The Triangulation.
I grew up in Pittsfield Massachusetts, which in the eyes of most sports fans should place me as a Boston Red Sox fan. But Massachusetts is a bigger place than most people would assume. Often when people ask me “how far is Pittsfield from Boston?” I say “about 2 and a half hours or as far as you can get without actually leaving the state.” For while in fact the word “Massachusetts” would indicate that my loyalty should be to the home state, in actuality my region of the state was/is a triangulation of 3 separate TV markets, covering 3 separate teams: the aforementioned Boston Red Sox, the New York Yankees, and (if you really hate the Yankees but can’t stand rooting for the Sox) the New York Mets, the one New York team (in any sport) I couldn’t hate if I tried. Growing up in the 80’s, way before ESPN and MLB started dominating the baseball airwaves, I had The Boston Red Sox on WSBK out of Boston, the New York Yankees on WPIX out of New York, and The New York Mets out of WWOR, Secaucus, New Jersey. Realistically, I had a legitimate claim on any one of these teams as “home town” teams, since they were brought to my living room in equal measure. I mostly gravitated to the Sox and the Mets, since I didn’t care too much for the Yankees and they were terrible in the 80’s anyway.
Fair Weather Fan.
Growing up, I was a classic fair weather fan. My reasons for liking teams usually had to do with players I liked, or teams that were doing well.
The first year I started watching baseball was 1984, (the year after the Baltimore Orioles last won the World Series). I had a sticker book of 1983, which required me to buy sets of stickers that fit into that book into the appropriate slots. The packets of stickers were about 60 cents each and contained about 6 stickers with either a baseball player or a baseball scene from that year. Because that sticker book was my obsession that summer, I will always remember a few random things, like that Rick Dempsey was the 1983 World Series MVP, and that the Kansas City Royals finished at an 81-81 record.
But I had no one team I favored. I liked Dale Murphy, so I liked the Braves. I liked Carlton Fisk, who was playing for the White Sox. That year, I watched my first World Series, and I liked the Tigers, who beat the Padres in 5 games (it really was no contest, as that team was a powerhouse that year). The next year, Kansas City won it all, and I for whatever reason started wearing a Royals hat (that was ill-advised). I even rooted for the A’s the year they got beat by Kirk Gibson’s walk-off homerun in Game one of 1988…for a very limited time, at one point or another I had a different favorite team, possibly because I had yet to discover things like team loyalty and hometown pride or the nobility in suffering (like Cubs fans or the Red Sox fans of those days did). I was just a kid who didn’t know any better back then.
1986
But my one true year as a semi-devoted fan of any one particular team was 1986, when I fully backed my “native” Boston (“about 2 and a half hours or as far as you can get without actually leaving the state”) Red Sox…except when I was watching my equally native New York Mets, who were also quite good that year.
Boston had Dwight Evans, Rich Gedman, Roger Clemens, Calvin Shiraldi, Jim Rice, Bill Buckner, and a host of other people I can’t remember off the top of my head. The Mets had Wally Joyner, Len Dykstra, Ray Knight, Howard Johnson, Darryl Strawberry, Dwight Gooden, Ron Darling, Gary Carter, Tim Teufel (of the “Tuefel Shuffle”) George Foster, Mookie Wilson, all managed by Davey Johnson, one of the best managers in baseball…come to think of it, it’s possible I remember more about the Mets than the Sox… (I’m trying to write this without googling: these are just the names I remember…) 1986 was a great year for my dual fandom of these teams, as I pulled for and followed them all year as they began their collision course with one another in that classic World Series. I had to pick a side: I chose the Sox…those of us who were alive and conscious during the 80’s know exactly how that one worked out…
I didn’t actually see the ball go through Buckner’s legs; it all happened past my bedtime (I was 10). My dad told me about it the next morning, in kind of a foggy and confused way that lots of Sox fans felt the next morning. I probably didn’t feel it as intensely as other new Englanders. But when I watched Game 7 and my favorite relief pitcher that year, Calvin Shiraldi, got hammered by the Mets (I don’t actually know what happened, this is just how I remember it), my heart sank as surely as if I’d actually seen that ball go through Buckner’s legs. (My adult self knows what an overhyped error this was. But it will unfairly go down in the annals of scapegoating, along with the Bartman play of 2003. Please, Chicago, forgive that man. Alou would’ve never caught that thing anyway!)
