Tell me about "your team"?

The Game Room
21

<shakes fist at Jules Andre>

Living in Charlotte, I got to watch Dan Morgan play for the Panthers. What a shame that he had the concussion issues because he was a hell of a player. I’ll never forget the SB against the Patriots. He was trying to win that game by himself, and almost succeeded. He has opened a couple of restaurants here and appears on the sports radio morning show every week. Seems like a real good guy.

Rick Barnes or someone else? I never heard that about him (but then I never really paid attention to him either.)

22

I was born in Texas and lived just outside Dallas for about a year, when I was about 4 years old. My family moved to SoCal when I was 5.

I learned how to play the wonderful game of American football when I was about 8 or 9 in 1978-79. I had no knowledge of pro football and simply asked other kids who was “good” because nobody wants to root for losers. They said the Steelers, so I because a huge Steeler fan along with several other kids in my class. I had a Terry Bradshaw poster on my bedroom wall and owned Steelers clothes. The first pro football game I ever watched on TV was the Super Bowl in January 1980 when the Steelers beat the Rams. Then, Bradshaw left the game and the championship Steelers fell apart. I felt a need to switch teams.

I always had a subtle sense of Texas pride as a kid because it distinguished me from other kids. I picked the Dallas Cowboys. I had really known nothing about them before, but the more I paid attention, the more I fell in love with Landry, Dorsett, Danny White, etc. I loved it when Ed “Too Tall” Jones made an appearance on Diff’rent Strokes. The Cowboys had their practice camp about 20 minutes from my house and my dad took me there at my request to get autographs. I went to see Dallas play the Rams in Anaheim a couple times in the 1980s.

Even though Jerry Jones is an ass and even though the whole “America’s Team” thing is bullshit…

Go Cowboys!

23

Another Yankee fan here, but not from the Bronx.

Was born in Syracuse, NY and lived there the first 7 or 8-ish years. My family is all Yankee fans therefore it was by birthright that I became a Yankee fan.

My father would take me down to MacArthur Stadium and watch the Yankees of tomorrow, Syracuse Chiefs, battle the PawSox, Toledo Hudhens, and Rochester Red Wings. Got to see the likes of Ron Guidry and Thurman Munson before they were Louisiana Lightning and the Captain.

24

I wrote a bit of an essay on a similar thread topic on the Baseball Fever forums. I’ve probably even mentioned the salient points of this story before on the SDMB.

But in summary:

Despite growing up in Flushing and playing a fair amount of informal baseball, and despite taking the #7 subway train past Shea Stadium every day to go to high school from 1983-1988, I was never a pro sports fan, much less a Mets fan.

In college, I first began paying attention to pro sports of any kind when a roommate of mine from Chicago harped on constantly about the Bulls and the Knicks in the 1991 NBA playoffs. I ended up watching the games with him and rooting for the my hometown Knicks just to see his big mouth get what it should have had coming to it. Unfortunately, the boys in orange and blue did not come through with the upset victory. Despite this, I began to get hooked on following the team, setting a pattern for future pain. By 1994 I was living and dying with every shot in the NBA Finals, hyperventilated in the 4th quarter and felt like someone ran over my pet when they lost Game 7. Huh! So people do this to themselves for fun, do they? I was better off not getting involved. But, it was too late.

One of my best friends is a passionate Yankees fan, and I watched most of the games in the 1996 World Series with him. He was literally moved to tears, and Ifelt something compelling in seeing pros play baseball, a game I associated with carefree summers of my youth, at its highest level.

So, I tried being a Yankees fan. It didn’t work out. First, this same friend convinced me to get into a small Rotisserie baseball league he started, which was simpler to keep track of in an NL (no DH) format, and due to the small number of participants he further simplified by making it an NL East Roto League. Thus making me start following NL East baseball.

