On Generational Fandom
As most of you know, I grew up in Seattle. My parents owned their own small business not far from Sea-Tac Airport, which meant that I spent a lot of after-school time at an auto parts store, trying to entertain myself with things that were of minimal interest to a child. But the store had a radio, and in the spring and summer, KIRO 710 broadcast baseball games. Combined with access to 25-cent packs of baseball cards at the 7-11 down the street, baseball became my babysitter.
We didn’t have a television until I was a bit older, and my parents worked too much to take us to the Kingdome very often, so I fell in love with the sport through the radio broadcasts of Dave Niehaus. I was taught about the game by his play-by-play calls, as neither of my parents were big sports fans, and the mid-80s Mariners weren’t exactly the kind of team that drew in anyone but those who truly loved the sport. I essentially became the sole reason my Mom and Dad paid any attention to baseball at all; even their moderate interest was mostly because, being good parents, they wanted to be involved in the things that I enjoyed.
I’m writing about this because, two weeks ago, I became a father, and in between diaper changes, I’ve been thinking about my son’s future relationship with baseball. How am I going to introduce him to the game? How am I going to teach him not just about the sport of baseball, but about being a fan?
The real answer is that I don’t know yet. Given that he’s only a couple of weeks old, I’m pretty sure I don’t have to know for a while longer, which gives me some time to ponder. And it gives me some time to ask for some insights from those of you who were introduced to the game differently than I was. I know the traditional notion of generational fandom is a father playing catch with his son in the backyard, and perhaps many of you were introduced to the game that very way. Perhaps you were raised in the same city where your father was raised, and your bond to the local team runs back through your grandfather or even your great-grandfather.
That is not going to be my son’s story. My Dad spent most of his childhood in Rhode Island and Maine before moving west, and his Red Sox fandom faded away as he dug roots in the Pacific Northwest. He still lives in Seattle, but I moved to North Carolina back in 1999, and while I might not be here forever, a move back to the increasingly expensive Seattle area seems unlikely. So he likely won’t be raised near my childhood home, and neither sets of his grandparents have a strong baseball heritage to pass on.
Even my own personal Mariners fandom has faded dramatically since baseball writing became my profession, to the point where I’d probably describe it as mostly dormant. It wasn’t through some choice to try and be more objective; it just kind of happened. The work/life balance is definitely part of it — it is difficult to have your profession and your hobby occupy the same space — but I also think that being involved in the community of shared fandom is perhaps the most rational argument for cheering for an individual team, and location has a significant role in the rationality of that decision.
As someone who spent over a decade rooting for a team 3,000 miles away, I can say with some certainty that it’s simply a worse overall experience than cheering for a team in your home city. And it’s not just the time zone differences; it’s mostly about being by yourself in an environment that was meant to be communal. Starting USSM helped fill some of that void, but as great as the internet is at connecting people, it is not a replacement for getting together in a stadium and participating in the emotional ups-and-downs of watching a game live. Or even simply having a shared connection with your neighbors.
As much as civic pride helps push us towards rooting for the local team, I don’t think we can understate the advantages of being part of a shared community. And that’s mostly not available for those who live in a place where few others share their passion. So, even if I had retained my own personal Mariners fandom, I’m not entirely convinced that I would want to pass that on to my boy. Is it better for him to be connected to me through shared rooting interests, or to those future friends who he might end up playing Little League with? I can see some benefits to having a tie to your family’s rooting interests, but I think I may see more benefits to devoting his passion to the same players that his classmates will be cheering for.
Perhaps I’m overthinking all of this, however. Perhaps in today’s day and age of MLB.tv, location isn’t as important as it used to be. Maybe he doesn’t even need to pick one team, or any team at all. Maybe if we continue to live no closer than six hours from the nearest Major League stadium, he’ll simply become a college basketball fan instead. Or maybe, like me, his interests will vary dramatically from his father, and I’ll end up getting sucked into impressionist paintings or classical music. Maybe this doesn’t need to be planned. Maybe he’ll just root for whoever he roots for, and that’s okay.
I’m interested in hearing your thoughts and experiences, though. Especially if you weren’t raised in the same city your parents were raised in. Did you become a fan of the local team, your parents’ team, or neither? Or if you’ve already gone through this with your children, how did you pass on your love of baseball to them, especially if you weren’t able to actually take them to the ballpark that often? Or does it just happen naturally, regardless of who you’re hoping your kid grows up rooting for?
Tomorrow, I’ll get back to writing about actual baseball. Today, though, I’d love to hear your stories about how you found baseball, and how your Dad may have played a part in that story.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
Make sure you teach him how to blink first.
You cannot teach what you do not know.
And the bar has been set for the 2015 Comment Of The Year
Seriously though, my dad grew up near Atlantic City and briefly lived in Philadelphia, so he’s a bit of an Eagles and Phillies fan. He’s definitely the definition of a casual fan as he doesn’t know the players and doesn’t actively seek them out on TV, but every once in a while he checks their scores in the newspaper.
However, since I grew up in the Twin Cities, my parents would take me to Twins games and I immediately latched on to them. I did have some secondary teams (Astros when they had Dotel and Wagner, Diamondbacks when they beat the Yankees in the World Series) but those never lasted very long, and it was more for their achievements or players than actually having any specific tie to the region.
My dad grew up in southern Illinois, in the heart of Cardinals country… I had the unfortunate pleasure of being raised in several different states, though we did settle down so that I could attend one high school all 4 years. I grew up a Cardinals fan, partially because there was never a local team to root for. By the time I realized where we were, who the team was, and the individual players, we were off somewhere else. I owned the team my dad loved and stuck it out for years. Now, my fandom creates a safety issue when attending Cardinals games in Philadelphia, but it’s always well worth going.
Unlike you, Dave, I have every intention of moving back to the St. Louis area, but for similar reasons… I just can’t afford to live in New Jersey.
-Andy
Congrats on the birth of your son!
I have always believed that one should root for the team that plays where one lives. My father grew up a (Brooklyn) Dodgers fan, and then switched his allegiance to the Orioles when he moved to DC in the 1970s/80s. I have retained that allegiance, but I still live in the area (in Baltimore). So it has not been a difficult decision to encourage my kids to follow the local teams, which were also my boyhood teams (except for the Ravens, but switching away from the DC football team was easy, and a lower-stakes affair since I only partly follow football). I was faced with a potential move in a job situation a few years ago, and I was prepared to (slowly) switch allegiances, as long as I moved to a ‘neutral’ area (i.e. not another AL East team’s area, although in NY I would have become a Mets fan).
I think it is sad that the internet and cable has increased the tendency of people to root from afar in their own bubbles, and I have a theory that the Red Sox and Yankees’ dominance in the time when the internet was becoming dominant has led to that even more, and allowed for their bandwagons to be even bigger than they would have been otherwise. But I blame those teams for everything that’s bad in the world, so maybe you should ignore my thoughts there. I still think there is enough of a non-internet community of fans that rooting for the home team, as long as you plan to set up roots there, is a more rewarding and ‘natural’ experience.
I believe that, above all, you shouldn’t tell other people who to root for. There really isn’t a wrong answer. It’s like saying someone should like green more than yellow. I’d say that includes kids. My kids, if I have them, will see me watching a lot of Braves games. If I don’t move, they’ll live in DC. They can choose which team they want to root for (or to not care about baseball).
I grew up in Tennessee and somehow latched onto the Blue Jays (MLB), Eagles (NFL), Knicks (NBA), and Georgetown (CBB). I never understood why having a team in close proximity meant that you had to necessarily root for them; of course we had no major sports teams in my formative years and have two now.
I think there’s something to be said for letting him be free enough to form his own allegiances, but at the same time I don’t share fandom for any teams with anyone in my family, which can also be alienating (or at least kind of curtails any bonding activities). It would be nice for dad & son to take in a game and share a rooting interest, and I missed the boat on that.
And I still do a double-take (or stare awkwardly) if I happen to see another Blue Jays hat/shirt/bumper sticker down here. So rare, but it does happen about once every five years or so.
Obviously, people can do whatever they want fan-wise. I definitely look down on bandwagon fans – I won’t lie, but it’s all good.
I was trying to say that I think rooting for a team is partly about community and belonging to a community. For some, that can come on the internet and that’s fine. For me, I really feel it’s important to have it come from other places, from the city, from the people you have casual conversations with, even from seeing the bumper stickers on all the cars, the game on the TV in the bars as you walk by, the headlines in the newspapers, etc.
Woohoo for the Blue Jays family!
Does Mom care about Baseball? My dad was never anything more than a passive fan, but my Mom grew up sneaking into Wrigley. I ended up a White Sox fan (mostly to be contrary to my Cub fan friends) but she got me into the game far more than my dad did.
They DO exist!
My story is not unlike yours. My parents were not interested in baseball, but we did have cable. That meant I spent most nights every summer watching absolutely horrible Atlanta Braves on TBS and caught many afternoon Cubs games on WGN. Scary to think that I learned so much listening to Harry & Skip Carey. The Braves fandom stuck and somehow the 1986 World Series turned me into a Red Sox fan.
You’ll be surprised how quickly children catch on. My wife and I are college football fans (Alabama fans) and now our 19 month old daughter says “alabama” “touchdown” and “roll tide” anytime the TV is on or she sees someone wearing Crimson.
Have fun!
My dad’s family were mostly Mets fans. They were Brooklynites who rooted for the Dodgers and adopted the Mets when they were established.
He let me pick my own team, though, and I picked the Yankees (I was a kid during the Mattingly era, so no it wasn’t a front runner choice). We still both enjoy New York baseball and we’ve both got a soft spot for each team. It’s pretty easy to manage having a favorite while still enjoying both teams. Especially since they’re not even in the same league. And we’re not the type to start fights in the bleachers if we see someone in a rival team’s hat.
If you go that route, it probably works in your favor since your kid who likely pick and East Coast team.
I’m a Mets fan too, mostly because of my brother and uncle. It was explained to me that NY NL baseball goes back 4 generations on my mother’s side, as my great-grandmother rooted for the Dodgers and my Uncle was a Giants fan when they were in the Polo Grounds. (My dad was a Yankees fan in the Mantle era and when Whitey, Yogi and the rest faded out he never learned the new guys. Not into baseball as an adult.)
But when the Giants and Dodgers left, you couldn’t just become a hated YANKEES fan, no, those are the OTHER people, so it was limbo for 4 seasons and then the Mets came, and everyone jumped on board. That’s why it didn’t matter that they sucked, there was National League ball in New York again! So I became a Mets fan as well and am a die-hard realist Mets fan to this day, even though I’ve lived in CO for more than 15 years. My brother stopped following real baseball teams’ fortunes and became a fan of the Manhattan Beach, his dynasty Strat-o-Matic team that he’s had since the last days of Eddie Murray. I am not a Rockies fan, but I always hope they’ll do well against any of the 28 other teams. When they made the WS I was happy for championship fever but I was on the outside looking in, in a way.
I have a 16 month old boy myself, and I just assume he’ll be a Mets fan, but this is thread is making me wonder. He does all sorts of things I don’t want him to already, so maybe he’s got a rebellious streak. I’ll be happy if he follows baseball at all, and I’ll teach him all the things my uncle taught me, like if you’re on the railing and there’s a foul pop, only reach to catch it if it benefits your team! (Bartman was wrong, and so was the rest of the crowd. See the 30 for 30: Catching Hell if you haven’t). Sorry, rambling. Cheers!
I Was born and grew up in my city as a Yankees fan, but moved to Long Island when I was 8. Day camp (cheaper for the group to go to a mets game a few times a year vs Yankees game) is probably what got me to love the mets. Thrilling games without an obvious all star (at the time) made me love what the mets were. It was all because of day camp and that shared experience with others vs. a forced-on love otherwise I’d love the grateful dead, scuba diving and the yankees
I’m a lifelong midwesterner, surrounded by Cubs and Cardinals fans. I inherited my love of the Dodgers from my dad, who became a fan as a child during the Brooklyn heyday.
My teenage son is also a Dodgers fan. I don’t think I really “forced” it on him, he just adopted his dad’s team (in spite of all the screaming at the television in 08 and 09), and I certainly didn’t discourage it.
I am glad it turned out this way, it’s a nice thing to share with both my father and my son.
I’m 23 and consider myself a big baseball fan.
My introduction to baseball was somewhat odd. I happened upon my grandma watching the Marlins 2003 divisional series and I just sat down and watched. I’m from Miami. I guess it was seeing the excitement of it, but by the time Beckett made the last out of the WS, I was racing down the sidewalks banging pots and pans with everyone, despite only being introduced to the sport weeks earlier.
It kind of carried on from there. My parents were never into baseball, but they supported me and put me in a local team with my friends who also enjoyed the sport.
And silly as it sounds, 2009 is when I started fantasy baseball and it really opened my eyes to the rest of MLB.
My grandma still keeps up with the Fish, but only superficially, so I’m still the only one in my family who loves baseball.
I’ve loved it ever since and I’ve also wondered how I will introduce it to my child down the road. Though I’m about 5 hours north of Miami now, I still avidly root for the Marlins and I think I’ll nudge my child to do the same.
For the sake of your child please don’t encourage him/her to be a Marlins fan.
Kidding, but I do wonder if it will be hard to raise a kid to be a Marlins fan, especially considering how much more people seem to care about other sports besides baseball in Florida and other parts of the South.
We’ve had really similar experiences! I’m also 23, also got really into baseball during the 2003 season, and also follow the Marlins (still a big fan of them to this day, believe it or not). My family spends June up north, so I remember checking the box scores every morning, which is when they really started putting together their playoff push.
Baseball was about the only thing my father and I had in common. And being the third generation in CT, it was easy to be a Red Sox fan with the community of Red Sox (and Yankees) fans nearby.
My son was born after we moved from CT, during the Lou Gorman era. My dismay at the ineptitude of my favorite team made it hard for me to watch, let alone pass to my son, who gladly filled that void with a love for video games.
But overall, I think you’re right that it’s tough to pass on a passion for a team without a community of fellow fans nearby.
My dad was raised in Missouri and became a die hard Cardinals fan. I grew up in Iowa and despite my dad’s best efforts became a Cubs fan. I remember originally being a cardinals fan. I think early elementary age I switched to the Cubs. Possibly due to frequently attending Iowa Cubs games or possibly due to their 1989 division win. My younger brother is a Cardinals fan so maybe my dad realized what worked and didn’t work and got his second chance. I have a one year old son so I’m in a similar boat as you in looking forward to sharing baseball with him. I plan on letting him determine his own allegiance and interests and being supportive no matter what. Even if he is a Cardinals fan.
To me, there’s something about the fervor of your father relative to the fervor of your friends. I was born in Michigan to a football-first father, and even though we moved to Chicago when I was still young, I have many memories of watching UM on Saturdays with my dad. That doesn’t go away, particularly in a place without a dominant college football team to replace them. I don’t follow college football much anymore, but it’s difficult to imagine liking another team over Michigan. Those Saturdays created an affiliation that persists.
But baseball was different. My dad likes the Tigers, in the way that you half-heartedly like any local team, but he never followed them particularly closely, and he never transferred that on to me. And unlike college football, there’s anything but a void when it comes to baseball in Chicago. So as baseball became my passion, the passion of the friends around me—the Cubs—quickly became mine as well.
My father wasn’t into sports so I learned my love of baseball through my 4 older brothers. I rooted against their favorite team just because I wanted to be different. In hindsight I regret that because I became somewhat alienated from my friends in school because of that. As a father, I have decided to let my daughter either love, like, dislike or be indifferent towards baseball as she sees fit. Let it be your son’s choice. Don’t over-think it. Expose him to baseball don’t impose it upon him.
I’ve never been a father, so take a grain of salt with this, but here goes:
Let it happen naturally. Make baseball a part of your home – as it already is – and your children will learn to love it, or not, by themselves. You have a job watching ballgames, so all your current or future sons or daughters will grow up with baseball. When you watch, express your admiration/fandom as you usually would. These things are infectious.
In 2024 or thereabouts, some great storyline will happen with a “lovable loser” team that overcomes the odds, or some such, and your child(ren) will become fans as they watch with you. Or, you’ll move to a town with a ballclub. Or, you’ll go to minor league games and they’ll find a favorite player who makes the big leagues. Or your children will be like me, growing up casually rooting for a half-dozen teams before choosing a permanent die-hard rooting interest essentially at random.
Either way, I don’t think you need to worry about it. If you force the issue, or force baseball on them, the odds they’ll be baseball fans decreases. Baseball should be like TV, not like church or math homework. A stress relief. You know, like it was for us as kids.
