of fielding display you only see in a T-ball league.

That said, my one true love, over all else, is my Kentucky Wildcats. At 3 years old, I knew I was going to go to Kentucky (class of '06). The first game I remember from start to finish is, for better or worse, The Game. I actually cried over that rat bastard Laettner.

In the darkest depths of the latter Tubby years, when we couldn’t get out of the first weekend of the tournament, or even the embarrassment of the Texas Drunk and the Not Invited Tournament, I still bled blue. Watching Cal and these guys this year reminds me of 1996 and Traitor Rick, and I’ve got that same sense of awe and amazement when I see them play.

You don’t have to be born a member of Big Blue Nation, but it certainly helps. Every Kentuckian, “from Pikeville to Paducah,” has an understanding of how special and how meaningful the 'Cats are. Weddings and funerals are scheduled around games. Productivity soars the day after a win, and plummets after a loss (seriously, they’ve measured it.) People name their children, to this day, after Cameron Mills for the shot against Duke in '98. The head coach is more famous and more important than the governor, and for good reason.

Ask any one of us and we’ll all be able to recount a favorite memory. There’s Tayshaun vs. UNC and the five 3s, knocking off #1 Florida by 15 (I was there!), the 1998 Duke game, making Charles Barkley cry, the 31-point comeback at LSU, Magloire vs. the mascot, Wake Forest and “you can’t see the Forest for the threes,”…

20

Another big time Yankees fan born in the Bronx but raised in NJ. I moved down here just before Kindergarten. I am only a little older than the Op, but I remember the loss in 76 really painfully and the triumph of Chambliss’s walk off against KC even more. I think it helps my brother is 6 years older. My father and us watched the Yanks together a lot and I use to get up to games as far back as the two Shea seasons for the Yanks. I have been to over a dozen playoff games now and still treasure every one. I got my son up to a great one this year.

My grandfather was a big Yankees fan, my mom’s favorite aunt was buried with her Yankees cap, my sister has a small shrine to Lou Pinella and Paul O’Neill. My brother and I talk Yankees almost daily. My best friends and I talk Yanks all the time. Strangers come up to me in bars, on trains, in the mall even and talk Yankees. Even when I am not wearing Yankees gear. It is rather odd.

One of the biggest thrills in my life was meeting the national treasure Yogi Berra back when I was a teenager. My Dad worked on the grounds of the YooHoo plant and he brought me up one day when he knew Yogi would be there.

I bleed Yankees Pinstripe.