He’s still kicking himself about that setup but it probably would have happened anyway. Because once I started following baseball on TV and radio, especially radio, I found I just could not stand the Yankees vibe. I was not coming in with ANY preconceptions of “Yankee fans are insufferable arrogant bastards” (given that my best friend is one), and in fact as a native New Yorker would have thought a priori that such an label was to be carried with pride. No, it’s the “focus on the glory and simply ignore the inglorious” attitude that came through even in the broadcasting style in the TV and radio booths, John Sterling (the “Voice Of The Yankees”) in particular, with his shticky home run calls and “the-e-e-e-e-e Yankees win!” signoff, and a typical play-by-play going like this: “Runners on 2nd and 3rd with 2 out, a hit will plate two. Here’s the pitch, Annnnd… A ground ball, it’s a sharp base hit into right field, [the right fielder] picks up the ball and throws it in and they hold [X] at third, one run has scored.” So why do you always say “a hit will plate two” in this situation? EVERY TIME? YOU BLATHERING IDIOT!

I then found Bob Murphy and Gary Cohen on the radio dial, who are much more to my liking. Even though the Mets were not as good on the field as the Yankees, there was something there that reminded me of why I fell in love with the Knicks of the early 1990s: some of the biggest contributors were overachieving, “who the heck is this? / what the heck was that?” types of players and plays. That vibe resonated with me from a fan perspective.

The the legacy of the Mets and the vibe of the fan base is to want to see “something amazing”. The comeback over the wire-to-wire victory, the story of the “unheralded rookie has breakout year” versus how the “acquired player signed to the biggest contract ever wins the MVP award”. The team ridiculed and left for dead stunning the world by winning it all in 1969, and going to Game 7 of the World Series in 1973, or shocking the Red Sox even after the scoreboard operator at Shea Stadium had already congratulated them for winning the World Series…

Dana Brand wrote an essay (and a book) about this that sums it up even better:

*Mets fans tend to think of the Mets as a fundamentally bad team that, every once in a while, briefly and magnificently rises up to play against type. When the Mets win, the fans feel as if they themselves have willed the team forward. …

Mets fans live to be a part of miracles… They want astonished fun… the pleasure of the unexpected, even of the undeserved.

This is what has hooked us. This is what we long for. This is why, however much we hate them at times, we love to love this team.*

25

Penn State football fan. I was born in the hospital next to Beaver Stadium. I attended my first game before I could walk. I slept every night for the first year of my life swaddled in a Penn State blanket. When I played basketball in junior high, I chose jersey #14 because it was Todd Blackledge’s number at Penn State. I still remember beating Temple 42-3 in 1989 not because I was there…it was about the fortieth or so game I’d been to but it was my first one in the student section.

They didn’t let us bring noisemakers. So we held up our keys and shook them. The whole student section rang like thousands of tiny bells. They can’t take our keys, can they? They can take our marshmallows but we’re always going to have more.

One of the last memories I have of my mom before she was unable to communicate was watching a Penn State game with her. It was a bookend…because just about the first memory I have of my mom was watching a Penn State game with her, shouting “go, go!” at the running back racing down the field. And when the game was near the end, and it was obvious Penn State was going to lose, my mom let out a big sigh. I held on to her for a long time, because I knew we were never going to see a game together again.

My mom gave me a stuffed Nittany Lion mascot when I was five. I still sit with it at every game when I watch at home.

26

That’s very touching.

I have to say I have never understood devotion to a college team with no alumni ties. Having school spirit for one’s own school, especially one that your family traditionally sends people to, is one thing; but having the local school’s team serve as a proxy for a professional local team seems very odd to me. Of course that’s possibly because my own hometown of NYC has a superabundance of professional teams (major and minor league) in every possible sport.

Did you go to Penn State for college (assuming that you did go to college)? If so, was that because it is your local school and most of your family has gone there, or did you choose the school at least partly because of the team loyalty (not the other way around)? And if you went somewhere else for college, how do you reconcile loyalty to your actual college team with this inherited love of Penn State’s football team?

27

Yes, I did go to Penn State, as did my father, my aunt, several of my cousins…and some of my family members even worked there. So, yes, there is a big family connection there. I don’t think that there’s anyone in my family (other than my sister, ever the iconoclast, who went to Philadelphia Textile) who isn’t connected to Penn State in some way.

Ironically I didn’t choose Penn State for the family loyalty, I went there to become an engineer…then I washed out of the engineering program in my sophomore year and graduated in another field. And I ended up going to three other colleges as well as Penn State…but all of them were in other countries, so there was no split loyalty there. Now I’m working at yet another university, but we don’t have a football team, so nobody minds that I’m a Penn State football fan.