Anyway, after that year I kind of lost interest in the Sox. I just wasn’t as committed as I thought I was. Other than my year I followed the Athletics in ’88, I moved on to other things, namely music and playing the drums in little band called Lampstand. I didn’t watch sports at all for almost 6 years…
Baltimore.
And the next thing you know, I grew up and moved to Baltimore. Where, as it turned out, my love of baseball was restored…
It didn’t happen right away. I moved during the ’94 strike year. I was 18. But sometime during the 1995 season, when some guy named Ripken was making his run toward history, playing in a record 2131 consecutive games, I worked at a deli that was about a half block away from the celebratory parade route for Mr. Ripken, which we were allowed to skip out of work to attend. The next years the team went on two exciting playoff runs that united the city behind them. Suddenly they were the most important thing going. It was during that period right before the Ravens came to town and took primary ownership of the sports attention in Baltimore. In ’97, when the O’s went wire to wire, I remember being in a math class at my Community College, in another Game 6…people running out every other few minutes to check on the score (if this were today, I could have just followed along on my phone). And…the O’s losing to Cleveland in a heartbreaker…
Unlike those games of ten years earlier, this was in my city, my beautiful adopted home city, one I was proud to call home. I moved for my own reasons, but one of which was to be my own person, to assert my independence in a new place where things were fresh and exciting to me. I’ve always seen Baltimore with outsider’s eyes, and I’ve always felt like this was a gift. I love the people, the neighborhoods, the great many things to do, the fact that even now after 20 years I still discover new parks and parts of town I never knew existed, and even more, I love my teams. And while I have learned to love my Ravens (2 Super Bowls makes it easy), I love my Orioles just a little bit more…
The Dark Years.
Yeah, any O’s fan remembers the years between 1998 and 2011. We sucked. Gotta own it: if I refer to an Orioles win by saying “We Won!” I also have to be able to say “We lost.” after a loss. We sucked. Really, really, really, fucking sucked.
This team certainly spent a lot of time punishing me for turning my back on what should have been my childhood team. Watching the Red Sox win 3 World Championships may seem like punishment for not sticking with them. But at the same time, I am not that person anymore. I could no more call myself a Red Sox fan than I could stop breathing or singing in the shower or yelling “moo!” at cows on the side of the road, or yelling “puppy!” whenever I see a puppy. It’s just not me.
Even the Dark Years had their moments. I actually attended my first big league game in 1998. It was the O’s vs the Chicago White Sox, Mark Buehrle was pitching and I think Jose Canseco was still playing. I know that we lost. But I had so much fun going, I kind of didn’t care. My buddy’s dad took a group of us, bought us beers, and as we sat out on beautiful night of mediocre baseball, he seriously questioned why we’d all never done this before?
I really didn’t have an answer for that. But if it had taken me 23 years to finally make it to a big league game, I certainly have made up for that in the years since…
But these were the Dark years of multiple managers and ownership interference and stupid decisions and Albert Belle and losing Mike Mussina and a cover article in a national sports magazine detailing how bad and poorly mismanaged my team was. Things were so bad that a grass roots fan protest was organized: there was a mass walkout during a game, to protest the poor team play and the poor management that had led us into this horrible stretch. I wasn’t a part of that, but I wanted to be.
2012. Buck, and Why I continue to love baseball and the O’s.
Then Buck happened.
Buck Showalter taking over this team at the end of 2010 was the beginning of a sea change in Baltimore. After many years of many different managers, it finally looked like the ownership was getting serious when they hired Buck. The newspaper began printing the O’s record under Buck. And even though it was way late in the season and we were way out of the pennant race, Buck gave us reason to talk about the O’s.
My wife and I love Buck. We watch his press conferences, laugh at his gentle humor; bask in the glow of his simple wisdom. Buck gives us our little moment of Zen, every day. Nothing makes us feel better after a loss than listening to his long-view take on everything. And nothing grounds me more as a fan after a win then understanding his long-view. Baseball is a long season, 162 games a year. One win or win loss isn’t then end of the world, nor is it a reason to think too much of yourself. No matter what, Buck is in charge, and any success the team achieves is surely the result of his leadership, something we had lacked for so many years. One day there will be a statue of him out there past left/centerfield. I just know it.
Then the curse of the Andino happened.
