Loyalties and Motivations

I could have been a Mets fan. In late 1988, I took notice of Gregg Jefferies (talk about mistakes) as the Richmond Braves’ season ended, after seeing baseball in person for the first time that summer. For Halloween, I demanded to be the Mets’ rookie shortstop, and my mom dutifully ironed a number 9 onto the back of the pinstriped shirt we had bought in the mall a few months before. A year later, though I would decry the injustice of Jerome Walton winning the National League Rookie of the Year award, I really couldn’t have cared less about the pride of Flushing, Queens. I was a nine-year-old kid. Easy come, easy go, I guess.

Sports team loyalty is like that. Though people try to establish rules for sports fandom, the actual practice of choosing and holding an allegiance varies quite a bit. Just take a look at the hockey blogs riffing on this theme:

• Penalty Killer Chris kicking off the topic, with his team loyalties following a combination of parental and personal moves
• Abel to Yzerman demanding some geographic loyalty, after seeing too many out-of-state Wings fans line up with the Yankees, Cowboys and Lakers to boot
• Acid Queen (from whom I found the topic) just asking for honesty about your motivations

So here goes. In baseball, after my brief Mets flirtation, I picked up the Atlanta Braves sometime between 1990 and 1991 — many of the players I saw come through AAA Richmond in 1988 and ‘89 started making a mark in the majors right as Atlanta’s reign of terror run began — and held that through 2004. But I moved to the DC area at the same time as the Montreal Expos. I might have made the switch even living in Richmond — the capital’s geographic pull is strong (an effect the Baltimore Orioles never had on me) — but an hour and a half in line at the RFK trailer park on 22 December 2004 wrote the contract up, and being present on Opening Day as President Bush threw Joe Grzenda’s ball to Brian Schneider signed it. Go Nats. (On the American League side of things, my fandom has always been more anti-Yankees than pro-anything else. But one of my closest friends from high school moved to Boston in the fall of 2003, and after years of denying she’d ever enjoy baseball, I got a phone call from Kenmore Square after the Oakland ALDS win, and participated in the “YANKEES SUCK” chant long-distance. I gave in and bought a Red Sox hat a few days later. At best, I’m a resident alien in Red Sox Nation, but it’s nice to root for someone rather than just against.)

Pro football is the only one I can easily explain: I grew up 90 miles south of Washington. That made a Redskins fan, with just one interruption during the Spurrier years. I bailed to the Steelers for a few years while that clown was in charge (and will still stick with them in the AFC).

Pro basketball? Is there such a thing as pro basketball?

The hockey saga is a bit more interesting. I became aware of the sport’s existence in 1990-91 at the hands of the Richmond Renegades, but had very limited exposure to the NHL as my family didn’t subscribe to cable. I latched onto the Minnesota North Stars for a couple of years after reading a Sports Illustrated article about their unlikely Finals run that season, but they moved to Dallas and I somewhat lost interest. For a few years, I floated around — paid some attention to the Colorado Avalanche as they moved and immediately won a Cup, and even bought a Hartford Whalers jersey at one point for very little reason other than it was available and reasonably priced at the sports shop in the mall.

That jersey became rather more significant over the summer of 1997 when the Whalers, already checked out of Hartford, announced their destination for the fall to be North Carolina. And for that season specifically, they’d be heading to Greensboro, just 2 1/2 hours south of my own new home-to-be as a freshman at Virginia Tech. On Halloween of that year, I drove down for a game against the Sabres, and after I got tired of hearing “Let’s go Buffalo”, I decided the guys on the ice needed someone upstairs cheering for them — especially with the grief they, their fans, and by extension Southern hockey as a whole were starting to get from the national media. I don’t hold latecomers’ status against them, but I think the night of 19 June 2006 might have been sweetest for those of us who sat in those teal-green seats, absorbed the trash being flung our way from the Northeast, and held our ground in hopes that someday the hockey world would welcome us.

That’s my story. Care to share yours?