28

I grew up in Baltimore, so I’m a long time fan - of the old Orioles, the team before Peter Angelos took ownership and ran it into the ground. I mean, as kids, we worshiped the greats on the team - Brooks Robinson, Frank Robinson, four 20 game winners in 1971 (Palmer, McNally, Cueller, Dobson), Earl Weaver. Of course, later on there were Eddie Murray and Cal Ripken. But over the years, as Angelos has destroyed the team, I’ve watched less and less. I can’t tell you even 5 players from last season - but I can still recite the complete lineup from 1969-1971.

I’m also still in love with another old team - the Baltimore Colts. Oh, I know what you’re saying - it’s been how long? Give it up already. But I can’t - I have wonderful memories of my father taking me to games in Memorial Stadium. He had season tickets for years, and all the people sitting around us were the same, year after year. The people in our section were the first adults who ever asked me to call them by their first names. And of course, there were the teams - Johnny Unitas, Tom Matte, John Mackey, Bubba Smith.

But the Irsays ripped our hearts out. And if moving the team wasn’t bad enough, they took the name and colors with them, which is why I still hate the Colts. Rational? No. But I will be rooting for the Saints with all my heart come the Superbowl.

I like the Ravens a lot, and I like football in general. I got to see several of their games on TV, so even though I’m not in Baltimore, I was still able to keep up with them. My wife, having grown up in Pittsburgh, is a die-hard Steelers fan - and she’s brainwashed our kids into her way of thinking - but that’s another story.

29

As a kid I was a Dodgers & Rams fan and pretty much lived and died their successes and failures. I also would play baseball all day and every day, given the chance, so following a class franchise and knowing Garvey, Lopes, Russell & Cey would penciled each summer day from age 8-16, that didn’t suck. The Rams would fall apart at the most inopportune times, but that’s still better than most cities get.

But things were about to get a whole lot better.

My freshman year in high school the Lakers drafted that kid out of Michigan State and my best friend, Keith Bambacigno, was a huge basketball fan (I was never very good and only a casual fan). But something turned during that freshman year and pretty soon my life revolved around two things: watching the Lakers and playing hoops with my friends. Best time of my life.

And really, it just didn’t get any better than being a high school kid and Laker fan in 80’s (well, except the '84 Finals). The most exciting team during the golden age of the sport. But I’ve been a fan ever since, even had GO LKRZ as my license plate (sold the rights to it so I could put a downpayment on an electric car). I think I had even more fun watching the “lean” years of Cedric Ceballos, Nick Van Exel & Eddie Jones than the championship years that followed along with all the Shaq & Kobe diva crap.

I’m actually kind of tiring of basketball now, never thought it would happen. I seldom hit the refresh button on the internet more than five or six times a night anymore to see how my fantasy team is doing.

30

I’m a SF Giants fan and a Cal football fan…a bit more fanatical about Cal, so I’ll discuss them.

I arrived on the Berkeley campus unaware that they even had a football team*. I was a sports fan in general, attended my high school’s football games, so mid-season I finagled a ticket (the opportunity to get a student season pass had long passed) and went to my first game. It was love at first sight. I bought into the entire Color & Pageantry of College Football: traditional cheers, songs, marching bands, cheerleaders…launching water balloons from a giant slingshot at the USC band…hook line & sinker. It’s been love ever since, through good times and bad. Mostly bad. Although I was in the stadium for The Play, I’m proud to say.

*Reading the SF Chronicle as a youngster, they would refer to some football team as “California”. However, I was applying to Berkeley. It turns out they’re the same thing. This dichotomy still exists; academically, it’s Berkeley; athletically, it’s Cal.

31

Another Cal fan checking in. College at Berkeley was the bestest time of my life. (It’s been a long, slow, sad downhill slide since then. I’m so pathetic.)

I was on the field for The Play. Didn’t see a thing. But I was part of the Axe Guard that went and wrested the Axe away from the Stanfurdites. You should have seen their faces!

32

USC Trojans. Went to school there.

Ferrari. A racing team that builds road cars (at least in the Good Old Days), not a car company that races. Fairly cut-throat.

