I’ve written about moving to a new city and the old team/new team dynamic before (here, for example). After four years as a resident of Colorado, it’s pretty clear how my team loyalties line up:
Nuggets > Bulls
White Sox > Rockies
Bears = Broncos (I don’t know what I’ll do when they play each other next month)
If anyone thinks it’s lame to be a fan of, say, the Bears and the Broncos, that’s fine with me. I’m going to be a fan of the Bears and the Broncos for the rest of my life, and that’s just how it is. It would be easier to have only one team, but I can’t leave my old team and I can’t resist my new team.
On Thursday, we perched on barstools at Goose Island until our butts hurt, watching the entire Rockies/Red Sox game. The Rockies should have and could have won that game, but that’s beside the point right now. I want to talk about Red Sox fans.
I’m not going to be overly critical and shit-talky like I was that time with the Cubs. There’s no reason for that, and I’d just piss people off because really, Red Sox fans annoy me. But for now, I just want to know — who are Red Sox fans?
On Thursday, there were two guys wearing Red Sox stuff at Goose Island — a guy at the bar wearing a Red Sox hat, and another guy in a Red Sox t-shirt. Neither of them even glanced at a TV showing game 2 of the World Series.
I’m sure most people don’t take things like team hats as seriously as I do. I don’t wear a White Sox hat or a Rockies hat because it’s hiding my bed head — I wear it because I love my teams. It also might be hiding bed head, but I wouldn’t wear a hat if I didn’t love the team. When I see other people wearing team hats, I always assume, just for a second, that they love their team as much as I love mine. I’m trying to stop doing that, but it’s always my first reaction. (Don’t get me started on the ridiculous way I always refer to White Sox fans as “my people” and say hi to them.)
The two guys at Goose Island representing the Red Sox but not watching the game made me wonder — who are Red Sox fans? I mean, hell, there always seems to be a ton of them everywhere. Who are they? Are they just guys wearing hats to hide their bed head? Are they serious fans? There’s some of each, right?
Maybe those who are serious fans used to live in Boston and moved but still love their team. Can that account for the millions of Red Sox fans all over the country? According to the 2005 census, Boston has a population of 559,034. That’s not very many people. By contrast, in 2005, New York had 8,143,197 people and Chicago had 2,842,518. It makes sense that some of the 8+ million people from New York move away and wear Yankees hats in their new cities. Same with the Cubs. Do just as many people leave Boston? If so, Boston must suck ass.
According to the 2005 census, Denver had almost as many people as Boston — 557,917. You sure don’t see Rockies fans all over the country the way you see Red Sox fans all over the country. Why is that? Even taking into account the fact that the Rockies are a very new team and the Red Sox are a very old team (and the fact that the Red Sox traditionally are a better team than the Rockies), there is a huge disparity. Do people leave Boston the same way people move to Denver?
Or do people become Red Sox fans for no good reason? If so, that’s weak.
I don’t know. I kind of want to understand and I kind of want to talk shit. I’ve never become a fan of a team that isn’t from my city. Is that common? How does it work? Do people just jump on the next exciting bandwagon and then find someone else next year, or is there loyalty? If you’re not connected by geography, what binds you to your team? If you’re a Red Sox fan (and you’re not in or from Boston), why?
October 27, 2007 at 10:14 pm
Ok, ok, I have to admit. My favorite AL team in MLB is the Red Sox. Because I love Boston, the city. It is #2 behind Chicago with all the history and sights and museums. They’ve been my favorite since the 1986 World Series (don’t bring up Buckner, thanks). That was also the first year I really paid attention to baseball (Cubs).
The other team that I like besides the Red Sox, in a city where I’ve never lived, is the Pittsburgh Steelers. There are a few reasons behind that, but long story short = Super Bowl XXX. I was sick of Dallas and I knew a Steelers fan.
I grew to like the Broncos and Avalanche before I moved to CO, only because of G. Both of us have been bandwagon Rockies fans.
I think Bears > Broncos for next month. I’ve been a Bears fan for much longer than I’ve been a Broncos fan.
