The teams I root for [View All]

[Onceuponalife]

There seems to be some interest lately on what teams I root for, what teams I SHOULD root for and what teams I should be ALLOWED to root for. I have posted on this before and didn't intend to revisit it, but on the chance that my previous post was missed due to it being part of a subforum that was deleted (thanks to all the poison posts surrounding it), I will try to clarify things once more. I guess I should be flattered that some of you are interested enough in me to pay so much attention.

First, a little geographical info.

Contrary to what some may have assumed, I am not FROM L.A. I WAS born there but have never LIVED there. I did live until the age of 16 in Southern California and so we got all the L.A. TV stations. My early sports affiliations came naturally enough, I suppose. Up until about age 12 I was too busy actually playing sports in the street (mostly baseball)to pay attention to the sports being played on TV. As we lived about 100 miles from any major sports stadium, my early exposure to pro teams was limited to 3 or 4 trips to Dodger Stadium and twice to Anaheim Stadium where the Angels play. I was lucky enough to be able to watch the Dodgers go to the World Series the first two years I actually began following them. So that relationship was cemented. I didn't have quite the same feelings for the Angels although I remember watching plenty of their games on television (I still remember the hokey theme song they used to play before the broadcasts began!). I'm not exactly sure why that is although I certainly admired players like Rod Carew, Bobby Grich, Don Baylor and Bobby Bonds. For whatever reason I definitely felt more at home in the National League where pitchers hit for themselves and preferably play on real grass.

I also got into hockey and the L.A. Kings big time, although, sadly, never got to see them play at the "Fabulous Forum", as it was then called. I also wanted to play hockey badly, but alas, my parents wouldn't spring for the expensive gear I would need.

Then my parents broke up and I went to live with my Mom in San Jose starting in 1981. Then moved to nearby Fremont in 1984, while starting my employment career in San Jose and, later, neighboring Campbell. As a hockey fan, naturally I was thrilled when the NHL granted San Jose a franchise. This was a big deal financially for SJ as it was expected to bring in big revenue for the struggling downtown area. I was an early supporter for the ballot measure to raise funds for the stadium (which turned out to be built VERY close to where I worked at Taylor and Miller Streets!). We even had tee shirts printed up, which I believe were distributed at City Hall which was down the street from where I worked. There was a contest to pick a name for the new franchise and I am very glad they chose Sharks from the resultant short list. I can't remember all the dodgy names that were on the list but I do remember there was a faction that wanted the name tied into the Silicon chip industry somehow. Glad we dodged that bullet! The San Jose Circuit Boards somehow just wouldn't have done it for me. But the upshot is I remained a Kings fan for they were my first love but it was pretty awesome to (for the first time in my life) have a chance to follow a team from the beginning of their existence. Cboy would like to believe I ignored the Sharks for 10 years and then suddenly jumped on a bandwagon when they "got good." But you see, they were always good in my eyes even when their play was amateurish (they weren't privy to the same favorable expansion draft rules that allowed the Florida Panthers, who came into the league a few years after the Sharks, to have a much more talented pool of existing players to draft), because I was just happy to have a home town team that I could actually go see, that wasn't 100 miles away from me. And if you try to tell me that they're not my home team because I was raised in Southern California, consider that I only lived in that area for four years after I started following pro sports, while I have lived in the SF Bay Area for 26 years before having to move further north this past June due to economic reasons. Believe me, I love the city of San Francisco more than any other city in the world, but I just couldn't afford to live in that high priced area of the country anymore in these bad economic times.

I know this goes against the rules that Cboy has decreed for everybody in his fiefdom (aka the DU board) but I think it would have been crazy to ignore a new franchise starting in my town because I already had a hockey team to root for. And I'm still a Kings fan, make no mistake, but they haven't exactly lit up the hockey world with their prowess. I have never abandoned any of my teams and I never will. That's not how I roll no matter what some may assume about me. When I was a kid there was nobody I loved more than Marcel Dionne and the Triple Crown Line (Dionne, Dave Taylor and Charlie Simmer). I'm not going to throw away those memories just because there's a new more exciting team in town. It is possible to root for more than one team in a sport. It happened naturally and I make no apologies for it. Nor should I have to. Especially to someone who doesn't even know me or make any attempt to. That makes about as much sense as the people in Baltimore ignoring the new football franchise (Ravens) that started there because the Colts had already moved to Indianapolis (what would be Cboy's rule for that...stick with the Colts because they were your home team no matter where or how often they move or switch to the Ravens and dump the Colts because they no longer are your "home" team? If it was me, I'd root for both, but that's just me). One thing I never have done nor never will do is jump off or on any bandwagons.

After moving to Fremont I found myself a short BART ride away from Oakland A's stadium, which unfortunately, was built for football only (Raiders) and was coverted to allow baseball also. It was great for the first time in my life to be able to go to a pro baseball stadium on my own whenever I wanted. I started going to games in 1985 when they were still a terrible team. I was just happy to attend, not expecting much. Of course, when they started winning a couple years later, I was as happy as anybody. But I guess to Cboy I jumped on the bandwagon 3 years ahead of when they went to the World Series because, obviously, I was psychic and knew ahead of time they would be great.

My story is similar with the Rams (always a fan and stuck with them through 20 years of horrific play, to finally getting rewarded for my loyalty by seeing them win the Super Bowl). And I didn't dump them just because they moved to St. Louis. With them playing in far off L.A. they may as well have lived in St. Louis the whole time. The same is true for the NBA and the Lakers, although my enthusiasm for basketball in general dipped WAY down after that player's strike a while back. I still watch the Lakers when they get to the playoffs but I can't bring myself to care whether they win or not. They won so many championships it just kind of got boring and stale after a while if that makes any sense. I dunno, I just can't get excited about basketball anymore. Period.

In college sports, I'm a USC football fan since childhood which included more bad years than good. I also like the Cal Bears mostly because I just can't stand Stanford and Berkeley is an awesome city! I also enjoy watching the Oregon Ducks play but I don't consider them "my team" of course. I actually watch a lot of college football these days.

So, anyway, sorry to bore you with a long post, but i felt like I was being misrepresented so I thought I'd tell my story, for whatever it was worth. I know it won't sway Cboy but then again he's always right and we're always wrong, right? And he'll decide what he wants to believe about people he has never met and never will.

Cheers.