11/40 - The Home Team

Having a home team to cheer for is something that I think every kid should be able to experience. There is nothing like being a committed fan and feeling the rise and fall of your team. It doesn't matter what sport, but it does matter to be all-in on a specific team that you can go watch live from time to time and that you can follow year over year. For my family that was the Texas Rangers.

When we moved to North Texas in 1985, our family was coming from Omaha, Nebraska. In Nebraska, there are no professional sports teams. There is only Cornhusker Football. In Dallas, there were the Cowboys, Mavericks, Rangers, and later the Stars. Every major sport was represented and gave us something to follow in the Sports Page of the Dallas Morning News every morning.

My Dad had grown up in a baseball family, my Grandpa being a really great catcher in his early days. Each of us kids played baseball or softball for varying lengths of our childhood. Naturally, of all the professional sports teams in town, cheering for the Texas Rangers became a family past-time. Looking back through photo albums there is a reoccurring theme: every summer we drove at least once to Arlington for a game, sometimes more.

We were a very savvy tailgating family. We'd find a good parking spot not too far from the stadium and pull out the Thermos full of hot water and hot dogs that Mom had packed. After a solid pregame dinner, we'd make it into the stadium with time to watch batting practice and see our favorite players shagging balls in the outfield. We always brought our gloves just in case batting practice included a home run hit right to us or a player tossed a ball up into the stands.

Our whole family had their collection of Rangers swag. My brothers and I could go head to toe in Rangers red and blue from hats to shirts to shorts to shoes. Learning the ins and outs of Baseball with Dad was a very fun pastime and something that continued well into our adult years.

I love finding out who people's home teams are now as an adult in NYC. Here, so many people are transplants from other parts of the country. But who they cheer for is not always obvious based on where they are from. Team allegiances are more complicated than hometown geography. I've noticed three distinct groups of loyalists.

True Hometown Fans: like my family with the Rangers
Adopted Fans: People who grew up in one place and then moved and now claim a local team as their team.
Generational Fans: They cheer for who their parents cheer for, even though they don't live anywhere near where their parents acquired their fandom.
Walmart Fans: These fans are the most bandwagon of fans, but they cheer for the team that has the most swag at their local Walmart or sports store. Think LA Lakers, NY Yankees, or Dallas Cowboys. People that have never been to LA, NYC, or Dallas love cheering for those teams because they have their gear.

When moving to NYC twelve years ago, I was determined to adopt a team to augment my Dallas team fandom. I obviously couldn't cheer for the NY Giants because they're in the same division as the Cowboys, so I've been trying to be a Jets fan for 12 years and still can't make it stick. I initially cheered for the Nets over the Knicks, but have just found I like going to the games and don't care about Basketball that much. Hockey is fun to go to, but I am not following either the Rangers or the Islanders.

The real debate for me was Mets or Yankees.

I moved to NYC hating the Yankees. Growing up, they were the rich team that signed silly contracts to take my favorite players to the Evil Empire and always won. When my Texas Rangers made it to the playoffs for the first time in FRANCHISE HISTORY in 1995, they won their first game against the Yankees and then lost their next 9 playoff games to the Yankees. We never won another playoff game during my childhood because of those damn Yankees.

So I tried to be a Mets fan. Even going to see them in the World Series and eventually watch them lose in Game 6 to the Kansas City Royals. It was a good run, but the draw of the Yankees is pretty strong and the experience at a Yankee game is pretty exceptional.

So while I haven't become a Yankees fan, I am not spewing hate against them the way I used to and I no longer think less of people who love them. If you are going to have a hometown team, they're not that horrible of a team to cheer for.