33

I grew up in Central Illinois. You’re either a Cardinal fan or Cub fan where I come from, or at least that’s how it used to be. There might be a few White Sox fans around there these days, but that team got no notice one way or another back in my day.

My dad is a Card fan. His dad was a Card fan. All of my mom’s family was Card fans. So by about the time I was 8 or so, I figured out a way to piss the whole lot of them off. I became a Cub fan.

You know how your mom always told you that if you keep making that face, it’ll stick that way some day? This is kind of like that. It stuck. There are times when I wish I could just give up, but I can’t do it. Even having been transplanted in California for 28 years now, I can’t fathom switching allegiances. Not even after so many dismal years, and after so many bitter disappointments in the post-season.

True story: I was out here in the USAF back in 1984 when the Cubs got into the playoffs for the first time in my lifetime, and I had to get down to SD for a game. I couldn’t be gone for more than one game, and it was a 5 hour drive each way. So I made the banzai run down for Game 3. The Cubs had won the first two in the best-of-five, and it seemed like a near certainty that they were going to sweep and go to the Series. I got there, and there were several other Cub fans hanging around waiting for the stadium doors to open, waving brooms, taunting the home fans, having a good time.

We won’t talk about what happened. And then I had to make the 5 hour drive back in the wee hours of the night.

But even having lost that game, there was no way in hell that the Padres could win both of the next two. If push really came to shove, the Cubs had the white-hot Rick Suttcliffe for Game 5. So when I got back to the base, I went off to the liquor store and bought a bottle of 12-year old Wild Turkey for the celebration.

25 years later, that bottle sits in my cabinet. Unopened. Only to be opened and consumed when the Cubs get to the World Series. That’s gonna be some damn fine bourbon.

I get pretty worked up watching the Bears, and I still like to watch Illinois basketball. But no team has the part of my heart that the Cubs have. I just wish they’d quit stomping on it…

34

I was a six year old living in New York City when, within about a 3 month span, the Mets won the World Series and the Giants won the Super Bowl. That was it for me, leading to the rare Mets/Giants combination; generally, the Giants go with the Yankees and the Jets go with the Mets, since the teams’ identities line up so perfectly: the Giants/Yankees are the storied, “classy,” mostly successful franchises with legacies that go back a million years, while the Mets/Jets are the children of the 60’s with long-suffering fan bases and only fleeting moments of glory.

Anyway, there aren’t many of us around. I was pleased to discover that Jon Stewart is among our number, however.

35

i am for an odd situation… a CHICAGO fan… as a kid i was born in 1969… the infamous year when Leo the Lip took the cubbies all the way to the last week in sept… till a black cat and Don Young collectively choked the pennant away. I grew up watching Jack Brickhouse and Lou Boudreau do the afternoon games at Wrigley… the cubs were pretty bad in the mid 70’s till the mid 80’s… i just thought this was way god intended it to be… Dave Parker and the Pirates would come to town and roll my boys… and then Johnny bench and his crew would be next… soon afterwards Steve “MR Perfect” Garvey would come with his gang… man i hated Garvey LOL

In the evening after about 4-5 hours of playing baseball i would come in and watch the White Sox on WSNS channel 44… Harry Caray and Jimmy Piersall would do the games… Piersall was memorable to me because my old man told me he went bonkers. and i saw that godawful movie Anthony Perkins made about it. Piersall was the first “color” guy who would attack his own players. i particularly remember him calling out Ralph Garr’s lazy ass or Chet Lemon for hot dooggin it… THe sox were midly better than the cubs… but got little pub in the paper… the fans at Comiskey were drunker and rowdier so i liked them better… the Cub fans were always a bit more high class…
When the fall rolled around i watched my beloved Chicago Bears run Walter Payton into the ground. Payton left Payton right… incomplete pass PUNT… that was Neil Armstrong and Jack Pardee’s offense. the only joy was when Walter did something incredible… or when Doug Plank or Gary Fencik knocked somebody unconcious…
When WInter came it was time for my Bulls… I watched Stormin Norman Van lier and Jerry sloan man the backcourt… i watched Artis “THe A train” GIl,more look more dispassionate then I’ve ever seen a professional athlete… Funny Sloan was the athletic guy… and Van lier the black guy was the hustle guy lol. the bulls were only on for 20-25 games a year and NEVER on the national game until we got Micheal Jordan… i was excited when we drafted micheal…but i had dreamed of gettin Akeem the Dream… nobody knew Micheal would be THAT good…
The blackhawks… the cheap bastard Bill Wirtz wouldn’t let them on teevee. so i never got to really get into the hawks… i went to a couple of games. but when your black hockey fans can annoy you because they assume you don’t know what the puck is… i did like Bobby Hull… but Wirtz never expanded their fan base by televising the games… not until the cable sportschannel came around…
So thats my sad sad story. when Bartman reached across and grabbed the ball… i was glad the they made him leave the city… not proud… but as a chicagoan i understand… its a rough city…