October 28, 2007 at 11:01 am
Hey now, if Boston #2 behind Chicago, you should like the White Sox as your AL team. :)
October 29, 2007 at 2:49 pm
Well, I can tell you personally I’ve never lived in Boston but I am a massive Red Sox fan (yes, I am a masshole). No other sports team compares and gets my undivided attention. The connection I have is through my late father, who was born and raised in Boston, along with all of my family on his side. Not sure if that’s a valid enough reason to love a team, but I can’t think of a better one on the planet than a bond between father and son. When the Red Sox win a World Series, I not only cry tears of joy, but also tears of sadness. Sadness that my dad didn’t live long enough to see his team win it all. Okay, enough with me being a little girl and crying out of my vagina.
I do have theories about why there are so many Red Sox fans, other than the obvious bandwagoners. And don’t get me started on those bastards. I used to be able to drive down to Tampa and get a ticket for free from some random Tampa fan. Now the games actually sellout, and not because of the Devil Ray fan club. Needless to say, I hope these bandwagon assholes fall off of the next wagon they try to jump onto and get run over. Front and back wheel!!!! Nothing worse than a guy not knowing shit about the game of baseball, let alone the team logo he has stitched to his brand new clean and shiny hat.
Besides those douches, I think a lot of the Red Sox fans come from the 5,000,000 universities they have up in that area. I would venture to say that the equivalent of the entire population of Boston probably moves away about every four years and a new batch arrives. Maybe not that many, but close. With that being said, it doesn’t help that most of these people are sanctimonious holier-than-thou I’m smarter than everyone on the room assholes to begin with.
Another reason—and I think this is big—is the utter universal hatred of the New York Yankees. People love the Red Sox because they hate the Yankees. It’s like the U.S. government throughout history having to pick sides between two feuding and almost equally bad countries - such as Germany and Russia, Iran and Iraq, or the Rebel Alliance and the Empire (guess who’s who in that last analogy). Pick the lesser of two evils so to speak, and begin to cheer them on. Give aid and comfort even.
So, that may account for a lot of the extra Red Sox fans spread throughout the country I guess. Or who knows, maybe people like the darker team colors. Very slimming you know. Vertical stripes? PAH-LEZ!!!!
October 29, 2007 at 8:36 pm
I’ve never been to St. Louis before in my life, yet I’ve been a die-hard St. Louis Cardinals fan for 35+ years. My father liked the Cardinals, and he also liked the Braves.
Let me explain a bit, I’m from the deep south region of Virginia. I’ve been to Atlanta, GA several times and long ago, back when I was only a child, my father use to take me to games and we’d watch the Cardinals and Braves play, or we’d watch Braves games.
Virginia has never been a pro sports state. And I’ve never, ever alluded to a Washington D.C. team because that just wouldn’t be right — not from the D.C. area; and growing up, in terms of the NFL, I hated the Redskins and it became natural for me to dislike any team from D.C. thus not being a Virginia team.
November 3, 2007 at 2:27 am
Seeing that I come from Buffalo, we don’t have a big league team. Sure, we were Triple A for Pittsburgh in the 80s and early 90s and now Cleveland, but I was never attached to either club.
Harry Caray drew me as a Cubs fan when I would catch games on WGN in the mid 80s. The Cubs had Ryne Sandberg, Rick Sutcliffe, then in the 86 offseason signed Andre Dawson, cultivated Greg Maddux from the farm…things were good.
Now that I live near St. Louis, it makes life so much more entertaining rubbing the Cards failures this past season into any loudmouth Cards fan who had no statistical information to back up anything they said.
The only hometown team I root for is the Bills, and yes, I was a fan of them pre Jim Kelly, Thurman Thomas and Andre Reed. Joe Ferguson, Joe Cribbs, Preston Dennard and Booker Moore ring a bell to anyone? Probably not.
In hockey, I have always been a Leafs fan due to the history of them as an Original Six franchise and the bitter rivalry between them and the Montreal Canadiens. If you haven’t read Forever Rivals, I recommend checking it out, it is an excellent book detailing that feud which has gone on for nine decades now.
November 4, 2007 at 2:07 pm
Once upon a time, when I was in a bar in Pasadena, there was a douchey looking kid wearing an ugly-ass Yankees cap. One of those ones in random colors. And I, being the obnoxious Sox fan that I am, had to make a comment about that fantastic choke in 04. The kid looked at me like I had two heads all Wha?? and i was like um 04 ALCS? up 3 games to none and choked fantastically to lose it? And he’s all huh? and i was like your hat idiot! And he goes, “Oh I just wear this hat because it matches my shoes.” i just walked away.
I thought you would like that story.