I grew up in a house with lots of books on the shelves, and classical music coming from the speakers. My parents encouraged me to read, but they never forced me to listen to composers. Nobody ever said “Beethoven is very important to us, and we hope it will be to you, too.” Now I’m a music critic. Who knew? They weren’t trying. They just gave me free and ready access to something which I grew to love.
Last year was the first time in probably two decades that my father and I didn’t watch a World Series game together. Maybe next time.
My dad is a die yard Yankees fan, as he and his family grew up in New Jersey. Grandfather also a big Yankees fan. My dad attended college in Baltimore and has lived in the area since 1990. As a baseball fan, he got season tickets for the Orioles and took us to the park quite often in the 90’s. I disassociated with baseball from probably 2000 to 2008 (until I started playing fantasy baseball and got a summer job at Camden Yards – I made Big Mario’s Pizza in the Boardwalk Fries stand on 3B line for those of you who are wondering) and have loved the Orioles since then. So despite being a Yankee fan to this day, my father did a good job of building my foundation for baseball at a young age only to have me rediscover it as an 18 year old. I don’t think it is important that we like the same team, and it is nice that our squads are division rivals.
Grew up in Chicago a White Sox fan like my dad (who also liked the Cubs just fine), but when I moved to NYC, and married a Brooklyn girl, and it was clear we’d stay here forever, I went full-in Mets. You’re right; it’s great rooting for the home team. It’s great getting to go to the games, and even better asking the deli man who’s starting today and if he thinks Flores could play a decent short. It helps bind me to New York. And now I’m passing that onto my little toddler here who’s Brooklyn born and bred,
Well, I’m Canadian and the Expos aren’t a team anymore. You do the math.
My family’s obsession with Yankees baseball has always been one of the largest draws to the team for me. I always loved going to family gatherings and hearing stories about old teams or arguments about what the Yanks should do next. For me, the bond of shared fandom is essential to my ability to stay current with a team because a lot of the fun for me is rooting, suffering, and winning with other people.
The other thing that attracted me to the Yankees was the atmosphere at the old Stadium. I quickly became addicted to the noise, energy and passion there. I often wonder if I’d be as big of a fan if I was growing up now because I just don’t think I would have been as attracted to attending the games now that they’re more low key and sort of like going to a mall.
I grew up in NY in the 80s. Our immigrant family did not have any connection to or interest in baseball, so when I became interested in the sport, I chose the same team my cousin loved, the Yankees. The Mets were the popular team in town at that time, so I was at odds with many of my friends, but I lived and died with those Yankee teams and felt very lucky when the team became a great one in the late 90s.
Since then I have lived in DC and when the Nats came to town I jumped in. My first son was born around the same time, and both he and his little brother spent a lot of time in RFK & Nats Park as toddlers.
They are both now baseball fanatics, die-hard Nationals fans, and lovers of everything baseball. They play on neighborhood baseball teams, play wiffle ball in the backyard, casually collect baseball cards, and even play Stratomatic and RBI baseball.
Looking back, I think the key was to share my love of the game early and often. Kids love playing ball with their dad, so all those wiffle ball sessions when they were 3 and older paid off. Taking them to games, major league or minor, and making sure they had a great experience also went a long way. They only recently started enjoying baseball on TV – it’s the fun, hands-on activities that make it shine for them. Baseball is a wonderful means to enjoy time with your kids in many different ways – try them all and see what they like.
That’s great that your boys took to the game so enthusiastically. My oldest just turned six and I’m hoping that he and his younger brother (and sister) will love sports (mainly baseball) as much as I do. So far, he’s been lukewarm about it. He prefers superheroes, comics, Skylanders, legos, etc. and is not interested in watching any sports on TV. I don’t push it very hard but I remember already being a sports junkie when I was six.
I have such great memories of playing wiffle-ball in the backyard, collecting baseball cards, playing board games (Statis-Pro!), video games, etc. that in a weird way I can’t imagine a kid growing up without it.
When I was little, my great aunt (a Yankees fan) and my grandfather (a Phillies fan) battled fiercely to sway my baseball allegiances. We lived (and still do!) in South Jersey, which is predominantly Phillies territory, but my great aunt had latched onto the Yankees, as they were actually good when they were growing up. My grandfather won thanks to the existence of the Phillie Phanatic, a love that continues to this very day. Then, in 1998, my dad took me to see a game at Veteran’s Stadium between the Phils and the visiting Rockies. I’ve been absolutely hooked on the game ever since.
Goofy mascots and going to local games. That’s the key (note: goofy mascot is not strictly necessary).
Dave, thank you for this, beautifully written.
If your son observes baseball as something that brings joy to you, he will love baseball at least up to his sullen teenage years (don’t worry! That’s what teenagers do). He’ll be into whatever is cool then, but when he starts to live life on his own, baseball will come back with the association of happy memories. As to what team, who knows? A lot of seemingly random things can happen that create a love for a particular team. I have a good friend in San Diego who is a diehard San Antonio Spurs fan. I bought his 5-year-old son a Lakers hoodie, and now, his son is a Lakers fan.
For me though, there was never really anyone in my immediate family who is a big sports fan. I grew up in Mid-Missouri, where we got Royals and Cardinals radio broadcasts equally clear. What tipped the scales for me was that my grandpa usually had his tool garage radio on a country-and-western station that also broadcast the Royals; Denny Matthews is part of the soundtrack of my childhood, in particular, time spent with my grandpa. He died when I was 8. So as you can imagine, my Royals fandom is very emotional, probably to the point where I tend to ignore sabermetric realities and vigorously defend some questionable moves (#TeamTradingWilMyersWasTheRightCall). Last year, the Royals postseason run brought about an unexpected homesickness that I have never experienced in my 10 years living in Southern California.
Create those happy memories with your son, Dave, not just with things, but with time spent together. If he becomes a baseball fan, that will be icing on the cake.
“I have a good friend in San Diego who is a diehard San Antonio Spurs fan. I bought his 5-year-old son a Lakers hoodie, and now, his son is a Lakers fan.”
Wow, I’m sure your friend loves you for that! Hah!
Pops grew up in Alabama, but was a Cardinals fan because the Birmingham Barons were a St. Lou affiliate at the time. We moved around a bit as a kid, but the only team that stuck for me was the Dodgers, despite the fact that I was a wee tyke when we lived in Glendale. I blame Gibby and the ’88 World Series.
My parents are both from L.A. and were young children when they Dodgers moved to town. They both grew up Dodgers fans. (I have these amazing pictures of my aunt as a very small child on the field with Sandy Koufax!) But when my parents were a young couple in their 20s, they moved to the Bay Area. As I understand it, they didn’t pay much attention to baseball at all for years. But by the time I was born and dad wanted to take me to ballgames, we were Giants fans. I’m not totally sure how it happened but my dad hates the Dodgers as much as any Giants fan now. My mom sometimes accidentally says things like “what time are the Dodgers playing? I mean Giants.”
It’s a bit horrifying to realize that had mlb dot tv existed in the 70s and my parents’ fandom hadn’t waned, I’d probably have been raised as a Dodger fan.
I grew up in Fort Worth, and at that time there were no Texas mlb teams to watch or listen or go to. My love of baseball initially came because my father and I would watch the Game of the Week on TV, with Dizzy Dean and Pee Wee Reese, and eat hot dogs on TV tables. I am sure it was that connection with my father that made my connection with baseball. Later, I listened to the Cardinals on KMOX because they had the only 50,000 watt station, although in the evening I could pull all sorts of options fading in and out on the radio, from what seemed like far distant lands. I never became a Cardinal fan though, just an Astro fan when Texas finally got a team, then a Senators fan when we moved to D.C., where I saw my first mlb game, and that experience has always led me to follow the Senators/Nationals. If you remain in N.C., I would pick the Nationals or Orioles as teams to follow (as a family), otherwise you will have to explain or listen to the nauseating and boring and derivative Atlanta war chant, not something I would expose my child to!
You don’t have a lot of time, My son is 2 7/12 and started noticing baseball during the playoffs, where he readily glommed onto my excitement/torture while watching my team of choice play. He also learned the word baseball during said period (although now anything from football to bowling is “baseball”) and could kind of say “Giants”.
Given the proliferation of MLB.tv and the relative apathy of my area to professional baseball (we’re just south of Tacoma, and it’s Seahawks, Seahawks, Seahawks or nothing), I’m not sure he’s going to be at any advantage or disadvantage because he’s watching the Giants at home and going to a few Rainers/Mariners games a year (side note, he doesn’t care for people dressed in suits but loves Rhubarb, the Rainer’s Mascot), with the easy access to information on the Internet I don’t think kids are going to have any problem rooting for whichever team they’d like (outside of being in a city which actually has a team).
Unburden yourself of this stress now: you won’t be able to control what your son ends up liking. Since he’ll be exposed to a lot he’ll probably like it, but be prepared for him to like it in his own way. Maybe he’ll end up hating stats and living for the dingers. Or maybe he’ll like a team you like, pick their bitterest rivals just to strike out on his own (this happens all the time with kids), pick a random teams because of the uniforms, or have no interest whatsoever.
My family was definitely a sports-watching one, but pretty much just football. Baseball fandom came largely on my own, in my own way, and not until my twenties, well after I’d moved far away.
My Dad and I started gong to Cub games every Sunday the team was at home in 1969 (yeah, I know. We filled out a scorecard for every game, and two during a double-header. There was no better way to spend an afternoon.
Once I started working, it was harder to get to Cub games, they weren’t playing at night then, so a couple of friends and I started going to Comiskey Park for Sox games. When my daughter and son were old enough, I started taking them to “Kids Days” at US Cellular Field. I bought a box seat at full price and each of their box seats were $1. Autograph sessions before games, running the bases afterward.
Today my daughter is 26 and lives in Chicago. She goes to 10 to 15 games a year and calls me to meet here there for weekday night games. My son is more of a weekend fan, so we tailgate for Saturday night games and stay for fireworks.
So my advice is to take your kids to the park. We always say “there’s no such thing as a bad day at the ballgame”
Grew up in the near west Chicago suburbs a Cubs fan. My dad was not a fanatic (like I am now), but took me to 2-3 games a year at Wrigley. My interest in baseball waned a bit in college. When I moved to California in 1997, I decided a needed a local team so I could attend games and be part of an accessible fan community. This was before the interwebs are what they are now, to me at least. Choose Oakland b/c I lived mostly in the East Bay and b/c they are in the other league. I’m still a nominal Cubs fan; in my case absence has not make the heart grow fonder. I have a season ticket plan at O.co, love attending live games, esp the playoffs and playoff runs. There’s nothing like it. That said, my kid, my step-daughter with whom I’ve lived since she was 4 (now 19), doesn’t care much for baseball or sports fandom in general. She’ll go to a big game for the social and excitement factor, but my love of the game hasn’t translated. I think you just be yourself and see where the kid winds up on the spectrum. Congratulations!
Dave – great article, really enjoy when you think outside of the usual sabermetrical box.
I think it has a lot to do with the group of players you grew up following or are currently watching. I grew up outside of Philadelphia, my dad was an Orioles fan and took us to Camden Yards whenever he could, these were the Ripken, Mussina, Palmeiro, Murray, Alomar years and I was a huge Orioles fan. It was a great time in my life, going to Fanfests and Spring training in Fort Lauderdale at the O’s facility. Cheering like hell when Armando Benitez came in blazing 95 to close out a game. Rex Barney announcing when a fan caught a foul ball: “Give that fan….A Contract!” When Ripken retired and I moved into high school, I started going to Phillies’ games and tailgating with my friends in high school. I developed a great love for Utley, Rollins, Howard, Hamels, and eventually Doc and Cliff. I then moved to Atlanta, and while I went to Braves games as often as I could (mainly when they played the Phils) I relished in the “bad guy” role. I got heckled but heckled right back. It was a lot of fun. But now that the Phillies are finally rebuilding, and I live in Boston, the ties to my old team are being traded away and retiring. Plus the Red Sox rarely play the Phillies. I’m hoping for a new core of exciting players who are fun to follow.
I find myself at a crossroads. The Orioles are a perennial contender, but I can’t get myself into rooting for them like I did when I was a kid and my dad was alive. The Phillies are still “My Team” but I find myself caring less and less. My fandom probably doesn’t make any sense, but my point is I think it’s about the group of ball players you can identify with as well as the community comradery factor you referenced in the article. I was here for the Sox 2013 Championship run, it was exciting and awesome as I was definitely pulling for them, but I don’t feel the strong connection I once did. I think fantasy baseball has played a large roll in my uncertainty, but I digress.
Having read this and thinking forward to my future son, I think you just let the chips fall where they may. It probably sounds like I am a front runner, but I’m at the point in my life where I don’t really care what other people think. Baseball is supposed to be fun and if you don’t like the guys you’re rooting for, why root for them?
Thank you for sparking my baseball nostalgia this afternoon!
I grew up in Central Virginia in a post-Senators, pre-Nationals world. Since Richmond had the R-Braves at the time, it was mostly Braves country, with a smattering of Orioles fans, along with the requisite number of front-running Yankee fans. Neither of my parents were baseball fans really. My mom was an ex-pat Clevelander with only a passing interest in the Browns (until they went away), and my dad is an NFL-only kind of fan, but nominally a Yankees fan (passed down from his father). However, it being the 90s, it was a perfect storm to become interested in the suddenly successful Indians. It wasn’t easy to follow along with the team during the regular season, but I wasn’t really a passionate fan anyway. I was disappointed when the Indians lost in the postseason, but wasn’t living and dying on every pitch. I was a self-described Indians fan, but only extremely casually.
Fortunately, I ended up at school in Northeast Ohio, where I got every Indians game (at least for April and September). After I started watching every game, I was hooked. Once back in Virginia, I realized that at night, the radio signal from Cleveland was just strong enough to hear, even 600 miles away.
Long story short, my fandom is the result of family ties and happenstance. I think, really, that’s the way all fandom develops, at least outside of the big city.
Hey Dave,
Thought I’d chime in with some background as someone who grew up in a similar manner as it seems your son will.
I grew up in southern California as a die hard Seattle sports fan. My dad grew up in Edmonds, and met my mom at UW. None of my immediate family (save my younger sister, who is a senior at UW) have lived in Seattle at any point in my life, although my grandparents spend 4-5 months of the year in eastern Washington. I’ve never lived in Seattle, nor spent more than week long vacations there. While my grandfather is a huge baseball fan, he grew up a RedSox fan, having spent most of his life without a Seattle team, and really only picked up the Mariners when I fell into die-hard fandom with the Refuse to Lose team (I was in first grade). My parents are Seattle sports fans, but more casual than die-hard, and most of that is related to what you referenced – wanting to be interested in what I am interested in.
My experience as a Seattle fan (and while baseball is not my favorite sport, the Mariners are far and away my favorite team) has been fantastic. The way I was introduced to it was primarily through my parents casual interest in that Refuse to Lose team (which was immediately followed by the Sonics run to the NBA Finals), and the team having 3 players I immediately loved: Griffey, Randy Johnson, and Edgar Martinez. If you do decide to introduce your son to the Mariners, I highly recommend focusing on the brilliance of Felix, or whichever player is our most beloved at the time he is old enough to understand. In terms of the shared community, that’s definitely something I missed out on (I went to school at UCLA during their back-to-back-to-back Final Four run, so I understand how much fun being immersed in fandom can be). However, I grew up in Palm Springs, which, while being in Southern California (not Mariner territory), is also in the odd spot of being roughly equidistant from 3 MLB teams, 2 NBA teams, 2 NHL teams, and the bizarreness of LA NFL fandom (Chargers, Rams, Raiders, 49ers, and wherever your parents are from split the fandom there about evenly), so it wasn’t like I was the only non-fan of the local team. From what I understand, North Carolina has similar characteristics in terms of the fandom, being within the blackout range of seemingly half the MLB.
Anyway, sorry for the long post, just wanted to give you my experience. Being a fan of Seattle sports has been torture at times, but I can’t imagine it any other way. The internet has made it even more fun. Whatever you do, I’m sure your son will have a great baseball experience, but I hope you bring him into Mariners fandom (and that by the time he is old enough to understand it, that won’t seem like as much of a mean thing to do as it would have in the last decade or so).
Congrats!
I wonder if it’s easier to pick up a new team while holding onto the old one if they are in different leagues. If I moved to Seattle, I feel like I could be both a Dodger fan and a Mariners fan. However, if I moved to Pirates territory, I might find it hard to be both a Pirates and a Dodgers fan.