Another major event involving the Boston Red Sox that I didn’t actually see. This was still during what can be considered the Dark Years. I only actually read about it on Facebook, and in spite of my lagging interest in my adopted home team, I at last was able to express pride in them for knocking out the Red Sox on the last day of the 2011 season. The Red Sox, a team whose fans had been invading our stadium for years and possibly edging out traveling New Yorkers for the title of Most Obnoxious Visiting Fans.
(SIDEBAR SOAPBOX: I have nothing against visiting fans. I have been one myself. I have made friends with visiting fans, most notably a very nice group of Detroiters, as well as we have made fans in other cities—San Diegans and Houstonians were all very nice. But when I visit another stadium, I am respectful of my place as a visitor. When I am in another city to see a game, I never refer to it as an “Orioles game”: If we are at an Orioles game played in San Francisco, it is a Giants game; if in Houston, it is an Astros game. To refer to another’s stadium as simply being the site of an “Orioles game” is disrespectful. You are a guest in that city: be polite. While I will cheer loudly for my team when they do something good, I do not smack talk the home team. I also do not lead cheers. In short, I am not an asshole. END OF SIDEBAR SOAPBOX.)
Then 2012 happened.
A magical run that turned my casual but steady fandom of this team into a full on obsession. Just before that season, my wife, who had possibly looked at my devotion to this team with loving but benign detachment, got on board. This was completely her idea and was not done with any coaxing from me and I love her for it. Suddenly she amassed a wealth of knowledge about all the Orioles personal stories, following them on Twitter and keeping up with up and coming stars. Whereas at one time I was driving the bus of the hopeless Oriole trip, now I have a partner in crime who rides with me and knows more about it than I do.
We followed that run all the way to the end. We had tickets and we endured the rain of the first two playoff games at home, yelled our heads off when we won Game 2; then we watched into the wee hours on TV, and even after finally losing to the Yankees in 5 games, I couldn’t help but be proud of my team, and their turnaround.
Now when I go to the home games and see the little Orioles highlight package of the last 60 years, culminating with the footage of the team celebrating on the field after the Wild Card win against Texas and the announcer saying “And the magical run of the Baltimore Orioles continues...” sometimes I have to stop myself from shedding a tear…
And Now…
I have met Orioles, gotten autographs, been interviewed by the TV news, travelled to other stadiums to follow the team, watched the standings, become the go-to guy at work for the answer to questions like "did we win last night?" and "who are we playing today?"…it is important to me in a way that is hard to explain to a non fan. Non fans can say “It’s just a game.” They are free to say that. But if it’s just a game, then it is a game that fills me with joy and exhilaration and dread and heartache and happiness and hope and pride and love. In short: all the things that make up life. The world is a fucked up place full of horrible things and assholes and unpleasantness and problems too big for me to make one damn bit of difference about. But baseball is solid, concrete, and in my view, one of the best diversions ever known to man. If I choose to care about this diversion, I at least keep my sanity and do not give in to the despair of the world.
Pride in a city, pride in a team, and an unwavering faith that one day (hopefully sooner rather than later) a team that I love will make it to the Promised Land have taken me full circle in my life as a baseball fan. While I have always followed the game, it has meant different things to me at different points in my life, and this is what it means now: a little pride, a little faith and a lot of love.
I have been a baseball fan all my life, an Orioles fan for 20 years. Rain or shine, good year or bad: that is what I am. I hope it all makes sense to you but I understand if it doesn’t.
Thank you for reading my words today.
July, 2014.
NOTES:
Things the non-hardcore baseball fan might need to know to understand some of my references:
1. The ball going through Buckner’s legs refers to a play in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series. In extra innings, with a runner on second and the game tied, Mookie Wilson hit a weak ground ball down the first base side, which should have been an easy play for first baseman Bill Buckner, only it went just under his glove and into shallow right field, bringing home Ray Knight, the winning run from third base.
2. “The Bartman play” refers to a foul ball hit with one out in the 8th inning of Game 6 of the National League Championship, Chicago Cubs against the Florida Marlins in 2003. While several fans went for the ball, the unlucky young Steve Bartman was the one whose hand actually tipped the ball preventing any possibility of a catch by the left fielder. Failure to make this out led the Marlins to a huge rally to overcome the Cubs, win the game, force a Game 7, resulting in the Marlins going to the World Series, which they won. There is a GREAT movie about this called “Catching Hell,” which you can probably find on Netflix. Here is a clip of the play.
