Difference between being a fan of team v. fan of individual

Yeah, when Damon left for the Yankees, he got booed, but it was very perfunctory. Fans' hearts weren't really in it.

 

I always hated Gary Sheffield until he came to my team, but I had no problem rooting for him as a Brave. Then he went to the Yankees, and I went right back to hating him again.

The Mets are my least favorite in any sport, and I have trouble rooting for their star players. Mike Piazza and Jose Reyes were two guys I hated when they were on the Mets for the way they tormented the Braves, but I respect their body of work (Reyes' recent legal entanglements notwithstanding).

 

The wind has really gone out of the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry. Not enough choking on either side. Too much success and not enough embarrassing failures. There's nothing to goad fans on the other side with. Red Sox-Yankees series now sneak up on me, whereas I used to have them circled on the calendar.

 

Well, the product the two teams have put on the field since the Sox won it all in 2013 has not exactly stirred the competitive juices. It's one thing to go through near four hour long games when you've Pedro, Manny, Papi, A-Rod, Jeter, Rivera, etc. out there. Damn if I'm staying up late to watch Travis Shaw go up against whoever will be filling in for Chapman during his suspension.

 

Tell that to ESPN.

 

I still retain a child-like support of the Saints, which is ironic, because I didn't start following them until I was 24 and moved to the area. The relationship between the Saints and the City of New Orleans, and the Gulf South, is complicated, maybe more so than any other team in pro sports. It's very tied in to the peculiar culture of the area, and it was that way even before Katrina. And I find myself holding my breath hoping that Drew Brees really is the saintly figure (no pun intended) that his public image portrays him to be.

 

Gee's post got me wondering how attached people are to their hometown teams. I know a lot of people are all in for local teams no matter what, but I've had varying levels of affection. I've always loved KU and the Royals, but merely liked the Chiefs. In fact, for some reason I might even root against Denver and Oakland as much as I root for the Chiefs.

If the Royals winning the World Series meant the Chiefs could never even get to another AFC Championship game in my lifetime I would be perfectly fine with that.

 

I'm very attached to my hometown teams. All of them. The only teams I root for otherwise are teams I latched on to before my hometown teams existed. My favorite team of all plays 1000 miles away but has a special place because it trained in my hometown for most of my formative years.

 

nowadays I gotta imagine there's a lot more geographic dissonance among the teams people root for, due largely to the explosion of sports channels that carry teams from all over the world. When you only had the local teams on TV and the radio, it made it more unlikely to develop allegiances for faraway teams. And it'd probably be more likely in football, since games are only once a week and even the Niners or Raiders would have been easy enough to follow back in the day. But how many kids who grew up on the East Coast were Giants or Dodgers fans? I don't know too many, but I know plenty of Raiders and Niners fans from the East Coast. Nowadays I find that I enjoy rooting against certain teams and their fans almost as much (and sometimes more) than I like rooting for my own teams.

 

Have always rooted for the player and his team as opposed to the team itself.

Exhibited this at an early age. Had an affinity for Tom Seaver and Joe Namath in the late 60s and correspondingly rooted for everything New York--Mets, Jets, even the Knicks. In the summer of '69, my dad would ask me in front of all the relatives who was going to win the World Series, and I would spout off 'the Mets'. That generated a good chuckle from everyone, especially considering we were living in the two time defending NL champion St. Louis area. Think I still have the congratulatory telegram I got from one of my aunts when the Mets delivered the miracle.

Late 70s was a huge Dr. J fan, and carried that love for the Sixers for many years, through to Andrew Toney, who I used to absolutely love watching him crush on the Celtics in the playoffs.

Also, a Montana fan over the years at both Notre Dame and the 49ers.

The only place where I have an affinity for the laundry is the St. Louis Cardinals. Think that grew out of my college years where the mix of my friends was a polarizing group of Cardinal and Cubs followers, and the intensity of those exchanges probably drew me to support the local hometown baseball team in a more fervent fashion, even to this day when I'm close to 3 decades removed from having lived there.