I have a lot of friends who are Dodger fans, and a few Angel fans, so I’m always happy to root along with them….unless they play against the Royals. Other than that, it’s fun to follow different players. I never was an Atlanta Braves fan, but because they were on TBS, it was fun to see what Dale Murphy would do. I hated the Cardinals (still do), but had to admit there was no better SS than Ozzie Smith.
I’m 24, born and raised in LA and I’m a a pretty serious Dodger fan. My father introduced me to baseball at a young age, bringing me to my first Dodger game at Dodger Stadium when I was about a year old. My father has been a pretty big Dodger fan throughout my life and we would watch a lot of games together at home. But he, interestingly enough, was born and raised in the bay area of California and used to be a Giants fan. But his Giants’ fandom started to fade after moving to LA in his mid twenties and by the time I was a kid he was firmly in the Dodgers camp. I have a feeling the crazy 1988 season might have had something to do with this.
While I am still a Dodgers fan first and foremost, I’ve become an Orioles fan too. I went to college in Baltimore and still live there now. The playoff runs in 2012 and 2014 after so many years of being terrible has been a blast for me, and this past season I remember being almost as invested in the Orioles as in the Dodgers.
So I guess my point is that for my Dad and I location was a big factor when it comes to liking a local MLB team.
Do you think you find it easier to be both an Oriole and Dodger fan because they are in different leagues? If you went to school in DC instead, do you think you’d be both a Nat and Dodger fan?
Yeah I think being in different leagues makes it much easier. But I do like the Nats a little, especially since I’m in their TV market and thus have watched a ton of their games. So far it hasn’t been the case, but if both the Dodgers were constantly battling the Nats for a wild card spot it would be much tougher to be a fan of both teams.
I’m also a Mariners fan relocated from Seattle in 1999, although with 4 kids ages 11-1.
My fandom has actually grown while I’ve been here, a large part of that being ussmariner. My kids are also Mariners fans, and this has been a fun thing for us through the years. I’m sure part of that is because of the lack of a real “local” team.
Email me if you’d like to discuss this more.
I grew up rooting for the Tigers and listening to the immortal Ernie Harwell. My Dad wasn’t a big baseball fan, but he didn’t discourage my love of the game and we enjoyed the Tigers World Series win in ’84. My love of Baseball was replaced with Basketball and coincided with the Strike. I essentially stopped following Baseball after that. I rediscovered my love for the game of Baseball during the ’03 playoffs and rooting for the Boston Red Sox. Now I consider myself a Red Sox fan and enjoyed my trip to Fenway in ’04. I spend a good deal of time on Sons of Sam Horn and enjoy the interaction there. Maybe the great thing about loving a game is that everyone has a different reason/story for why they came to love it. When I step back and think about the time/emotional investment I’ve made into following Baseball it seems silly, but in a larger sense it does give you a connection to other people and each season is a story unto itself. My own children are still a little young to have rooting interests, but I hope they’ll find a team that they are passionate about and find a connection with.
I grew up in Chicago as a Red Sox fan– my father’s fault. He grew up in upstate NY but worshipped Ted Williams. Attending only White Sox games to root against the home team was weird and in some small degree must have shaped my character. Speaking of character-shaping events, 1978 undid me. I was 13. I cried for days at night as I was going to sleep. The sixth game in 1986 made me literally roll around on the floor yelling that it was impossible. Friends looking on worried.
The three world championships have released me as if from an evil spell. I still like the Sox but can watch on happily if they lose. I’ve aimed to make my kid a fan of the game (if he likes it) and not worry about rooting for a specific team. Unless he wants to. My son likes Big Papi and Miggy Cabrera and Edwin Encarnacion because of the parrot. He’s 9.
Warning: playing catch with your kid (if you’re like me) will occasionally make you almost cry with joy/nostalgia despite how corny it is.
I am 39 and have lived my entire life near Comiskey Park/The Cell. My family has been here for nearly 100 years. I grew up listening to stories about the goings on in and around the park. The second job I ever had was selling hot dogs at New Comsikey. The first sports memories I have are from the ’83 season, and I still own the replica White Sox uniform that my parents ordered from the same company that supplied the Sox. The White Sox have been an integral part of my life/entertainment ever since.
Times have certainly changed, but I am old enough to remember how anyone could stand outside of the player’s parking lot on Shields Ave and get autographs and/or chat with the players as they entered Comiskey. Ozzie Guillen would routinely drop F bombs before signing autographs, some things apperently never change. If I am not mistaken, Ozzie also had his kids enrolled at a school near the park. My brother once got Ivan Calderon’s and Melido Perez’s autographs when they were stopped at a stop sign around the corner from our house as they made their way to the park. One particular memory that stands out was when Tony LaRussa was managing Oakland. Tony and his coaches would routinely jog around the neighborhood in their uniforms before the games and greet the locals. A carryover from when he managed the White Sox. I have and have heard several other stories where fans and players/coaches have interracted in and around the park with fans, although that has become increasingly rare.
My suggestion to the modern, mobile fan is to let your children choose their own team(s). Of course you can encourage them one way or the other, but they will ultimately make their own decisions some day. However, there is nothing like going to the games. My 3yr old has the “White Sox! White Sox! Go Go White Sox! down pat.
Third-generation Cubs fan.
Grandpa grew up in Gary Indiana listening to the radio and watching WGN. They vacationed in Phoenix and it was a natural fit. Before he passed in 1998 right after the McGwire / Sosa home run season, he gave me his Cubs hat and said something like “I never saw ’em win, but you will.” I was 15. It felt good.
My dad and I have visited stadiums, watched the Cubs clinch one year on my birthday at home against the Cardinals, and even been to spring training a few times. Calling myself a third-generation Chicago Cubs fan is part of my identity. Go Cubbies!
Dan
My dad came north from the Bay Area, but didn’t really talk about the Giants much. He was from Oakland, but when he was a kid, the A’s were in Philly and then Kansas City. Even the Giants only moved to SF when he was a teen, so I never got the sense that he really HAD a rooting interest.
My mom on the other hand talked about the Dodgers a lot, and how happy she was when they moved to town, and the time she spent memorizing their line-up. That said, I never considered NOT rooting for the Mariners. I knew several kids at school who still cheered for the teams their dads had grown up with (and every dad had grown up with a different team, as the M’s were still brand new), and that always struck me as infantile. I’m not sure why.
Like you, I really became a fan because I’d listen to Dave Niehaus’ call every night. I’d go to sleep to the call of night games, or stay awake in the dark and envision Dave Henderson or Phil Bradley, and convince myself that THIS was the year that the M’s would make a push at contention.
When my eldest kid was born, I would be the good dad and take her to Tacoma Rainiers games all the time, just plunked her car seat into the seat next to me and watched the game. At 1-2, she picked out baseball names for the entire family – she became Mike Wilson, and I was an avatar of Carlos Peguero. We watched M’s games, listened to Curto call the Rainiers, etc. As she’s gotten a bit older, other things intrude, and I get the sense that she tolerates baseball more than anything, but holds on to a piece of it because it’s something we shared. I think it’s all to the good that she develops her own interests, but I really love the fact that she sees some sliver of value in the game, and that she’s loathe to just toss it out. She may prefer cartoons (or the Seahawks, actually) to an M’s game on tv, but she’d still likes to come to a Rainiers/M’s game with me.
Congrats on the son, and in living in the great state of North Carolina! My kids are 7 and 5, and I grew up a huge Cub, Bear, Bulls fan. I saw it as, in 1999, moving to NC temporarily then meeting someone and staying, as fully embracing where I live to root for the local teams. It’s just much more fun (especially getting to root for Duke!) and local TV is a big part. I get MASN, so my family has embraced the Orioles the past 5 years, and it’s good. The Cubs got dropped from WGN, so……they don’t seem to care about NC fans, and that’s that. I’ve very much enjoyed the experience of rooting for the local, and keeping a part of me that also has the childhood teams that I’m fond of.
I used to be a huge sports’ fan…….but neither of my sons cares at all. And, I’m happy for them. They probably won’t waste hours on Sunday watching the NFL, or college ball on the weekends. They probably won’t have their mood swing (like some of my friends) based on the outcome of a piece of entertainment. But, it was nothing I did, I don’t think. It was in them not to care all that much.
If we did anything to discourage sports’ fandom, it was that we didn’t watch much tv, and did stuff together as a family instead. We do watch more tv now, but not much sports is left on our tv.
Really, it won’t be up to you. It will be up to their friends, and personality, and somewhat you. The most important part of being a parent is doing what you think is right, and not feeling guilty every time something happens differently than you expect……
My advice:
1) You have time. Every moment, song, game seems critical with a first newborn, but they take some time to develop!
2) The most precious thing to your kid is your time, so if you spend time with him listening to baseball, baseball will be important. If you’re listening to the Mariners, the Mariners will be important.
I watched/listened the Pirates with my grandparents, mom, dad and uncle from a very early age, so even though we left PA for CA when I was 2.5, I have always been a Pirates fan. It happens! Now, I’m trying to instill this in my 3 year old daughter, but it’s tough when all the games we go to are SFG, the Giants had a Panda and she’s scared of the Pirates logo. Best of luck, Dave!
My dad grew up moving around the NYC area (Long Island, The Bronx, Upstate NY). His father had lived in the area his entire life and was a New York Giants fan, and naturally, he hated the Yankees, however, by the time my father was born, the Giants were gone and the Mets were about to take their place. As a result, my father grew up a Mets fan, living through the early days, and the ’69 team. During this time, he worked for the Yankees as a teenager, as a vendor in Yankee Stadium. Still, he grew up with a hatred for the Yankees.
I was born in NJ, and ending up becoming a Mets fan like my dad, so not that special, however, if there is one thing that we have shared even more than being Mets fans, it’s our hatred for the Yankees.
What I’m trying to say is, it doesn’t matter what team your child becomes a fan of, just make sure it is not the Yankees, and he learns to hate them.
Great point! Hate the Yankees!
25 year old LA native here and lifelong Angels fan. My parents are ambivalent to sports and their feelings approach a dislike for baseball. My mother stomached out my little league games because I was a pitcher and at least had the ball for half the time.
Baseball found me in a myriad of ways. My uncle has been an Angels fan since the 60’s and shared a lot of his passion with my brother and me. Fused with some really good baseball/kids movies from the 90’s (Angels in the Outfield, Rookie of the Year, Little Big League, The Sandlot) baseball became entertainment for me too. My math-inclined self also enjoyed looking at the newspaper most mornings. Finding how many CAA (or ANA and now LAA) players were among the league leaders. Looking at the standings and wondering if the playoffs were still a possibility.
By 5 or 6 I had the whole roster memorized, despite the fact I would attend only 1 or 2 games a year. My dodger-fan best friend and I would have our own inter-league games in his backyard as my Chuck Finley would face his Mike Piazza. I made more baseball playing friends, played little league. I was often the lone Angels fan in Dodgers territory, experiencing the same little brother syndrome that Clipper fans experience from Laker fans. I was fine with this, and I still had at least a couple people to talk Angels with, not to mention the articles, albeit shorter than Dodgers ones, in the LA times.
Show him the things about baseball you love (and loved). That may mean more Mariners things and it may not, but baseball is not just about going to the ballpark. He’ll figure it out and in his own way. All that said, you bet my future kid is getting some Halos gear and learning about why baseball and the Angels are important to me.
Just play catch with him. So many more games now trying to get attention, just a simple catch in the yard from a young age is about the best you can do.
I grew up in southeast Alaska as a Mariners fan, with neither parent being particularly interested in baseball. I now live in the Bay Area with 3 sons ages 6, 4, and 2. The 6 year old is very aware that the Mariners are my team, and thanks to mlb.tv we probably watch at least 60 or 80 games a year. With them playing in Oakland regularly, we try to get to one game a season against the Ms. Additionally, since I coach little league and we pick our team names (and the As and Giants always go first), the last 2 seasons we’ve been the Mariners. All of his friends are As and Giants fans, so we’ll see what happens as he gets older, but for now he calls himself a Mariners fan.
I think MLB is ensuring your kid won’t be a fan a with their current blackout policy.
Your son will at least take an interest in whatever your passion is. He may not adopt it as his own but he’ll learn about you through it. My dad is a die hard Tigers fan (SE Michgigan has a very strong Tigers following, check out their nielsen ratings, also the classic old english D is the hat of choice here) but he included me and my brothers in his love for the game from young ages, basically as soon as we could hold a bat. I can remember us being like 5, 6 and 8 yrs old and him hitting us grounders and teaching us to “turn 2”. We had a vacant lot next door which made it easy for us to go outside and play ball. All summer, every day. Waiting for him to get home from work and throw batting practice to us. Good memories. My 2 boys are also fans but probably my dad deserves half the credit for their allegiance too, plus they were just becoming fans when the Tigers came out of nowhere in 2006. Anyway, if its not baseball then find some common interest with your kids, something you can always lean on to share some time/conversation together.
My father grew up a Yankees fan, but with me growing up in the East Bay, he raised me as an A’s fan (and was a mild fan himself). By the late 1980s, it was an easy time to be an A’s fan and virtually every kid of my era was an A’s fan (NOT a Giants fan).
I live in the same area with my 5-year-old son. He’s an A’s fan as well, but unlike me, he likes the Giants, too. He knows that even though I don’t like the Giants, it’s okay for him to like them. It’s an easy time to be a Giants fan, after all.
Unlike my childhood years, there are now a lot of Giants fans around. In addition to the success of the SF team, it also moved to a much more accessible location for East Bay fans, and increasing gentrification is also a factor — my observation is that there are some class and race divides on team fandom.
That said, if the A’s move, I’ll probably become a Giants fan. In the end, the fundamental reason I am a fan of one team over another is that I choose to go to one team’s games, and if the A’s move too far, the Giants will be the convenient team to see.
I think this is a bit interesting because I believe we are in a similar boat Dave.
I grew up a Red Sox fan because my father was a Red Sox fan. I was really into the Red Sox when I was younger in the championship run. But eventually I grew out of being a “fan”. I watch more Red Sox games than any other teams, I have more opinions about the Red Sox than any other team, I still like the Red Sox. But I am not longer emotionally invested in the team. I do not feel joy when they win or misery with a lose….It kind of sucks. I realize that fandom is just silly if I am watching quality baseball, I’l be happy. I’d rather watch Kershaw pitch than the Red Sox play. I’m sure if I move to NYC, I would develop a relationship with the Mets or Yankees simply because it gives you fodder for social conversations and something in common with people who were just strangers. This is the only reason location matters. When I moved to Boston, I came to like the Red Sox LESS. It was exceptionally easy to realize that fandom in just an example to a business using emotional attachment to make money. It was nice to go to a Rays game. Sure the ballpark sucks and the atmosphere is terrible, but I get to see good baseball a quarter of the cost.
Warning, small sample size ahead …
I’m 46 with 8 and 11 year old boys.
My father grew up in New York as (subdued) Yankees fan.
I grew up in Ohio and, despite my father’s inclinations, fell in love with the local team, the Reds.
Now, back in NYC, I still love the Reds … but my kids both love the Yankees. Why? All their friends are Yankees fans, which is more important than what their Dad likes.
I’ve had to hold my nose & tepidly root for the Yankees so my kids can enjoy their team making the playoffs.
But despite our differences we have a common bond over baseball … one that engenders a lot of ribbing. (My 8 year old responds “27” whenever I say anything positive regarding the Reds.)
Takeways?
1) You can help your son learn and love baseball.
2) You can’t sway your son to any one team.
3) Most likely your son will glom on to whatever team is closest or that most of his baseball-loving friends follow.
Congrats! Talking baseball with my obsesses sons is a great pleasure. My 8 year old quotes WAR stats (they’re on the back of baseball cards nowadays) … names minor league prospects … knows whether players are good defensively or not. And loves playing, too.
My story is totally boring. Grew up in LA, parents were Dodger fans, I’m a Dodger fan. I was only ever a casual fan as a kid, and eventually around high school I pretty much paid no attention to sports. Then in college (because I had nothing else to do) I rediscovered the team and became a much bigger fan than I had ever been in the past, as well as being interested enough in baseball in general to frequent places like fangraphs.
I’ve wondered before if I would still be a fan if I moved out of LA permanently. I don’t go to all that many games, and I don’t even have many friends who are really into baseball, so I don’t think that part of it is what keeps my interest going. I think it could be the combination of them having not been to the WS in a while and the fact that the organization has so much promise. If they won a WS, or even a few, I might find my interest wanes a bit from the Dodgers and goes more towards baseball in general.
I grew up in Oregon with a Father who was a Braves fan because of his father. Thanks to the Superstation and stunning team success being a Braves fan in the 90’s was pretty easy. My Dad also coached my little league teams until he died when I was 14.