36

Those Notre Dame univ of M Catholics versus Convict games were a real milestone in college football.

37

ifeel for you man… that year was magical. Dallas Green told us we were finally gonna be winners… WHen Durham let the ball threw his legs… and Lee Smith gave up the homer to Steve Garvey… my father throw up his hands… he said he’d finally had enough… You start to wonder why…why why… one year… can’t they even just make it to the WS… i really wonder if I’ll live to see it. and I’m 40 lol

38

I agree that Mets/Jets fandom typically aligns, but I know of multiple instances of Mets/Giants and even Yankees/Jets pairings. In the cases of being Mets/Giants fans, the fans “hooked on” in the mid 1980s like you did, after both football teams left for NJ and there was no home field reason to root for the Jets (who used to share Shea with the Mets). In the case of the Jets/Yankees pairings, those guys are in families with a long history of rooting for the Yankees (dating back to the 1950s or beyond) despite living in Brooklyn, Queens or LI (traditionally NL enclaves), but didn’t have a collective interest in football until the Joe Namath Jets.

One guy I know well is a Yanks, Jets, Islanders and Nets fan. Very strange fish that way. He grew up in Rockaway in Queens, whose family has lived there for generations, and have always been Yankees fans going back to the DiMaggio days. In all other respects, they went for the “local” team and stayed loyal to the Nets after they moved to Jersey (I assume they look forward to their move to Brooklyn).

39

I forgot the Nets were on Long Island, I have never been anything but a light fan of basketball anyway. Though I root for both the Nets and Knicks about equally at this point. I gave up on Hockey completely with the strike. I don’t miss it at all. I once rooted for the Rangers.

I rooted for the Yankees from birth and I started seriously following the **Giants **by age 10 but they were always my team even when I was clueless to what was going on and boy did the Giants stink when I was a kid. By 72 when I had a reasonable clue what was happening with the Yanks, they were a competitive team and then got really good once they moved to the rebuilt Yankee Stadium. However, for the entire 70s, the Giants were awful and always found ways to lose. It has always kept my expectation for the Giants a lot lower than for the Yanks.

The Yanks are suppose to win, with the **Giants **it is usually a pleasant surprise. Though this year was disappointing.

40

Yeah. Huh? I say! The Bruins sweater looked COOLER? It’s like a tubby bumblebee! That’s not cool! I’ll grant you that it isn’t Minnesota Wild ugly, but “cool” is a bit of a stretch for the Bruins’ colours and sweater!

Yeah, I’m a Habs fan. :smiley:

Why?

Because I live in Montreal, and because most of my friends are Habs fans, and I wanted to join into the conversation! I started watching hockey only a little over a year ago, and I am pathetically hooked. I neither have the time nor mental ability to watch every game and follow every team, so the Habs were a natural choice. When things are going well for them, this city has an amazing vibe to it, and I really enjoy that. And when things are going poorly…well, the vibe just changes, but there is still this constant “we are Habs fans” feel to the group on the metro, on the bus, on the street. Eye contact over newspaper headlines, people wearing ballcaps and toques and sweaters, and just a general feeling of being part of something. It’s hard to describe, but once you start paying attention to it, it’s there. Sure, it’s a terrible fishbowl for the players, but it’s so much fun as a fan.

FWIW, I also really like Chicago, Carolina and Anaheim (and Henrik Lundqvist), though this isn’t the thread for it!