Danny ChaiI wonder whether I’m going to make my kids be fans of the same sports teams I’m a fan of, or if I’ll let them make their own decisions. The reason is this – it’s tough growing up being a fan of a non-local sports team that isn’t great. It’s different if you’re a grown up transplant. You still spent your formative sports fan years with a local team. Or if the non-local team you root for is really good. You still get coverage.
But yeah, growing up a fan of a non-local team can be hard. Like, I was a Reds fan because of my dad. When he was in Ohio, the Reds were incredible, the peak of the Big Red Machine. So yeah, I was also. But you get a lot of flack from your friends, hardly any coverage of your team, stuff like that.
But at least when I was growing up the Reds and Giants were in the same division so there was some exposure. It must suck if, e.g. you’re a Falcons fan in an AFC city. SN. When I was younger, I classified major U.S. cities as being NFC or AFC cities. And don’t ask me why, but I thought of NFC cities as being hip, and AFC cities as being backwards. No clue why, maybe it’s just I followed the NFC more. So yeah, when my dad said we’re moving to Houston, my first reaction was, Houston? It’s so backwards. It’s an AFC city.
So anyway, it’s nice rooting for the same teams as your father, but I’m thinking about it, and if my kids were Reds fans, I dunno, that’s kind of odd. They’re basically Reds fans because of their grandfather, and that’s stretching familial loyalties a bit, no? I dunno.
Someday I’m gonna write about my 7th grade filipino girlfriend. I dunno, just looking back it kills me because we were so immature. I think part of it was just the shock that someone actually liked me – that took a while to get over. But yeah, like I’ve said before, we never talked at school and actually only had a handful of phone conversations. We wrote notes, and it was almost entirely about baseball. She was a huge Giants fan, me a Reds fan. So we’d write notes about how much the Giants/Reds suck and how awesome the Reds/Giants are. Did we ever talk about feelings? I doubt it. So that was our relationship in a nutshell. Notes about Giants/Reds, 3 phone conversations and assiduously avoiding each other at school.