I remained a Braves fan until I went to college in Tacoma and I made the Mariners my team. This time Ichiro, Felix, you, and Jeff made being a Mariners fan easy as I bopped around the country.
Baseball remains a large part of the connection I feel with my father even though he’s been gone for twenty years now. I’m very glad he taught me to play and enjoy the game. Exactly which team didn’t seem to matter. I hope to do the same for my young son.
My father grew up in California. Giants fan, but before that a Hollywood Stars and San Francisco Seals fan. Our only relative to play in MLB spent most of his long baseball career affiliated with the Seals.
I was born in Georgia, however, and my father raised my brothers and me as Braves fans. Likewise, he switched his allegiance to Atlanta as well. I grew up with the terrible teams of the 1980s and then experienced the wonder of the loveable losers becoming postseason regulars and National League Champions, and, eventually, World Series Champions. And now the three star pitchers of my childhood team are now in the Hall of Fame. Pretty cool.
In my late teens, my interests drifted away from baseball and, after college, I moved to the DC area. I tried and failed to root for the Orioles and mostly went without baseball in my life for a few more years. My interest was rekindled, however, when the Expos moved to DC and became the Nationals. I have been a fan of the team from their very first day in DC.
One of my brothers has switched allegiances, like me, and is now a Cubs fan since he lived there for many years. Another brother, like my father, remains a Braves fan. None of us have any children of our own, but the last few years have certainly been interesting as Atlanta and Washington developed a fierce (by MLB standards) rivalry. I admit to being somewhat disappointed that Atlanta has seemingly raised the white flag this offseason despite how that benefits my own favorite team.
I grew up in Western NY, which isn’t a big baseball area to start with, but most people gravitate to the Yankees, some to the Mets, and there was a connection at the time to the Orioles through the AAA affiliation with Rochester. I didn’t have cable until the 90s so any baseball that I watched was reserved to national broadcasts and what I could pick up on the TV antenna on the roof. This led me to the Blue Jays, who I was able to watch every Wednesday and Sunday. Not to mention that it was just a 2 hour drive so my parents would take me there each summer for a game. That my interest in baseball coincided with the Jays’ rise in the mid-80s certainly helped. 1985 – 1993 was a great time to be a fan. Then I went to college, the 94 World Series was cancelled, and baseball went on my back burner for a while.
I have two boys now – a 3 year old and 1 year old – and live in central Massachusetts. At this point, I’m essentially a bandwagon fan; if the Jays are doing well I’ll watch via MLB.tv (which really is phenomenal), if not, I tune out. I decided before they were born that they would have free will. If they want to cheer the same team as their dad, great. If not, no big deal. But living in MA I figure there’s a strong probability that they’ll be Red Sox fans (who I’m generally neutral about, and I’ve always disliked the Yankees) and that’s fine; growing up I always liked the local teams.
I think you just let your kids do their things and support what they like. They’ll let you know when they’re ready or interested in something.
My folks were both Pittsburghers, but since my Dad was a Petroleum Engineer, they ended up settling in Houston, Texas. There was no MLB team there until 1962, so before that I was a Pirates fan. Once the Colt .45s started playing, I started following them. We went to games at Colt Stadium (the Astrodome precursor) and I remember how much my Dad loved the game.
Fast forward to 1989 – I’m taking my kids to baseball games at the Oakland Coliseum since I’m a Navy guy stationed in the Bay Area. They loved it – and then we moved to the Seattle area in 1994 – just in time for the Mariner run to end all runs in 1995. For me, these things have always been not so much about baseball, and more about the shared experience.
Dave- Congratulations on the birth of your son. My story will llkely align more with your son’s, and your story sounds like my father’s experience. My grandparents were Russian immigrants in Chicago and LA who would not know a baseball if it hit them. My father became a huge Cubs fan and then a PCL and Dodger fan after moving to LA on Pearl Harbor Day. My father was a baseball fanatic and brought me up to be one as well–mostly on a steady diet of baseball cards and minor league games. We left LA when I was small and made our way north–Santa Barbara, Portland, Sacramento and finally in 1975 Mercer Island. While I loved the Dodgers (and still do) and was treated to an occasional game in LA, Oakland or at Candlestick, my fondest memories are those minor league games with my dad, My first games in Portland watching Lou Pinnella and Ray Fosse, traveling to Eugene to see Greg Luzinski (and Mike Schmidt I think) or to Tacoma were some of the best times with my dad. I was with my dad at game 1 in 1977, ALDS Game 5 in ’95 and the last one in the Dome and first one at the ‘Safe. My father has been gone 14 years from cancer, but those are still some of my best memories. My brother (Cards season ticket holder), sister (interested Ms fan) and my son (just turned 21) still love going to the ballgame, though my son got so mad at the Ms front office he was boycotting for awhile.
My advice: Don’t sweat the MLB rooting stuff. Go enjoy the minors with your son in the Carolinas, sit him down to watch MLB with you on TV and only good things will come. The world will not end if he is a Braves fan. Enjoy.
My dad grew up in PA and was an avid Pirates fan until he moved to Boston in the late 70s. Slowly he became heavily entrenched in the Sox instead. He’s one of those homer types. More of a Sox fan than a baseball fan… I don’t think he could name one Pirates right now. I grew up a Red Sox fan because of this.
I would say if you don’t have a father figure who is a big fan growing up, you kind of latch on to a random team. But I like the communal aspect of rooting for the home town team maybe doesn’t appeal to everyone. Some like to be different.
I grew somewhat interested in Philadelphia sports teams when I went to college in the area. Not a rooting interest but a general following. I guess that’s how it starts. But outside of college I’ve never moved out of the area permanently so I’ve never had this truly tested. I’m willing to bet if I moved to Seattle I’d turn into a big Mariners fan if I stayed there long enough. But I’d like to think I wouldn’t abandon my childhood team like my Dad did. I think it’s just different for everyone and time does change things.
I actually got into sports AFTER my dad left my mom. I started by rooting for the Miami Heat back during the Mourning, Hardaway days, but come the 1999 baseball season, I fell in love with watching the Florida Marlins as did my mom somehow. I was too young at the time to care that they were a terrible team and still remember players like Todd Dunwoody, Brian Meadows and Kevin Orie who never really became much, as well as Mike Lowell, Alex Gonzalez, and Ryan Dempster, who became some of my favorite players. My Grandpa began rooting for the Marlins along with his beloved Cardinals, turning into hybrid Cardinal/Marlin fans, which made about six to nine games a year really fun for us. The Marlins won it all in 2003 and the Cardinals in 2006 and the bond it created was great.
Somehow I stayed loyal to the Marlins despite a litany of fire sales. I was young but understood something of economics of the game. Then the stadium happened and I saw how the Marlins were ripping off taxpayers and run by crooks. Then I saw the awful new uniforms and was completely turned off. I moved to North Florida where I didn’t buy cable but MLB.tv, where the Marlins were blacked out (and the Rays) and quickly lost interest in the Marlins, almost rooting against them nowadays. I I just love baseball in general, but no longer have real rooting interests, though the Cardinals come closest in my book. I hope one day my kids will learn to love baseball as a sport, whatever team they root for, though it just better not be the Phillies.
You are (now) a fan of the game, which will provide a good foundation. Beyond that … minor league games nearby? A favorite, or local, star? Every game is available, but if you care when the kid gets to sleep, you’re likely to steer him towards EDT teams. I wouldn’t recommend Atlanta, though.
I was obsessed with baseball at a young age, and my interest has waned over the years to the point where I didn’t watch one pitch of the World Series (though I’m obviously into it enough to visit Fangraphs).
My older brother was a bigger fan (Red Sox and Reds) than my father, and his influence was much stronger. But what really got me going was starting to play baseball at about 4 years old. All the kids in the neighborhood would get together and spend hours playing baseball, basketball or football, depending on the season. This was in the 1970s, when kids organized 95 percent of their activities without supervision.
Things are different now, so I have no idea how the game is passed down. My level of obsession might have been frightening if we had the Internet and cable TV. I can’t imagine how much time I would have spend memorizing baseballreference.
I guess one piece of advice might be to not push your son into something he shows no interest in. My dad loved fishing and really wanted my brother and I to like it. Well, sure enough, we grew to despise it.
Congrats on fatherhood. This has been one of my favorite articles on this site ever. As much as I love the numbers and quantitative side, it’s great to never forget the fan side and the space that exists for both.
I had my allegiances tested as I grew up in the DC area w no “home” team, but the O’s were only an hour away and well covered from TV and paper so they were the “home team” everyone in the neighborhood cheered for. I never once thought of cheering for the Ravens as the Redskins were my team( probably a bad choice thanks Snyder), though it did then make me wonder why cheer as the O’s were my hometown. When the Nationals came in 2005 most around me flocked to the DC team. It made sense but I felt that would betray my devotion to the Orioles.
It was Ripken, Eddie, Camden Yards, and many other reasons that I had to stay loyal to a team that was outside DC even though I loved DC. I like that the Nats have success and go to more Nats game than O’s due to proximity but its not the same. The O’s will always be the team that i associate with when looking at all the logos.
Now my kid will grow up in DC and surely will be a Nats fan. And that is ok. I won’t force the O’s on him (or her) nor will I force the Nats. Most likely everyone in the community will be Nats fans and he will want to enjoy that. You’re right that it is something special when you have a party with the neighbors to watch a big game. Doesn’t mean I will change but I imagine it will allow me to teach him how to have fun with differentiating fandoms. It’s not a reason to fight or curse, but how to engage in playful teasing and have fun with it.
My father roots for the Mets, but he was originally from Winston-Salem, born in the ’30s. He grew up on Queen Street not far from what was then Baptist Hospital, with which I know you’re familiar, Dave. Got stitches there myself as a tyke. He came up to New York in the ’50s, so he’s really more a fan of the sport in general. He doesn’t hate the Yankees and will watch their games, too, but I think when he first came to New York he liked the Giants and NL teams more, so his bias was Mets by the time I came along.
Like you I listened to a lot of games on the radio mostly when I was young, RAlph Kiner, Lindsay Nelson and Bob Murphy. I was 5 in ’69 but my first memories are more of ’71, ’72 and especially the ’73 season. I remember Willie Mays hitting a game-winning homer in his first game as a Met (his OPS was actually .848 that year as Met and if he’d qualified would have been 29th in wRC+_ that year at 132, which isn’t too bad for a 41 year old using only some greenies).
I was at a game in 1972 when i was 8 where Jim Beauchamp hit 2 of his 14 homeruns in his 10 year career. Earlier that year I saw Stargell huit 2 of his 475 homers. My dad took me to the 1973 Mets-Reds playoff game where Pete Rose and Bud Harrelson got into a fight, and gave me the pretty basic advice not to throw garbage or yell you suck, even at Pete Rose.
But I didn’t just do Mets games. My grandfather, visiting from North carolina, took me to a Yankees Royals playoff game that Chambliss won with a home run in 1976, and it fell to my mother to take me to game 4 of the 1976 world series where the Yanks got swept by the Reds in 1976.
And I did play catch in the yard with my dad. He threw a pretty mean knuckle ball back in the day, and he had fun with me trying to catch that, but he’d take it easy for batting practice.
I don’t think you need to follow a local team necessarily. I listened to Tar Heel basketball games in northern New Jersey on WBT from Charlotte as a kid and became a life-long fan. But it probably helps.
Maybe take him to some Winston-Salem Dash games. He may end up a White Sox fan. My parents both followed minor league teams back in North Carolina. Mom was a big fan of Buddy Bates, Carolina League mvp 1947 for Burlington. http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/b/batesbu01.shtml I only learned that recently.
Anyway, if you are watching any baseball on tv he’ll probably pick up on it.
My dad grew up in Bulgaria and came to the states via Ellis Island in 1969. He is an absolute soccer nut and will watch any game, from any league, from any country if it’s on TV. American sports never really grabbed him though. He rooted for the Giants in football and Mets in baseball but it was never more than a passing interest. I was born in 1980 at the absolute sweet spot of Mets, Giants and Knicks fandom. My earliest memories were the hoopla surrounding the Knicks getting the #1 pick to draft Patrick Ewing watching the the 86′ World Series and Superbowl with my dad. I was basically hooked immediately.
My parents are from England, so baseball was not on their radar at all. To this day I keep threatening to take my mom to a game and she asks, why do I want to torture her. I’ve never watched a game with either of my parents. I was lucky that I had two older brothers that took me to my first game when I was nine. I can only guess that they picked up the games by growing up in San Diego and talking my parents in to letting them play little league.
Back in the 80’s, the only time you could watch the Padres was when they were playing away games. We didn’t have cable, so there was no game of the week to get lucky with either. Aside from the half dozen games by brothers would take me to, this was it for what I was able to watch. I loved listening to TWIB growing up as well, Mel Allen truly had an enticing voice that made you want to love the game.
I never played catch with my dad or my brothers, but did manage to find some kids in the neighborhood that would want to. Mostly catch was just a game of pickle. To this day, even in my forties, I love playing catch with whomever wants to, it’s such a peaceful endeavor. My wife, who is kind enough to support my fanaticism was nice enough to buy a left hander’s glove and indulge me from time to time. I live in San Francisco now, I’m still a Padres fan, between cable and the MLB package it’s easy to remain a fan. I’d imagine the time difference would make it harder for you to raise your child a Mariners fan.
We don’t have any kids, but if we did I’d guide them to be an A’s fan, because no child of mine is going to be a god damn Giants fan.
“but if we did I’d guide them to be an A’s fan, because no child of mine is going to be a GD Giants fan.”
this made me smile. go a’s.
Nails on Dave. Grew up north of Philly and left some 28 years ago. I lost my affinity quite a while ago and root, somewhat half-heartedly due to abysmal state of this local team (Maybe!), in San Diego. Interest definitely wanes from so far a distance no doubt about it.
When I was 7 or 8 my parents forced me to join little league to get me out of the house. I hated it and I was terrible at it but it started to grow on me. My dad did not grow up interested in sports much but we had gotten a Nintendo recently and his motivation for signing me up was to make sure I got some fresh air.
That summer I started to improve and enjoy it and went to my first Yankees game. The following season was 1996 and the beginning of the Jeter and Torre-era dynasty that got me hooked. Funny enough it was my Japanese mother who would watch games with me, often letting me stay up late with her to finish games, or tell me the final score in the morning before school. Neither of them couldve known how significant all of this would be as I’ve been a diehard baseball/Yankee fan for two decades since
My dad was a Brooklyn Dodgers fan who was probably happy when I chose the Mets as a 7 year old during the 1988 season. Baseball was our first shared interest. I remember to this day going to my first Mets game, waking my dad up way too early to arrive at Shea Stadium way to early to see the Mets lost 5-0 to the Giants. I lost my dad 10 years ago and when it was time to close the coffin I slipped a stub from that game in his shirt pocket.
Since becoming a dad of my own I’ve shared the game with my son and daughter. They both enjoy it however I would not call my 13 year-old daughter a fan of any team. My 3 year old son enjoys the mascots. Over the years I’ve picked up some children’s books geared towards baseball. The Philly Phanatic and Mr. Met are his favorites and I plan on taking him to a few games this year. For me it comes down to the hope my children find something in life that they love as much as I love baseball whether as a hobby or career. I’ll continue to share the game with them as well as keep an open mind to whatever interests they pick up along the way. It’s one of the fun parts of being a parent and seeing the world through their eyes.
My dad is from Northern California and he grew up a Giants fan. Not long after I was born, we moved to Southern California, and we have lived here ever since. My dad raised me as a Giants fan, and I have stayed that way, despite the fact that I live in Southern California.
I think that my dad was successful in raising me as a Giants fan for a few reasons. First of all, I am a big sports fan, and I have been for a long time. Were I a casual fan who pays sporadic attention, it probably would have been easier for me to shift my attention to a local team or something like that.
Secondly, my dad and I had shared experiences. He took me to Candlestick a few times, we saw the Giants at Dodger Stadium, and perhaps most importantly, we traveled up to SF for Game 5 of the 1989 NLCS. This was an important moment in Giants history, and easily my favorite sports moment. I think this really solidified my fandom.
Lastly, while my dad and I do not have a strained relationship by any means, he is not always particularly talkative, but Giants baseball is one of the things we can always (and have always) talked about.
So, as best I can tell, if you want your kid to follow a particular sports team (a) make sure they care about the sport, (b) take them on outings and engage in shared experiences, and (c) keep talking to them about the team.
That’s what worked for me at least.
I had a daughter a little less than three years ago, and it is a little different. We definitely go up to SF every year for a game, and she has no shortage of Giants gear to wear. She knows Hunter Pence, Buster Posey, and Barry Bonds. Will she be a lifelong, hardcore Giants fan? I don’t know. I just know that she better not change her allegiance for some jackass boyfriend.
