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Why do you root for your club?


grilledcheese

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Pretty simple thing, I suppose. How did your fandom percolate? 

 

Baseball is a huge deal in my family. My Papa is born and raised in Brooklyn, and loved the Dodgers his entire young life. He raised the family as staunch supporters of the Bums. When they left, he was so heartbroken and lost that he didn't watch or listen to a ballgame until the Mets showed up in 62. What else was he going to do, root for the Yankees? 

 

Anyway, after my Dad got back from Vietnam, he moved out to LA and eventually met my Mother, who being from Los Angeles was also a huge Dodgers fan. They settled in San Jose, which is where I was raised and have dealt with a lifetime of being surrounded by fans of my greatest rival.

 

I now live in West Sacramento, and am raising my son in a very similar fashion, both as a fan of the club, and one growing up in enemy territory.

 

How about you folks? Was it because you were local, or did you love one particular player on a team thousands of miles away? The Braves on TBS? Dave Niehaus? Lyman Bostock? Please tell, I desperately want to know!

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As a kid I had no major league club in Seattle. We had the Seattle Rainiers. Most other kids were Yankees fans, but then as now, I was a contrary SOB, so the Milwaukee Braves, with what I contend is still the most awesome 3-4-5 line-up of all-time (Mathews, Aaron, Adcock) became my team.

 

The Pilots weren't around long enough to make any sort of impression, and when we finally got the Mariners, I'd been a hardcore Braves fan for a decade. 

 

Since they play in different leagues, it's easy to root for both, but if it comes down to it in the WS, it's gonna be the Braves all the way.

 

Dave Niehaus? MY OH MY!!!! That's a name I haven't heard for awhile...

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Born and raised in Toronto. The 85 AL East win is probably what hooked me, and I've been on the roller-coaster ever since.

My sister moved to Pittsburgh in 03, my first nephew was born in 05 and since then I've adopted the Pirates as my NL team.

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Born into a family of Yankees fans. My grandmother, grandfather, mother, etc. My mother has pictures of me where I can't be more than 5 years old wearing Yankees shirts. I've got a shitload of memorabilia, Yankees tattoo, and I got engaged at Yankee Stadium. Eventually, it will be passed down to my kids. 

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Got my love of the Mets from my dad. In 1984 when I played organized ball for the first time my dad took me to my first Mets game. In 85 and 86 we went to 8-10 games per, then after the World Series he partnered with two other guys to get season tickets. From that point until 96 we had them and I would go to at least 10 games a year. The 86 Mets are my favorite team of all time and the only US based team I root for that I actually saw win a title. Years later me and my dad made an annual vacation in DC built around when we played the Nats.

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Brewers, who the fuck else am I going to root for? My other options are the Twins, White Sox, Cubs and Tigers and all are farther away with varying levels of horror and greatness historically. Baseball was my favorite sport as a kid and after a lull for most of the late 1990's until around 2003, and it still is now, so it was all about Yount and Molitor when I was a wee lad, I was born the year of their WS run, so I don't have any memories of those teams, sadly. I'd love to have memories of the Braves, but I'll take Uecker as a secondary option.

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So I hate San Diego and have been repulsed by both our sports teams and their fanbases (the Chargers hate is more of a fanbase thing than the Padres hate tho). Anyways, when I was having trouble between semesters in 2014, I started watching baseball between lower ranked, bad baseball teams as like a zen thing. Focus my mind far away. I was drawn to the Phillies because every time I watched them they'd do something hillarious. Papelbon specifically leapt out at me as being super intense and being prone to terrible foolishness.

 

One of the first full games I ever watched was him blowing a save against the Reds first by loading the bases and then balking.

 

The next Papelbon game I saw was the nut-grabbing incident.

 

I bought a Phillies hat the day after that.

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As a kid growing up in New York I sort of vacillated between the Mets and Yankees... my dad had had his heart broken when the Dodgers left Brooklyn so I never received any true guidance from him. Then when I was 11 I spent the summer working at my grandma's drugstore in Chicago.

That would be the summer of 1984.

Got totally caught up in the Cubs' historic pennant race and never looked back... joined the Die Hards club and everything. I was literally the ONLY Cubs fan in a family of dyed-in-the-wool South Siders for years and years until my cousin Steve had his "interfaith marriage." To this day I've never wavered... good things come to those who wait, right? It did happen to Man City and the Rangers... :)

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Grew up down South during the 90s, so I was a Braves fan. Moved to NY, had always appreciated the vast history of the Yankees, plus Ted sold the Braves and they became cheapskates, so I transitioned to being a Yankees fan. Not a huge baseball guy anymore though.

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Born and raised in Los Angeles. That's pretty much all there is to it. Started in the FernandoMania era and went from there. The rest of my family are Angel's fans, so Oakland is my secondary team.

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