WHAT ARE WE ROOTING FOR?
Hey Erik,
2006 will be my fifth year of baseball fandom; I'm always amazed by what I don't know and what I learn. Now five years into this, I have to tell you one thing that bugs me, and I'm wondering what you think of it...
My fandom is not really for teams, per se, but for collections of players. I'm bored to tears with the city-centric, franchise-centric, ultra-corporate team mentality: "Your Chicago White Sox." What I like instead is a bunch of guys who -- brought together by good planning or chance -- create chemistry that makes baseball worth watching.
Five years doesn't seem like a long time to me, but what I'm seeing is that the vagaries of victory and defeat really drive who you keep and where they go when you're done with them (meaning: players). In 2002, the Giants had an astonishing line-up. Almost no one from that year's line-up still plays for San Francisco. Why?
Why are players shuffled like pieces on a Chinese Checkers board? Is it all business? Has it always been business? How come Hank Aaron camped with the Braves for 20 years? Mickey Mantle with the Yankees for 17 years? What's this shuffle-and-deal mentality that seems to pervade 21st C. baseball? Or am I simply not seeing the big picture?
Technically, every ball player I loved to watch on one team in 2002 or 2003 is now on pretty much every team in the National League. I'll be watching a game, and go, "Oh, look, it's Dustan Mohr or Livan Hernandez or Neifi Perez or Rich Aurilia or Jeff Kent," men who now play on five different teams.
I guess this all boils down to an interesting dilemma about what constitutes fan loyalty. Are you a Cubs fan because they hail from Chicago and play home games at Wrigley Field? Or are you a Cubs fan because of the people who make up the team? If it's the latter, how in the world do you re-align your fandom so that you can "love" your team -- that may not be the team you loved three or four years ago?
Perhaps I'm approaching an agnosticism about baseball, where rooting for the Yankees because Hideki Matsui is so awesome is OK. Or booing the Nationals because they traded away my boy Brad Wilkerson and took on a primadonna instead is OK.
Or perhaps I just have bad taste in favorite teams (the Cubs, Nationals, and Giants are not serious contenders this year, despite how many entertaining runs they pull out of their butts) and am fishing for an excuse to get mega-patriotic about the 2006 season.
Help a po' fan out with the measure of your wisdom.
2006 will be my fifth year of baseball fandom; I'm always amazed by what I don't know and what I learn. Now five years into this, I have to tell you one thing that bugs me, and I'm wondering what you think of it...
My fandom is not really for teams, per se, but for collections of players. I'm bored to tears with the city-centric, franchise-centric, ultra-corporate team mentality: "Your Chicago White Sox." What I like instead is a bunch of guys who -- brought together by good planning or chance -- create chemistry that makes baseball worth watching.
Five years doesn't seem like a long time to me, but what I'm seeing is that the vagaries of victory and defeat really drive who you keep and where they go when you're done with them (meaning: players). In 2002, the Giants had an astonishing line-up. Almost no one from that year's line-up still plays for San Francisco. Why?
Why are players shuffled like pieces on a Chinese Checkers board? Is it all business? Has it always been business? How come Hank Aaron camped with the Braves for 20 years? Mickey Mantle with the Yankees for 17 years? What's this shuffle-and-deal mentality that seems to pervade 21st C. baseball? Or am I simply not seeing the big picture?
Technically, every ball player I loved to watch on one team in 2002 or 2003 is now on pretty much every team in the National League. I'll be watching a game, and go, "Oh, look, it's Dustan Mohr or Livan Hernandez or Neifi Perez or Rich Aurilia or Jeff Kent," men who now play on five different teams.
I guess this all boils down to an interesting dilemma about what constitutes fan loyalty. Are you a Cubs fan because they hail from Chicago and play home games at Wrigley Field? Or are you a Cubs fan because of the people who make up the team? If it's the latter, how in the world do you re-align your fandom so that you can "love" your team -- that may not be the team you loved three or four years ago?
Perhaps I'm approaching an agnosticism about baseball, where rooting for the Yankees because Hideki Matsui is so awesome is OK. Or booing the Nationals because they traded away my boy Brad Wilkerson and took on a primadonna instead is OK.
Or perhaps I just have bad taste in favorite teams (the Cubs, Nationals, and Giants are not serious contenders this year, despite how many entertaining runs they pull out of their butts) and am fishing for an excuse to get mega-patriotic about the 2006 season.
Help a po' fan out with the measure of your wisdom.
posted by Andrew at
8:09 PM
2 Comments:
well ... i'm not erik, but i think a lot of us fans root for the team our dads rooted for, if not the city/region we grew up in. most likely it's both for my generation.
fantasy baseball may change this. may actually be changing this as we ponder the issue. but for a lot of us at least i think fandom is family/geography-oriented in essence.
a field of dreams is very real to many of us. kind of ironic, huh?
By
z, at 9:20 PM
I've been a Cub fan since birth and attended my first game in August of 1954 vs. the Giants.
In my 'yoot' I used to believe all the b.s. about how "someday we'll win it".
Now, as a senior citizen, I realize I love the Friendly Confines and the team is just something that I have to tolerate.My dad took me to Wrigley and I took my son there when he turned the same age.
I've taken my late wife there and my newest squeeze (2-0 five hitter by Dr. Maddux). Whem we arrived at Wrigleyville I went over to Harry's statue and genuflected. She thought I was mad. Then she went to the game and 2 hours and 5 minutes later she left a convert.
We're going back on April 23rd - a thousand mile road-trip.
The team doesn't have to get better. We all go no matter what line-up they put together.
By
Anonymous, at 9:30 AM
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