Great post, and congratulations on becoming a father. My son is now 2 and I think about this probably more than I should.
My dad brought the boys to the Twins games at the Metrodome in the 80s and coached our teams. Threw us batting practice and hit groundballs to us whenever we wanted (and sometimes when we’d rather be doing something else). Took us to the batting cages a 20 minute drive away. Then sat back and embraced cross-country running and track and field when we discovered where our talents truly lied.
When it comes to rooting interest, he’s a Brewers guy. We’re all Twins fans. It was probably easier that way, as, in our formative years, the Twins were world champs twice while the Brewers weren’t much to watch, outside of Bob Uecker. He never tried to control the rooting interests, and trust me, life would be easier as a Packer Backer instead of a Vikes fan. But he left the fandom choice up to us. The love of the game? That came from him. Fandom is just laundry that separates us (sorry Jerry Seinfeld). The love is what unites us.
My dad is from Long Island, where he grew up a Mets fan. He moved to Chicago as an adult and lived down the street from Wrigley Field when I was born. He kind of adopted the Cubs as a second team, and there was never really any doubt that I would be a Cubs fan.
I grew up in a military family and never in a city with its own baseball team. My Dad hasn’t liked baseball as a kid & made no effort to get me into it either. But he did help me to and from tball as a kid and when I fell in love with it he learned.
Later, we were able to go to a Braves game at Turner field & he encouraged me to ask one of the players to throw me a ball. I called out to Brian Jordan between innings from the outfield seats & he asked me if I could catch. I nodded and when he had a ball next he threw it to me. I’ve been addicted to baseball ever since.
Mlb.tv makes being a fan away from Georgia great nowadays + I always watched them on TBS when I could. I definitely wouldn’t be raging blogs, learning advanced stats & watching so many games if not for my Dad (who thought baseball was boring!) giving me the opportunities to get close to it. Those are probably the most important even for the next generation of mlb.tv fans.
Might as well give my story.
I come from a really old baseball family where my great grandfather was paying for my grandmother and her brothers into fenway park for a nickel circa 1930s. He then did the same thing with my mom before moving to Northern Virginia. She is currently a red sox fan along with my brother. While my dad from philly has rooted for the phillies since the 1960s and even after he moved to NOVA is still a big philies fan. Me of course am a Nats fan, i grew up with no team, didn’t want to root for Orioles, and the phillies were bad. Rooted for the red sox when i was younger but have since seen the light after 2005 along with my grandmother and still go to about 25 games a year. My recommendation would be to have him root for the local team as it is a lot more fun, but him rooting along side with you for the mariners would also be a blast.
I grew up on and still root hard for the Phillies. I consider myself somewhat spoiled with it in a way, despite they didn’t win a ring from when I was three months old until I was 28 (sorry Cubs fans). I didn’t really watch much as a young child due to early bedtimes and what not but every Sunday I went to the grandparents’ house and got to watch Mike Schmidt and Juan Samuel, two players who became my idols and even more so I got to listen to Harry Kalas and Richie Ashburn call the games. It was a game and a team that was sold to me at an early age and despite some horrendous seasons with a few to come, I watch religiously.
Today, I’m hooked more than ever and not just on the Phillies. I follow whatever team is on. I go to plenty of minor league games which sites like this one has helped me get more interested in and even drive 20 minutes to catch Villanova play some afternoons. There’s just so much more to get out of baseball than any other sport and I have a young nephew I try to rub the magic off on.
My dad was a lifelong Giants fan who moved to southern California before I was born (late 70’s). Since the Dodgers were not an option, I became an Angels fan. My first memory of the team was when I celebrated the team’s victory in game 4 of the 1986 ALCS by yelling, “We’re going to the World Series!” My father quickly corrected me, that the team needed to win just one more game to win the series. No problem, right? Well, we all know how THAT turned out. Still, that playoff run ended up being a very valuable distraction for an 8-year-old whose mother was terminally ill (and who ended up passing away in November of 1986).
As I got a bit older, and more knowledgeable about baseball, I also latched on to my dad’s beloved Giants, who as it turned out would have a successful run from 1987-1989. Still, I was a bigger fan of the hometown team, whose games I could watch on TV and listen to on the radio. This dual fandom ended up being put to the test in 2002, when I very quickly learned that my Angels fandom clearly outweighed my Giants fandom.
I moved to Northern California in 1996 and have lived here ever since. Now I primarily affiliate as a Giants fan, probably since just after that 2002 Series. My son is 6 and considers himself both an A’s and Giants fan; nobody has bothered trying to drill that out of him yet. That said, if I ever find him with one of those combination A’s/Giants hats, it’s going to go right in the garbage. 🙂
Probably very atypical here. Born and growing up in the East Midlands of England, it wasn’t exactly a hotbed of the game, however with the advent of Channel 5 in the mid nineties as I recall, they started showing live feeds of games from the States. I think I started watching them at my mate Chris’s house often after we’d had a cricket net (practice) followed by a few beers at Northants’ ground which was stumbling distance from his house.
As the games were fed direct from the States, the commentators assumed a basic knowledge of the game, which we did not have, and nor did we have the easy option of looking things up on the net as the internet was not on our radar. So we got a lot of the principles, but we had a very hazy idea of the difference between a ball and a strike – sure, we could tell it was a strike when he swung and missed, but as for what the hell this strike zone was, we were in the dark. Naturally, we were very much into a sport which involved swinging a bat and throwing a ball hard, but we weren’t getting the most out of it. In order to do sort this we did the obvious, got the phone book out, and started ringing random numbers in New York, whose code we’d pulled out of the Phone book. Alcohol has dulled the memory of that night, but we seem to think it was the 27th person who answered the call to some drunken English guys asking “Pleeeeassse!!! Can you tell us the difference between a ball and a strike” who laughed, asked several times if we were for real, and then calmly explained it!
As the years passed, I never picked a team, but picked up whatever games were played and shown on cable while I was up, and the next thing that dragged me in further were finding MLB.tv in, I think 2009, the idea of being able to watch as many games as I wanted for a really cheap price was too good to resist, and adding the MLB fantasy game, which was unsophisticated, but let you switch between live games as your players came up to bat – awesome!
2010 saw me working away, and one of my best mates (a huge White Sox fan) on gardening leave from work. With me living in a hotel, and beers and food paid for, and him with plenty of money and no work, we were enjoying some rugby league and beer, and in May, I think it was, he asked if I had any plans for Summer – as usual, I hadn’t thought much about hols – I still remember the next thing he said – “I thought not, I’ve been taking a look at the baseball fixtures, and have taken the liberty of preparing a schedule” and in July we were off – first to Chicago, not to watch John’s beloved White Sox, but their northside rivals the Cubs against the Phillies. The first bar we grabbed a beer in, we overheard two guys talking about baseball (forgive the English naiveity – we don’t hear it so much), and we made two great mates – each supporting one of the Chicago teams. The one game that we didn’t watch at Wrigley, the White Sox fan took great delight in watching his rivals ‘Cub it’ as they blew a lead in the eighth or ninth. However, the most memorable part of the Chicago trip was taking the train uptown to Wrigley, and the goosebumps I felt as I glanced through the buildings and we saw the bleachers (I think) and the stadium and I knew this was going to be awesome. As we met more and more people, the conversation kept coming around to who’s your team, and it became a standing joke – to the point that four Phillies took me for a beer, and tried to get me on board (despite some of the misery in the meantime, I think I dodged a bullet there).
After four days in Chicago, it was up to Seatlle for us, the Mariners had John’s White Sox for three games, followed by four against the Red Sox. I remember (and Facebook is great for not letting you forget these things) wearing a White Sox hat and shirt to at least one game and I was certainly cheering them on. When we first flew in to Sea-Tac and headed up to town, we jumped off near the Space Needle (well, there weren’t many stops), we checked into the hotel, and went for a walk, spotting a bar near the Space Needle called Sports – we immediately felt at home. We met some fantastic mates there, all baseball mad, drank some wonderful beer and as I cheered the White Sox on, I still didn’t have a team. The jokes continued, and I just loved the sport – the bars around the ground were awesome – being able to watch two games live before the one I was going to was just fabulous. After, I think, the Red Sox had won the first two, I’d certainly made my mind up that it couldn’t be them – some of the things some of their fans said in the immediate wake of Steinbrenner’s death seemed just awful – I wouldn’t generalise about any clubs’ fans, but it was just another team that weren’t going to be for me.
Then I think it clicked. Anyone familiar with English football might have heard of Northampton Town, if you have a look at our leagues, look down, down a bit more, keep going, you’ll find them eventually…. So, I quietly told Josh and Ron behind the bar, quietly, that I thought I had a team. The Seattle Mariners, those god awful Seattle Mariners of 2010 had stolen my heart.
Since then, we’ve had mates from Seattle over in England visiting us, subjecting them to my crap football team, and I’ve set that alarm for 3am (when west coast games start) more times than I’d care to admit to, but I’ve loved every second of it. Baseball was magic beforehand, but having a team to really root for (and that may actually be very good this year) has only added to it.
Now, at the grand old age of thirty-eleven, I’ve also commenced my playing career for the Northants Centurions, playing a tournment at the end of last summer, and looking forward to lots more this year.
Baseball? I bloody love it.
Martin
So many great stories here. This is just one of many that has profoundly touched me.
Thanks Ben. It’s funny, the individual stories have all been told to mates in bars and at games, but Dave’s question was the first time I’d ever been prompted to join the lot together. I’m loving reading everyone’s stories!
My dad grew up North of SF, and remembers when the Giants came over from NY. He tells me about Seals stadium, and watching Mays & McCovey. He says Ernie Banks was his favorite visiting player that he saw play in person.
So growing up in Giants country, plus my dad’s rooting interest made it impossible to be an A’s fan.
I moved to southern California, and now have a 3 yr old deep down in Dodger country. I am taking the wait and see approach: if my son goes with LAD because of the influence of friends, that’s ok. Here’s hoping SFG will be on the TV enough to brainwash his baseball mind…
I wish I had an amazing father/son story centered round sports, but I don’t. My parents have never been into sports, but especially not baseball. In fact, none of my entire family has ever been into any sports aside from NASCAR and football. I never played in Little League or played catch or any of that. I’m also left-handed, so any time we’d ever play at school (which was rare), I’d have to play with a glove for righties. Baseball wasn’t readily-accessible to me. Growing up in South Florida meant that I was constantly surrounded by snow birds. They all proudly wore their team colors and donned Red Sox bumper stickers. I’ve lived here in Fort Myers my entire life and have always been overwhelmed with Red Sox and Twins fans, as both teams call Fort Myers home. I never took to those teams for whatever reason that is beyond me. I could’ve belonged to that community, but it didn’t feel right to me.
In 1998, the Rays played their inaugural season. No one in my family cared that they even existed, but I was 10 at the time and the idea of a new Major League Baseball team playing in close proximity interested me. I didn’t know anything about baseball, but I was hooked. The team, as you know, was godawful for years, but my fandom slowly increased with each losing season. My family didn’t have cable, so I couldn’t watch them, and I could never find them on the radio. I followed them by catching the 5-minute highlight reel on the local news station, or by reading the newspaper’s sports section and seeing the little 3 or 4 sentence blurb about the team. For my entire childhood, this was how I followed my team. I had no one to talk to that rooted for the team and I never went to a game. It was tough.
When I turned 18, I moved into my own place and got cable and high speed internet. This is what transformed my casual Summer love for baseball into a full-blown obsession. I was able to actually watch my team play and listen to them on the radio. I could network with people who also followed the team and were as emotionally invested in them as I was. It felt really good to be a part of something. It was a great awakening. I could comment about something and get a response. People cared like I cared. I am now 26. I don’t know nearly enough about baseball as I’d like to, as I got off to a really late start, but my passion for the sport grows each year. Does a part of me wish that my family were all into baseball all of their lives and we all went to games together and my Dad was my Little League coach etc. etc. etc.? Of course. But being able to pull up Fangraphs, or BP, or Twitter and just talk about baseball is pretty special in its own little way. It feels good to be a part of a community.
My father was not a baseall fan. Growing up in a suburb of Milwaukee he mildly followed the (then) Braves, but was a pretty big Packers fan. Being a University of Michigan grad, he also followed their team closely and watched college football games when weather was too bad on autumn Saturdays to go hunting.
A journalist, he wrote for Time magazine in the 1960s, which moved us to the NYC area when I was 3 (1964). In 1969 he decided that writing politics for Time in the Nixon years would be too depressing and moved over to Sports Illustrated where he covered football, boxing, motor sports, and hunting/fishing (yes, kids, in the 1970s SI ran hunting and fishing stories) until about 1983. I spent my childhood through my early 20s not particularly interested in baseball and was mainly a fan of football (my father’s Packers and the Steelers of the Bradshaw era, only mildly interested in the NYC teams) and motor sports (mainly Indy cars and F1).
As I matured into an adult I began to be less and less interested in football and, living in NYC in the mid-1980s was caught up by the Mets. A 1990 move to Seattle gradually switched my allegiance to the local team, which remained fairly casual until the turn of the century when I became intrigued by the new statistical movement and began to pay closer attention.
My father passed away from pancreatic cancer 12 years ago, still watching as much football as he could manage.
I still watch more racing than baseball, but I read more baseball than racing. Since I started reading USSM more than 10 years ago, Dave has probably had more influence on my baseball fandom than my father ever did.
With the Internet providing team content from any part of the country, I think it is much easier today to stay connected to teams outside your local area than it was when I was growing up.
Growing up in Southern California I became an avid Dodger fan mostly as a result of listening to Vin Scully on the radio. As a teenager, I had a crappy evening job as a janitor and always listened to the game while I worked. I remember vividly the beginning of Fernando-mania as Scully masterfully described an unhittable lefty who looked skyward as he delivered each pitch. I loved those Dodger teams of the late 70s and early to mid 80s. Garvey, Lopes, Russell, Cey, Baker, Smith, Monday, Yeager…
We moved to Spokane in 1980 and I remained a loyal fan for several more years. But as the team aged, I was increasingly less familiar with new players. I casually watched Mariner games since they were on and at some point actually began to care. By 1990 or so I considered myself a Mariner fan more than a Dodger fan.
We raised our sons as Mariner fans – going to only a few games every year, but always listening to or watching the games. Despite all the exposure to games, neither of my sons have any interest in baseball whatesoever. They love it when we throw around the baseball in the back yard, but they won’t watch a game because it is too boring. Your kids are going to like what they are going to like, no matter how much you’d like to share a love of baseball with them.
Does North Carolina even have a local team? Move back to civilization. 🙂
My father grew up in Arizona and watched the Giants during spring training. After college and marriage he ended up in the Bay Area. I was raised a Giants fan and started going to games in 1986, right as the Giants were coming out of the wilderness with a crop of hreat young players.
My wife is pregnant now with our first child, probably concieved during post World SeriescSeriescelebrations. We keep coming back to Madison as a name.
I just became a parent myself. I’m a girl and so is my baby, so the dynamics are a little different. But my team is the A’s, my husband’s team is the A’s, and if our girl takes to baseball in the slightest, she’d be doing us a great kindness to not choose the Giants like everyone else in town. (we’re close to Oakland but casual fans tend to adopt the pretty park)
Anyway, my dad was a nine year old boy in SF when the Giants arrived and he’s loved them ever since. I was raised in the east bay and attended A’s and Giants games with him but didn’t develop a passion for baseball until I was in college, away from home. My sophomore year, I was incredibly homesick to start the year. I turned on the TV one day and I saw the beautiful (in the eye of the beholder, guys) sight of the coliseum. The A’s were playing the Yankees in the ALDS. I know coliseum jokes write themselves, but I was just so comforted to see that familiar place so far from where I was at the time that I lingered on the channel long enough to become ferociously invested in the game. Love blossomed instantly.
My dad still insists on rooting for the Giants, so we have a few tense days every summer, but lately he’s been pretty smug at the end of the season. So, like I said: if my daughter loves baseball, she can pick any team, but ugh… If she picks the Giants, I’m sending her to grandpa’s for the summer.
My father grew up in Washington state, well before the Mariners. I can’t actually tell you who his father’s team was (I do know he loved the game, though). My dad and his two best friends were all big baseball fans and chose their own teams to root for since there was no obvious geographic fit. My dad was a big Eddie Mathews fan and chose the Braves. One friend chose the Reds, the other the Cardinals. This became something of a rivalry among the three of them, and a lot of my dad’s baseball stories from childhood centered around when his team was playing his friends’ teams and the extra excitement that added to the equation for them.
By the time I came into the picture, my father had moved on from the Pacific Northwest and eventually settled in North Texas. Living in Fort Worth, Texas since about the age of seven, I became a fan of the local team, the Texas Rangers. My dad took my brother and me to a ton of Rangers games, and we bonded over a great many of those. That’s not to say I didn’t also have a soft spot for my father’s Braves. Some of my best baseball memories were being glued to the television watching those Braves teams in their ’90s playoff runs.
I guess the point is that your team doesn’t have to be your son’s team. If my experience is any indication, your son will be rooting just as hard as you are for the Mariners the next time they’re playing meaningful baseball in October.
My dad grew up in Oklahoma and his entire family was tied to the Cardinals as the only team they could follow on the radio — that communal experience. I inherited his Cardinal fandom and, in many ways, it’s still the only thing that binds us. My son is also a diehard Cardinals fan and, though we live in the Houston area, we’re able to watch the Cards play every night. When the Astros were still in the NL, we’d take in a couple of Cards’ games per year and now we just watch on TV.
We lack the communal experience with other Cards’ fans but Houston’s a city with a lot of migrants. A lot of people here follow teams other than the Astros (especially since the Astros have sucked) and there are a lot of Cards’ fans here. Regardless, it’s a bond my son and I share and, hopefully, will forever. One of his friends is a big Astros fan and he invites my son to a couple of Astros games per year. My son roots for the Astros when they go. It’s a lot easier with them in the AL.
One spring my son and I went to spring training together. That trip I think helped cement the bond we share. It’s not so much about the team itself; it’s about us sharing something. We hug and high-five when things are good (fortunately, he’s seen a lot of success) and commiserate when things aren’t so good. We’ve got something we enjoy that we can talk about the way I do with my dad. It would doubtless be better if we lived in St. Louis and could attend a lot of games, but the ability to watch them all on MLB.tv makes us feel as though we’re part of it anyway.
Clever Cameron, getting us to write actual column content. Good Stories, all you!
My dad was an immigrant with zero history with baseball: he played cricket! Same for mom, all my siblings and cousins, and ALMOST every family relation. Around when I started school, dad was assigned to a government project in a remote small desert town, where we lived a half a decade with nearly the perfect the right number and mix of kids to set up kids baseball leagues, and the climate and weather to play baseball and nothing but every day all day constantly and no other team sport, until we’d get to the age where we’d have to bus to another town for school.
Then in my middle and high school years dad was stationed variously around the country on de-commissioning from a project, and all I had for making friends out of school was that no matter where, I could sign up and try out for and make a baseball team, didn’t matter the dialect or language or dominant community.
Plus these 4 environmental factors: 1. my stupid glove stupidly fell apart and an uncle, who near as I could tell in those Bilko days was a sports non-com quartermaster for the military, somehow by some eerily convenient coincidence “found” this beautiful Mazeroski signature infielder’s glove sitting around “spare” and alluvasudden I could be Maz til my body grew in; 2. those goofy good-enough-for-me baseball cards on the backs of breakfast cereal boxes; 3. a probably not unusual amount of teen alienation due to moving about so much; and 4. the sudden timely emergence of Strat-O-Matic and APBA card-&-dice games.
From when I started showing up in the local paper sometimes, dad began coming out to watch, and kept that up til I gave up the goofy dream in my early 20s. I’m pretty such he never actually ‘got’ baseball like cricket, but I think it may all be for the best to know your dad loves you ‘that’ much yet at the same time isn’t about to make your decisions for you after a certain age. IOW, it may well have been CRITICAL to my life-long affection for baseball that dad didn’t particularly care for it.
“Maybe he’ll just root for whoever he roots for, and that’s okay”. Yes, it is.
I don’t begrudge your waning M’s fandom – they’ve dealt us a lot of abuse over the years.
But man, Dave, as someone whose read your work (both M’s and general sabermetrics) for many years, I wish you could have been at Game 162 at Safeco last year. It was a cathartic taste of payoff, even without advancing to the playoffs – a decade’s worth of sports emotion, frustration and joy being released. It was a small taste of what it’s like to be a devoted fan of a good team.
Small town southern Ontario, at the time in the heart of Canadian baseball country – think Ferguson Jenkins living a few miles down the road (I don’t think I ever hit against him though, just as well). Now, alas, mostly soft ball and slow pitch. Being across the lake from Cleveland there were a lot of Indians fans and people who needed to be winners liked the Yankees of course. The closest accessible big league town was Detroit city but strangely not that many fans in our little village. My folks took me to Detroit a couple of times a year and I think it was the old stadium that did it for me as much as anything, although I loved the game too. I remember the wonderful dank corridors under the stands reeking of beer and hot dogs. You could hear the thwack of wood hitting baseballs in batting practice as you walked along so we would hurry up a ramp to field level and the sudden brilliance of green grass, under lights or sunshine, always took me by surprise, magical every single time. The days of Al Kaline. But I have been to the new stadium (can’t remember its name) and have to admit I liked it, to a degree. But the game is always great,
My parents are European, so I was on my own.
I fell in love with baseball because of Joe Carter. The early 90s in Toronto was fertile ground for the development of lifelong fans.
Like everyone here, I’m a passionate baseball fan and have been all my life. Perhaps unlike many others here, I’m on the back-end of raising kids as mine are now all adults.
Expose your son to many, many different things – naturally your own interests such as baseball, but also things that do not interest you. You will get more enjoyment and satisfaction from discovering and nurturing his own interests and talents than you might yet imagine.
Regarding baseball, engage with your son according to his interests. Teach him to throw and catch and hit and run – do it together with him. As long as he wants to do that.
Take him to the ballpark and discover what he likes – the kids’ playground, the goofy mascot, the crowd and the atmosphere, the action on the field – just do it together and let being there be fun for him in whatever way it’s fun for him.
If he wants to play on a team, help coach or volunteer to help in some way. But only as long as he’s having fun – don’t let the adults take the fun out of it for the kids. Or be the adult that takes the fun out of it.
Expose him to what you love about the game – the history, the statistics, watching the game being played, rooting for a favorite team. Then let him choose what he likes about baseball, or choose whether or not he likes it at all.
Let him choose his own favorite team, which may or may not be yours. (A college friend, a diehard Cardinals fan, named his son Brock. Last I heard, Brock grew up a Cubs fan!)
And if he likes something other than what you like, engage with him and support him just as much in those interests as you would if he loved baseball the way you do.
When you get to the stage I’m at, with my kids now all adults, you and he will get more satisfaction from having gone on whatever his journey is together than from molding him into a “little Dave,” though that may be who he turns out to be (perish the thought).
One of my kids has many of my traits and interests, for better and for worse, and I’ve learned a lot about myself through that experience. One of my kids has many traits and interests opposite my own, and I’ve learned a lot about people different than me through that experience. They’re both my favorites.
Dave, congratulations, best wishes, enjoy the journey, and let us know how it turns out in 25 years!
This was amazing. Really, way better than I expected. The stories contained here are just so great. This is probably now my favorite thing we’ve ever published, and it has nothing to do with what I wrote. Thank you all for sharing.
I became a baseball fan in my mid-20s by reading firejoemorgan.com. I mean, I already liked baseball ok. But that website made me a super fan, and a saber fan.
I grew up in Oakland and Berkeley, but I was lucky enough to have family all over the bay area including a grandfather in SF and another in Sausalito. My first games were at the Oak Coliseum and they coincided with Billy Ball and Ricky Henderson’s rookie year. I loved that first year of going to games, sneaking in sometimes, the things that stand out are watching everything Ricky Henderson did and Billy Martin getting kicked out, kicking dirt on the umps as the crowd chanted “Take This Job and Shove It”.
Family wise, not a lot of interest in ball with a musician mom. But my Grandpa in SF loved the game, so I would listen to games with him, and rapidly became a die hard Giants fan, listening to and watching truly horrible teams stink up the joint in the early 80s.
I’ve lived all my time in cities, mainly New York, with a return to SF in the early 00’s. Then a move down to LA. I have 3 kids now, and they are all Giants fans. I don’t know if I could give them the choice or not, but the obvious enthusiasm that invades our household during the season, as well as 3 championships in 5 years, makes it a pretty easy sell. It also helps that they have a lot of likeable players. I don’t want to imagine a world where my kids are Dodger fans. Then again, the oldest is 7, so there’s time to see what’s what. I have a lot of Dodger fan friends, and I also have to watch my tongue during business meetings and such, so its a delicate balance.
Our oldest plays pony ball now, and you meet a lot of transplants, so there are a lot of different rooting interests. That might be a big difference over a more regional area/small market. I notice kids have random rooting interests, one of my lifelong dodger fan friends kid loves the pirates because of McCutch.
Baseball drives me more than other sports though, I was a Raider fan until Al Davis moved the team, the Niners got good right at that time, it was a no-brainer. But I’m not passionate about the Niners the way I am about the Giants. that passion for baseball started early, and just stuck. I went to school in Balto (Saw the last game at Memorial/first game at Camden), went to a lot of Yanks/Mets games during the NY years, I will mildly root for the Mets and the O’s, but its just that: mild. The Giants are a different ballgame. I think its something that I am passing on to the kids. Was it that relationship with my Grandpa? Was it the frustration of losing so badly? I don’t know. Things are pretty sweet right now, just have to enjoy the hell out of that.
I recently uncovered the radio that my grandma gave me as a child so that I could fall asleep listening to Giants broadcasts. She would take me to Candlestick, and her and my mom were a big reason why I just so naturally followed the Giants. As I grew older, I kept with the radio because I never owned a TV, and baseball broadcasts kept me company on long drives, especially late at night when I could listen to the KNBR midnght rebroadcasts of Giants games. I always laughed at how my grandmother was preparing me as a child to fall asleep to the Giants; as college student, I fell asleep to the midnight replay. I assume as I get older I’ll go back to falling asleep to the normal broadcast. I relay this story because it isn’t just our dads that share baseball with us.
Teach him to throw lefty. (Are you left handed? The web says you are, but it also says you are Prime minister of the UK.)
I’m a lefty and my son is a lefty, but for some reason he plays righty. It’s something I’ve regretted a little.
As for myself, I grew up in Hawaii so I felt free to adopt any team. I followed the Orioles as a child. They had Palmer, Robinson et al., but I liked them mainly for their cartoon-bird logo. But being 6 hours behind the East Coast, baseball on TV was always tape-delayed. For real time baseball my dad took me to see the Islanders (Pacific Coast League) playing in a wooden stadium. I remember more about the food than the plays on the field.
After I grew up and moved to Southern California, I followed both local teams mainly because cable channels covered them. But when my son reached T Ball age, we got heavily into following the Angels and started attending a lot of games.
When my son was very young he went to the games mainly for the food*. As he got older his attention dipped, preferring to look at his phone more than the field (pace of play and all). Now that he’s left youth ball for high school ball, he’s finally becoming interested in watching how the players play.
As for my 11-year old daughter, she really pays attention to the game. (She likes to bet on the number of pitches in a given plate appearance or the number that the pitcher will throw that inning.)
So I now go to all the home games and watch the away games on TV. The kids end up watching a good portion of these as well. I think they get the idea they’re fortunate to follow a pretty good team, but it probably won’t be until they have kids of their own and they say stuff like “when I was a kid, I got to see Mike Trout play every day…” that they really get it.
So it seems you first appreciate baseball in your youth and then appreciate it a second time as an adult, when you can compare your current experiences with your earliest ones. I suggest you give your son that same kind of opportunity.
* Not saying Angel Stadium food is any good, more that as a kid it’s fun to eat stadium food. Helmet nachos, anyone?
I’m a huge baseball fan from the UK and my favourite team are the Angels. This fandom started when attending my first baseball game 15th August 2003 at Angel Stadium, a 3-1 victory over the Tigers. At the time I was 9 years old on a family holiday to California and from that day onward I have been hooked on baseball and the Angels.
Being an Angels fan in the UK can be difficult. Supporting a West Coast team means many regular 03:30am starts for their games. Best feeling is waking up for School at 06:30am and catching final inning or extra inning walk offs live, a great way to start the day. I love the long East Coast road trips as it might mean I get to catch a game at midnight rather than 3.
My dad had no real interest in baseball so couldn’t guide me but has learnt about the game and taken an interest in it in order for me to have someone to talk about the game with which is kinda cool of him to do.
Saving up for when i graduate University to travel over and catch my Angels live in person and not the computer screen.
Cool story, thanks for sharing!
Congrats, Dave. I feel like you’ll be an awesome Dad.
As a father of 2, I don’t talk to my kids about baseball. I don’t watch it on TV (M’s fan living in SoCal), I don’t live stream it, and I don’t talk about it around them. Even if I could get the games on TV, I still wouldn’t watch – baseball is just too damn long.
I just think baseball is a pretty lame sport. It’s not that fun to watch, the games take too long, and it’s a terrible sport for young people to play (even though I loved it as a kid). I feel addicted to baseball and wish I could quit. I’m a math teacher, so the numbers in baseball were always appealing to me even though the actual game hasn’t appealed to me for 20 years. Nowadays, I like the analysis of baseball much more than the actual game itself. I would love to share in this analysis with my kids, but I don’t want to have to expose them to the game itself first. Plus, I don’t think they’d have the patience for it anyways.
My 6 year-old daughter watches Gamecock and Seahawks football with me and understands the game pretty well. And I love throwing a football with her. I coach her soccer team and would love it if she plays basketball.
But baseball is such a lame sport on so many levels.
Helpful hint: If you’re truly addicted to a sport you feel is lame on so many levels, you may have an addictive personality and may want to avoid alcohol, heroin, gambling, nicotine, internet porn, sex, cellphones, television, food, etc.
Grew up in Chicago in the 70/80s. My dad was a casual Sox fan and never watched them much. I became a Cubs fan due to the day games, which coincided with the only part of the day I controlled the tv. So… shout out to Jack Brickhouse and Lou Boudreau.
PS: Congratulations, Dave.
And of course Harry and Steve.
Congrats on the little one, Dave.
One of my earliest baseball memories is of my grandfather, sitting at a picnic table on a family outing, listening to an early 1990’s Reds radio broadcast by Marty Brennaman and Joe Nuxhall. I was fascinated with the game from a young age, and even as a child would be glued to the radio for 2.5 hours each night, taking in the Reds game. Now in my mid-twenties, my friends still tease me about my portable radio during baseball season, comparing me to an old man. Most of them don’t know that it’s my late grandfather’s old radio and Reds cap I’m sporting.
I was born, raised, and still live less than an hour from Cincinnati, so proximity certainly has a lot to do with my allegiance. In recent years, I have begun rooting for players and occasionally other teams, though not with the vigor I save for the Redlegs. I love baseball, but there are family links to the Reds which will be with me forever.
My daughter, about to turn 6, doesn’t particularly care for baseball as a spectator sport. But as a series of sporty actions? And as an idea? As something that gets her dad really excited and, so, seems like it MUST be exciting? And as something that involves throwing and hitting stuff, in some way, even if the rules aren’t all that clear? Yeah, she can get behind that. For now, at least.
She clearly likes something about being a fan. I gave her a blue monkey that wears a Blue Jays uniform, who we call Jose. (On account of she got it right after the Jays traded for Reyes, so two Joses in the starting line-up made Jose an obvious choice.) And she loves singing Jose Bautista’s name in an oddly aggressive way, scrunching up her face, and doing a dance to it.
She might never actually love the game or love watching it. But this is good enough for me.
I grew up in Virginia, and somehow became a Tigers fan. Why? I don’t know. They were terrible throughout my whole childhood (only becoming good in 2006 when I was in college), and it certainly wasn’t from my father, who is a Red Sox fan (and his dad was a Yankee’s fan). And yet, I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world. I feel just as passionately about the team as I do anything in life.
My grandfather at least had a decent excuse for his rooting interest, because he grew up in New York. My dad grew up in Virginia like me, but he became a Red Sox fan because he grew up during the days of Ted Williams. (Despite being on separate sides of the rivalry, he and my grandfather had a great relationship, one I hope that my own relationship with him can be like as I get older)
And despite the fact that we root for different teams, baseball is a huge part of my relationship with my dad. I have so many fond memories of us watching games together, and of course playing catch and him taking me to little league was a key part of my childhood.
I’ll never forget the Red Sox 2004 run, and how my dad, the long suffering Red Sox fan, reacted to it (according to the stories he tells, he turned to my Mom during the 9th inning of Game 6 in the 86 World Series and told her that the Red Sox would not only lose the game bu the series). It was a magical moment, even if they weren’t my team, because we could still share it together. I have fond memories of both the bloody sock game and the final game of the World Series. Even in 2013 when the Tigers and Red Sox played each other, it was still fun for me at first (although the result left a bitter taste in my mouth).
I don’t live at home anymore, but baseball and golf (the other sporting love my dad introduced me to, and one that we play together when wet get the chance) remain a strong part of our relationship. I call my parents up once a week in general, and my dad and I almost always chat about baseball (just this last week we talked about the Hall of Fame selections, counting down to spring training, where Scherzer would end up, and other topics). Baseball and golf were also huge parts of my relationship with my grandfather for the 17 years I got to spend with him. My first round of golf was with my grandfather, with clubs that he had given me before I could even walk, I played with him again at the end of his life just before he stopped being able to play, and we always talked baseball at holidays, sometimes for long amounts of time.
So, based on my own experience, I think it’s fine to just let kids root for whoever they will. I love that I became a Tigers fan in Virginia, because I can’t imagine anything else, and my baseball bond with my father has been one of the few unshakable things in my life.
My introduction to baseball was little like yours, Dave, in that it was born primarily from baseball cards and watching games on TV. Having ASD, my interests would border on obsessional (dinosaurs, animals, et al) and after my mother brought home my first pack of 1989 Topps, baseball took hold. I loved math and studied the backs of those cards like crazy, organizing them by number, then alphabetically, then by team to the point that all originals are long since worn down.
My father was not in the picture very much, but my mother was always very supportive and would purchase Baseball Weekly every Sunday so that I was the only 8-year old who knew the role players and prospects on both the Mets (my team) and others. 😉 I played through high school and have since been coaching for 16 years, and it might not have happened had my mother not opened a door to see if I would like something new – and supported me regardless. Do those things and you’ll do very well as a father. Congrats!
I recently heard my son, now 23, tell someone he’s a 4th generation dodgers fan. My dad was born in brooklyn and followed his father’s love for the dodgers. As a kid in New Jersey, I followed suit. We moved to fla a year before the dodgers went west. I stayed a dodgers fan even though I now live in atl where my son was born. There was a time Alex seemed like he might be a braves fan. I never tried to convert him. It just happened. We started going to away dodgers series at some point, and have shared that until this day. It has been a great bond between us. He is now in St. Louis, but we will travel to see some dodgers games over the summer. With the cable sports packages, it is easier to follow your team from anywhere. With players changing, it may seem more difficult to retain one’s allegiance, but it has worked for us.
Played catch with both my kids, my daughter turned out to be the big baseball fan, my son never cared much about baseball. Kids chose what they like, it’s impossible to predict what they will like. Grew up In the SF bay area, a Giants fan, but my Dad was an A’s fan.
Dave, I suggest you find a team that has media coverage in your area to root for the benefit of your son, and make the trip at least once a year to their town, be it Atlanta or Baltimore or whatever. I’m a fourth-generation Cubs fan who grew up in Chicago but has spent most of my life in the Bay Area. I raised my kids as A’s fans–we go to a lot of games–and if the A’s and Cubs ever met in the World Series (unlikely) I’d have a hard time picking a team. But I think it’s important to give your kid a team to root for to keep the generational continuity of fandom going.
For me, it’s a little bit strange since I’ve never been to the U.S. and the only thing I knew about baseball as a child was the New York Yankees. My parents (Save for my father) weren’t really that invested in sports and I live in a country where basketball is practically a religion. I really loved basketball growing up, but years later my interest waned and I was looking for something else.
It’s definitely not like a lot on here who learned baseball through their parents or just by watching the game, but I learned how baseball worked through the MVP Baseball series (Which, by the way, really needs to make a comeback) and MLB The Show around seven years ago and it appealed to me largely because it had some technical aspects to it, and it was beautiful to watch someone hit and throw a five ounce piece of leather.
Being someone who lives and breathes baseball, watching the 2010 NLDS and talking enthusiastically about each player really got my family into the sport.
They all loved the Giants’ World Series runs and have been rooting for them ever since that NLDS, (Although my sister’s focus has shifted to Nippon Pro Baseball) while I wallowed in the futility of the Chicago Cubs and soon the Seattle Mariners.
And congratulations on becoming a father, Dave!
I really like how you highlighted how losing out on the communal qualities of having neighbors has made it hard for you to stay as big of fan of the Mariners. My life experience has been pretty much the opposite.
I grew up on the edge of the Illinois side of the STL-metro east area where I would say the breakdown of fans is 80% Cardinals, 10% Cubs, 10% Other (mostly dodgers, yankees, red sox). I was mostly raised by my mom who was born and raised a few blocks from Comiskey in Chicago and relocated to West Central IL after college. She was never much of a sports fan but took up being a Cardinals fan as being part of the community. My dad and his entire family are also huge Cardinal fans.
For some reason I latched on to the Cubs at a young age and never let go. Out of all my close friends that cared about sports in high school, I was the only Cubs fan and it created awkward but real tension at times. Going to college was almost a 180 for me as almost all my friends at University of Illinois were die hard Cubs fans. Being able to watch games with people who cared and had such strong, same rooting interest was an awesome new experience for me.
I eventually moved to Chicago for some time, living walking distance from Wrigley and loved every second of it. Ever since the beginning of college, I think my fandom of the Cubs (and the Blackhawks) grew much stronger because of the communal effect. I took a job in more central IL where fans lean Cardinals but still a strong minority of Cubs fans but I expect I probably will eventually move back to Chicago because I liked it so much
Sometimes I question how much time I spend thinking/reading/writing about baseball but then when I realize the joy it gives me, both through the game and the community, it always makes sense
Also, it was really weird for me last year as I stayed with my grandparents for their health reasons. They barely ever miss a Cardinals game on tv and I would often watch games with them.
Come the playoffs, I absolutely wanted the Cardinals to lose because I really don’t like them and to spite a lot of the over the top fans I have on social media but at the same time I knew how much it meant to my family and usually caught myself in the playoffs wanting the Cardinals to win because I knew it would make them happy
A huge chunk of people end up being fans of whatever club was dominant during their sports formative years; hence so many Yankees & Braves fans. You’ll have to Steamer up who that team might be in 8 to 10 years.
Mariners . . . Got to make him earn it.
I started watching baseball during Spring Training of 2012 at the age of 28. I’m from England, I’ve been to the States once way back in 1993 for the standard Florida theme parks holiday and have no American friends or relatives. In short, there is no obvious reason why I like baseball.
The non-obvious reason is that my daughter was born in 2010. I was a big soccer fan, but when she was born my interest totally disappeared. I found myself unable to devote the time away from my family to go to the games in person and as my team (Woking, five divisions below the EPL at the time) are almost never on television I lost my connection with the team and with the sport.
I chose baseball because it suited my needs. It’s on every day, if I missed tonights game because she wouldn’t settle, I could watch tomorrow’s. If I needed to spend 45 minutes or so bathing her and putting her to bed, I only missed a few innings instead of half the game in soccer. There was also the cost to consider, MLB.TV costs me around £75 a year and I can watch literally any game I like. To watch the EPL (which I wasn’t massively interested in anyway, my team being so far removed from it) would mean subscribing to a couple of satellite services and costing about £50 per month.
In short, this just proves that you can do as much or as little as you like to influence your son’s interests but it won’t necessarily make any difference. I had zero exposure to baseball before 2012 and now it’s become a huge part of my life.
My dad introduced me to the game through t ball and baseball cards. He told me about the Brooklyn teams of the 50s that he grew up rooting for, since there were no teams in the south back then. I read a biography on Duke Snider, and that year the Dodgers and Kirk Gibson won the World Series. I rooted for them.
Watching baseball on TV then meant I had two options: the Braves and Cubs. I watched both, but even with the bad Braves teams of the time, the local ties to the Braves were strong. The local minor league team was the Braves’ AA affiliate, and we saw 10 games a year at times. In the 90-91 offseason I was excited and predicted the Braves to win their division. Little did I know.
I Got to see a lot of great players come through the minors, and now my two big interests in baseball are the Braves and prospecting.
This is one of my favourite things about my dad. Every since I can remember I loved baseball. I am a diehard Yankees fan, but grew up in the Yankees and Mets television market at a time when the Mets were New York’s team (hard to believe that time ever existed!). My dad and I watched thousands of baseball games together. We rarely missed a Yankees game, and watched the Mets whenever they didn’t overlap with the Yankees. I always thought my father loved baseball as much as I did. Then, after having moved out of the house I tried talking some baseball with my dad, and it became clear that he never again watched another game. It is now clear to me that he has never watched a baseball game without me. The amount of hours my father spent watching sports on television and taking me to my year round soccer and baseball practices, games, and tournaments is crazy considering the fact that it turns out he is not a sports fan in the least. Great dad!
That said, my children will be Yankees fans or they will be disowned. Good people love the Yankees.
I’m a little late to this party, but congratulations–there’s very little that’s more work, and more joy, than being a parent. As to rooting and baseball, it will come in time, because baseball is such a beautiful and simple game. You need so little to have a great time-a ball, and a friend (or a parent) to have a catch with, a couple for a fungo game, even just a wall with a strike zone drawn on it or a stoop to throw against. And it’s part of the magic of being with small kids. They don’t need a lot either beyond just pure play with their parents. Puts a special place in them they may not even realize is there, until a generation later, when they play with their own kids. Enjoy–it’s all great.
In a weird way I have almost the I verse of your story Dave. I grew up in NC being a Mariners fan. My dad was a Reds fan growing up, and he would play catch with us and take us to local minor league games. But my first real interest in baseball came as a teenager when I heard news reports about the Arizona Diamondbacks in the world series in 2001. My high school teacher was from the northwest and was a Mariners fan, and so for lack of a better reason I started following the Mariners. Then I found the USS Mariner and my fandom took off. Ironically a few years later I ended up moving to the Pacific Northwest and caught Mariners games on the radio almost every evening. Now I’m back in Winston Salem (hey there) and don’t have TV, so I never see Mariners games, but I still follow along on the USS Mariner and MLB gameday. So for my own sake I’m thankful for what you, JMB, and Zumsteg did back in the day.
I have two young sons whom I plan to take to Dash and WFU games whenever possible, but without TV or radio access I doubt he will end up being a diehard Ms fan. They like to do whatever I’m into, though, so they may e d up flowing them in spite of the distance.
Wait until you see all the poor tactics used at Little League!
In North Carolina you have plenty of minor league teams to root for, if you’re close enough to either very popular Triple-A city that could become the logical choice, and maybe he’ll grow up a Rays or White Sox fan, or go with the sorta-default Braves. There’s no real bad choice here.
I grew up in So Cal but somehow became a hard-core Giants fan. I had an older brother who favored them, but it’s more likely I was a contrarian from birth. I’m 58…it was not easy or fun being a Giants fan but, after a lifetime of disappointment, I’m reaping the benefits! Thing is, I care deeply about the Dodgers, I watch them every chance I get (rooting for them to lose, of course) and I adore Vin Scully. I’m in Idaho now so have not been affected by the Time-Warner debacle in Los Angeles. I’ve been to hundreds of games at Dodger Stadium, always wearing my gear and rooting for the other team. But that became, uh, inadvisable a few years back. Anyway, for those who expect blind home-team support…stuff it! Go Giants!
My mom was a Reds fan from Columbus, and we moved to Cincinnati just in time for the ’75 and ’76 Reds juggernauts. After seven strikes or lockouts in my life, and the realization that the Pete Rose poster on my wall made for a poor choice of someone to look up to, I gave up on MLB. Instead of prohibitively expensive MLB games, I have had good luck taking my family to a lot of minor league games (got married on the third base dugout of the Florence Freedom), and I drag them to all of the vintage baseball games that I play in every Sunday (no gloves, civil war era play). It has been my experience that kids can’t tell the difference between a MLB player and a minor leaguer (or sometimes even us oldsters in period costumes) without the aid of adult explanations, and since the lower you go league-wise, the closer you sit to the action, everyone seems okay with my choices so far. Plus, I figure that teaching my child to root for one group of millionaires playing for a billionaire against another group of the same, whether based of geography or genealogy or colors of attire, is just too much for me.
I became a fan of baseball because my dad would tell me stories about his favorite players. He’s an animated storyteller and while he didn’t hop up and re-enact Rick Dempsey’s wacky antics or Brooks Robinson’s amazing catches, you could tell he loved the players by the way his eyes lit up as he went.
Kids like it when their parents show their humanity by geeking out about something.
I grew up a Royals fan in Omaha and then moved to Kansas City in 1994. In the late 90s, the Royals went into the tank and I discovered John Miller on the internet broadcasting Giant games, which was a great as I was a young associate at a law firm working late at night. Over the years, as the Royals became a joke, I fell in love with Giants baseball. My eldest son was born in 1998 and my second son in 2000. I still had Royals season tickets as part of split plan but spent most evenings listening or watching Giants games courtesy of MLB.com. Once a year, I would take the boys on a baseball trip to watch the Giants. My allegiance transferred sometime around 2007, when neither the Royals or Giants were very good but at least the Giants had professional baseball players on the field. I left it up to the boys as to who they would follow. They became true Giants fans. This year was the test as never did I expect the Royals and Giants to meet in the World Series. They never wavered. My eldest is now 16 and when Madison Bumgarner got Salvador Perez to end game 7 I got my first hug, really a bear hug, in several years. With today’s technology, you can follow any team. We watch most Giants games and have TVs set up with MLB.com all over the house. The nice thing for us is that it is a communal thing, we watch together, ruminate about the offseason together, propose trades that Brian Sabean should make together, and complain about things together. Without the boys being Giants fans, I don’t think it would be this much fun. My one recommendation is that if you can root for the same team, you should. You will forge father/son bonds that you would not do otherwise. We have great stories from our trips and remember where we were when certain Giants events happen. I am blessed to have my boys and share these experiences. I wish the same for you.
Wow. Those who have written before me make me think that there’s no way you will read this.
Nonetheless, my advice to you, as a father and as a sports fan is this: stop thinking about it. You’ll introduce him to baseball and he’ll probably get into it because you’re into it, but that interest may pass, and he’ll wander into college basketball, impressionist painting and classical music or what have you. Or he’ll be into it for life. And he’ll pick his team based on what he’s exposed to, whether it’s what you like, or which team he gets to see live, or what jersey his grandparent gives him when he’s 8 years old. My grandfather lived in Vancouver, and one Christmas sent me a Seattle Seahawks jersey for Christmas. They became my favorite NFL team because, well just because I owned the jersey. This may be the same for you.
Either way, what you should aim to do is expose him to as many things as you can, in as great a depth as his curiosity demands. Let him see the world, and watch as his interests shape themselves. It is, quite literally, one of the most enjoyable experiences you’ll ever have in your life.
I became a Cubs fan living in Central Illinois. My whole entire family has always been Cardinals fans but I liked the color blue so I became a Cubs fan. I am still a die hard to this day, going to ten games a year and studying the Cubs farm system in hope for the futurs .
*future
My parents grew up outside of Pittsburgh and are Pirates fans. Right when they were to be married, my dad’s job transferred them to San Jose, CA. I am wearing an A’s hat in several baby pictures…I’m guessing they didn’t want me rooting for a National League foe if I was going to grow up in California. Fine by me…my wife is also a huge A’s fan, and we are pretty rooted in the East Bay, so my kids won’t have much of a choice.
Football is different, though…I didn’t develop strong ties to the 49ers or Raiders when I was young, and didn’t follow football all that much the first few years in elementary school. When the Steelers lost to the Cowboys in the Super Bowl, and I saw the look on my dad’s face after Neil O’Donnell coughed up turnover after turnover, I knew I had to stick with him on my football rooting interest. That’s going to be the interesting one for our children, since there will be no Pennsylvania tie at all for them. Not sure I want them to be subjected to the York family bungling the 49er franchise like my wife is, though.
I raised a naturally left-handed toe-head with bright blue eyes and an even brighter smile. And by naturally left-handed, I mean I didn’t force him to be a lefty, like a lot of other parents in Southern California seem to do. He hit, threw, kicked and wrote with his left hand.
At about 18-months-old we got him a plastic tee, ball and bat – one of those Fisher Price things. Just before turning 2 he moved up to a smaller ball and thinner bat. He’d swing from the living room and run and slide in the kitchen. My wife works nights as a NICU nurse. When she worked, our nights were spent playing baseball inside.
He had a sweet, natural swing. Hitting always came easy for him. Before he turned 3 I pitched to him over hand, so he’d get used to the motion. I was going to make him in to a big leaguer, whether he liked it or not. Fortunately, he liked it. Up until he died. He drowned at 4 1/2-years-old at a neighbor’s pool party. Just a couple of weeks after finishing his first tee-ball season on the Brewers.
I grew up an Angels fan. I lived in Orange County and the friends I wanted to be friends with at my new school liked the Angels. It helped that it was Wally Joyner’s rookie season and the Angels were good. Really good. My boy was growing up an Angels fan. Torii Hunter was his favorite player. He got to see him one last time, four days before he died, when we celebrated his great grandfather’s Father’s Day at Angel Stadium. After the game he peed in the parking lot. As a true baseball fan should experience.
It wasn’t the same watching baseball after he died. I didn’t have my padawan next to me to explain bunt defense to.
He was really good. His favorite position was third base, despite playing with the wrong hand. I’m staring at a note his coach wrote him following the season:
Very solid baseball player with a great looking swing. Always very focused when in the batter’s box and ready to go.
At 4, he was one of the younger boys on the team. But he didn’t play like it. One game, playing the “pitcher” position in tee-ball, a kid lined one back up the middle in to his gut. It looked like it hurt. A lot. He picked the ball up, threw it to first, and then held his abdomen. Coaches went out to check but I stood on the side trying not to make a big deal out of it. He didn’t cry. Though I knew he wanted to. I had seen that face many times. It always ended with tears. But not out on that field. Not in front of all those people.
About the last 5-7 games of the season the league went to coach pitch, where a coach pitches softly to the boys. They get three swings, and if they don’t hit, they move back to the tee. Jax never swung and missed once. He always at least fouled a ball off. After my Dad encouraged him to find his inner Incredible Hulk (he was a huge Marvel fan), the balls started jumping off the bat.
It was a great, great season. That one season of his.
Dave, I just wanted to share my own experience with Jax, my son. Baseball was so special to us as a father and a son. Don’t push it on him, but educate he is willing to be open to. Get him swinging, throwing and catching as early as you can. Make it fun for him. And whatever happens, just know that your time with him is precious. Even when he’s driving you nuts.
Just love the hell out of him.
Seth
Congrats on the baby!
My father grew up in Wisconsin as a Tigers fan, but he wasn’t that big a fan. I remember when my grandmother came out to visit us in California during the ’68 World Series, and she and I would watch the games together and I rooted for the Tigers — I don’t think because of my father’s fandom but I loved the players on that team — and that’s what made me a baseball fan, at the age of 8. We lived in the east bay and I became an A’s fan — Reggie Jackson, Vida Blue, Blue Moon Odom, Campy Campaneris, Sal Bando, Joe Rudi, Catfish Hunter. But I was the only real baseball fan in the family, demanding the car radio be tuned to A’s games. My fan experiences with my father revolved around football, the Raiders. And we had some great times together.
I kind of understand the view that you should root for the team where you are, but the heart is a fickle thing. My father did this with his football fandom, racking up Super Bowls as he switched from the Raiders to the 49ers when they moved to LA, the Packers when he and my mom moved to Wisconsin, and the Ravens when they moved to Baltimore to be close to their grandchild, my daughter. I ended up in Baltimore to go to grad school and it’s there that my dormant love of baseball awoke in the 80s with a run of crappy Orioles teams. But that just set up the wonderful ’89 season, the year of my daughter’s birth, and she in my arms only weeks old would spend the late nights up with me, listening to west coast Orioles games.
I’m now in New York, still and forever an Orioles fan. The internet helps, but I’ve also become friends with a Baltimoron who lives nearby, having met him in a local bar watching a game. Don’t think about. Don’t worry about it. Kids will lead you to discover worlds you would never imagine. Enjoy the ride.
-Peter
I was lucky to grow up with a father who taught me the game early and helped coach the little league team. I started out as a nominal Yankees fan (his allegiance), but his favorite players were Mickey Mantle and Pete Rose, so I was exposed to a lot of the history of the game beyond one team.
Under the age of 10, however, I was more enamored of the S-WB Red Barons (then the Phillies’ AAA team) which was within half-hour drive of my house. Minor league teams are fun when you’re young, and I’m sure there are a few near you in North Carolina. I can’t suggest much, as I don’t have a child, but you can’t go wrong with minor league ball when it is close by. If he likes baseball, all else will come naturally.
As a son with a transplanted baseball dad, I can see where your conundrum lies. I always showed an interest in sports and especially baseball, but my dad put aside his allegiances and allowed me to form my own. My dad grew up in Pennsylvania and Maryland a devout Orioles fan, growing up alongside Cal Ripken Jr. He moved to the Twin Cities for my mom and let me adopt the local teams for my own. I was just 2 when we arrived in MN. I adored Cal, and the Orioles, along with my dad, but not as much as the hometown Twins. (When Cal came to MN to watch a tournament his son was in, my dad and I got to meet him!) I grew up rooting for Torii Hunter, Johan Santana, and Joe Mauer and adopted them as my father’s Ripken. Today, my dad and I both root for the Twins and Orioles as a way to connect with one another. But if the Twins play the Orioles, I’ll be wearing my Mauer jersey and my dad his Orioles hat.
My advice is let your son be who he is, and let yourself be who you are. A natural part of the father-son relationship is for the father to support the son and the son to look up to the dad. Your son will gravitate towards certain things that you do, and you will help out with things you normally wouldn’t if your son wasn’t involved. Let the relationship grow naturally. Don’t hide your past, but still allow him the room to grow up to be his own man.
Dave, I live in Raleigh, NC and have two adult sons and one adult daughter. They have been here since ages 6 and 4 and in the oven. I grew up in upstate NY as an LA Dodgers fan. My dad was from Brooklyn but had only a casual interest in sports. My mother had zero interest. I gravitated to the Dodgers because of my father’s Brooklyn connection and because all all my friends were Yankee and Mets fans and i liked to be contrary. The 63 World Series was near nirvana for me.. Why baseball? It was the sport in NY when I was growing up in the 50s and 60s.
I don’t think you can steer your son or daughter to any sport, let alone your sport. I have one son with a casual interest in the SF Giants (long story) and who is an avid UNC fan. My other two have little interest in sports in general. I exposed all to major league and minor league baseball. My love for the game just did not take root in my kids. Ultimately I raised all three to be independent, decent human beings. I succeeded and I am very happy about that, including the fact that they have their own interests independent of mine. Thus I wish for you the same success with your children, future and present, that I had with mine in what really matters.
I am Giants fan living in Denver with 3 boys (5.5, 3.5 and 2) and MLB.tv makes it really easy to train them up that way. (That and each of the getting to see a World Series clinching victory before their second birthday.)
I get what Dave says about his interest waning from being separate from community, but watching your team with your kids is awesome. Seeing a 2yo run around saying “Home run Giants!” in response to anything that happens in the game is great.
Started as a Cubs fan in 1984 at the wee age of 5.
Always watched during the years, but followed the media coverage and kinda stopped watching after the strike as I didn’t understand the arguments or economics at the time.
Came back right before the time the Cubs lost to the Marlins, and after playing video games, finding sites like MLB Trade Rumors, and sites like Fangraphs, what seems like a simple game is shown to be much more complex and beautiful.
I don’t have kids or plan on having them, but I would want this if I could. A child who could simply like the game for what it is, a game of failure, and learn how to apply it to life itself.
Knowing the difference between total success and failure can be 20 or 30 percent (.200 average vs .300) is a good analogy for life I believe. And, if you love all the teams, and all the players, not so much heartache. 🙂
With that said, I’m most likely a Cubs fan for life. 😉
I grew up/live in Melbourne, Australia. My dad had been passionate about baseball from when he travelled to the US as a young man, and then an older young man. He taught me how to play, and even umpired our (Australian equivalent) little league games when I was a kid. We watched the very few games they put on TV here together, and he even got me out of school for one of the World Series games (as they are played around midday Australian time).
With regards to picking teams – my family went to visit friends in Waco in ’99 – went to the Ballpark in Arlington and saw Rafael Palmeiro hit a grand slam on the day the Rangers clinched the West. Rangers fan for life.
That was until I worked in New York for a year. Mets fan now. I think that pertains to the sense of shared baseball community.
This story may not be all that relevant for you Dave, but thought I would just say that my dad never forced me to like baseball (my brother does not care for it) – sometimes it just clicks.
P.S. You should consider yourself lucky being only 3,000 miles from your team. Try 10,350 (It’s even more in kilometres!)
I’ve found fandom most comes from one two sources:
Growing up that way that in the family/region (but it’s generally got to be strong and well attached) so the fandom is reinforced. We have almost no baseball fans in my family, however virtually everyone for the last four generations is a 49er fan. I’ve seen this in regions (but not so much in CA which is populated, mostly, by people from other states and is fairly weak when it comes to fandom) where there is strong fandom in college and pro-sports.
Winning teams, especially during youth. Because the 49ers were pretty bad in the 60s and 70s, most of the kids I grew up with in Northern CA, especially in HS, were Cowboys, Raiders, Steelers & Broncos fans. Sure, when we were all in college and the 49ers started winning under Walsh, they all pretended they’d been 49er fans all along. But they were just bandwaggoners with fickle loyalties as their other teams were starting to decline.
I guess ill put my story out there as well…My baseball love goes all the way back to the age of 2 where there is home video of me with a plastic tee, bat, and ball in the front yard. I would hit the ball off the tee and run to get the ball than put it back on the tee to start the whole process over again. I hope my son (who is 17 months) will love baseball like I do and I hope I can take him to his practices, his games, the batting cages, games at Safeco the whole nine yards but if he doesn’t have any interest that’s fine too, because as you said that is what being a parent is all about. Welcome to Fatherhood Dave, its a hell of a ride.
I came to love my all-time favorite player, Kirby Puckett, through serendipity. My parents got me a 1988 Leaf (knockoff Donruss) set of baseball cards for my 5th or 6th birthday. I was going through them with my brother, who is four years older than me and introduced me to baseball, when I came across a Puckett card. It was the first one my brother had commented on. He said something to the effect of, “he’s pretty good.” That was it; that’s all it took. From then on I was obsessed with Kirby Puckett.
My step-father grew up in North Texas when we didn’t have a MLB team. He adopted the Milwaukee Braves as his team. Around the time he and my mother married, the Washington Senators moved nearby (to Arlington,TX), and he took me to games. I fell in love with listening to Dick Risenhoover and others call the games on the radio. I now have 3 sons (and 2 daughters). My oldest (22) is a Rangers fan, like me. My middle son (19) isn’t interested in baseball. My youngest (7) and I are gradually visiting every MLB ballpark together (2-3 per year).
I’ve always had an issue with those who don’t pull for the local team, instead rooting for a team 1,000 away in a city with which they have no connection. I don’t get it.
I grew up in Kobe, Japan. My father is from New York and mother from Hiroshima, neither of whom really cared much about baseball (or any other sport). Kobe had it’s own baseball team (they relocated to Osaka a few years ago), Orix BlueWave, and the local schools used to hand out free tickets to their games, so naturally I went to their games alot and started rooting for them. Also they had Ichiro. My father being a good father played catch with me and took me to the games too.
Grandfather on father’s side was and is a big Yankee fan, and he and I used to watch Yankees games whenever we visited New York, so I was a casual Yankee fan too. But when I was 14, our family stayed in Olympia for a year. If I remember correctly that was the year before Ichiro joined the Mariners, but they were the closest MLB team so we went to some of their games, and I was fascinated. Dad and I both knew that I didn’t have any kind of baseball talent, but he still let me join a local Little League team.
So no one really “taught” me to watch/love baseball, or a certain team. Gradfather on mother’s side used to root for the Hiroshima Carp, my brother isn’t all that interested in baseball, so unfortunately I don’t share my roooting interests with anyone in the family. I just ended up rooting for the 2 local teams in Japan and the US. I was lucky enough that the 2 cities I’ve lived in had a baseball team, and that my dad was willing to take me to the games even though he’s not much of a baseball fan.
Maybe I’m the last one in, but I’ve been checking in on this post since it went up: one of my favorite comment sections of all time! Thanks for kicking off such a great discussion, Dave!
I hadn’t noticed if my dad was more into baseball or football until now. He was always into anything his children were doing, and we were always involved in various sports and musical activities. I asked him tonight how much he had listened to SF Giants games during my childhood, and he said he sometimes turned on the radio for a game, but he was more into 49ers football than Giants baseball. I suspect that was because the 49ers started up when he was in his teens, but the Giants arrived in the Bay Area when he was in his 20s.
Somehow, my younger brother and I gravitated toward baseball, though we loved any sport. My mom told me a while ago that she is the one who taught us how to play the game, so our love for baseball probably grew out of mild interest from both parents, plus tons and tons of playing it. Within a few years the two of us boys would spend all our free time playing baseball (or some variant like pickle) in the driveway and with neighbors in the street until the darkness made it too hard to see the ball (or Mom would ring the dinner bell.) Our parents finally let us play Little League when I was 12 and my brother was 10. I kept playing on teams as long as a coach would let me.
I remember watching the Cincinnati Reds in the World Series (probably 1976). Willie McCovey’s return to SF in 1977 is when I first remember becoming a Giants fan, and it just kept growing on me. At some point, my dad gave me an old portable radio to listen to Giants’ games in my room.
Along the way, it became a tradition for my dad to take my brother and me to a Giants game at Candlestick every year. That probably reinforced the Giants fandom aspect for me (and reinforced my brother’s contrarian decision to root for the Dodgers!)
I carried on the tradition with my family to some extent at AT&T Park, until we moved away a few years ago. My grown son and I still talk Giants baseball occasionally, so that has been a good connection for us, but he didn’t take to it as intensely as I did. My practically grown daughters would probably call themselves Giants fans, but they are more interested in it for the social aspects than for the game itself. My wife encourages baseball as my “hobby” – in moderation.
Dave, I think your son will be somewhat interested in whatever you care about, but (as others have said here earlier) the shared experiences are more important than which team he roots for. Maybe you wind up with the best of both worlds, but even then he may have other interests that are more important to him than baseball. Enjoy the time you have; it goes by quickly.
Ah, children, they are their own creatures. My son was interested in baseball early on, and was fairly good in PONY League, he was the best of the players who didn’t play year-round, but his interest faded by middle school, and he has little interest now.
One might say that his early interest was influenced by my interest, but frankly, during that period of time, I was essentially boycotting baseball, after the strike that cost Matt Williams a chance to test the 60 homer barrier. I would look sometimes in the sports page, but didn’t really have any baseball paraphernalia like I did once I started returning to baseball with the McGwire-Sosa homerun battles, and particularly in the 2000’s.
Plus, I didn’t want to force his interest into any particular subject, I didn’t want to be “that Dad”, so I would encourage my kid’s interest when they exhibit it, not when it was something I was interested in. Though my love of Beatle’s music did seem to imprint on him, but to be fair, my daughter has zero interest in them and instead is gaga over K-Pop Idols!
Baseball has been my obsession on my own for the most part. My father came from China and immigrated here as a paper son when he was in senior in high school. So he was not interested in baseball, as far as I can tell, but knew of it enough that when I showed interest in the sport, he got me a mitt.
However, the mitt he got me (and Asians can appreciate this) was a catcher’s mitt, because it was big, sturdy (hence won’t break easily), and had a lot of material. I made him go back and get me another mitt, which turned out to be an outfielder’s mitt. I still have and cherish it to this day.
I love the democracy of baseball. Everybody gets a shot to be a hero. Which is important because while I had a passion for it, I wasn’t very good at it until I got to college. My height was always an advantage in basketball, but I was horrible around the rim when shooting. Being skinny and not greatly coordinated, I usually ended up playing rusher and blocker in football. In baseball, even when I played catcher, I could make the big play, block homeplate and tag the runner out. Or knock a blooper down the line and drive in the winning run.
I’ll admit that I became a Giants fan because in my first season they were playing winning baseball. But I’ve been a fan for over 40 years now, even though they played mostly losing and mediocre baseball for the next 16 seasons, I hung in there for all those years before they finally won it all.
My first memories of baseball are:
(A) my grandfather listening to the Red.Sox on the radio and jumping out of his chair, holering, “God DAMN that Malzone!!”, and
(B) having to use my father’s big, old, five-fat-fingered glove (from the ’30s?) In my little league games (1955).
My mom was the biggest (Red Sox) fam in the family…or came to be one after my dad died in 1974, out of some kind of loyalty to him, I guess, since she wasn’t before that.
But she listened to or watched every single Sox game for decades. A friend brought her back a ball from 1981 spring training signed by almost all the players and coaches, including Ted Williams. It was her prized posession. But she kept it in the sun. When the signatures faded over the years, she…lovingly traced over them in trembling ballpoint. In the very last game she ever saw, the Sox won the World Series.