How did you first start liking your favorite team?

yankeeno7

Well, the thread about Griffey Jr sparked this question. How fans jump on their favorite teams because of how much they win etc.... for me, that isnt the case and just curious just HOW has anyone else come to like thier favorite team(s)?
I was 8 years old watching the 1977 World Series. That's when I saw Reggie hit 3 Home Runs...from there on I was a Yankee fan. Just that simple. My mother was a Pittsburgh Pirates fan so I didnt have anything drilled in my head to like any specific team. My father wasnt much of a baseball fan so no influence there.

frankhardy

Here in Western KY, we have a radio station that has carried the Cardinals games for years. I am 30 and have listened to the Cardinals games since about 1982 when they won the World Series. I remember one day (it had to be 1985 or 1986), I had just came inside from playing remembered that the Cardinals were playing. The game had already started. I turned on the radio, and the very second I turned it on, this is IMMEDIATELY what I hear......

(Jack Buck) - "SWING, AND A LONG ONE TO LEFT FIELD, THIS BALL IS......GONE.....A GRAND SLAM HOME RUN FOR TERRY PENDLETON!"

I will never forget that!

Knuckles

Favourite team - Edmonton Oilers
How? - They're the home team. Got hooked as a little kid watching Gretzky, Messier, Fuhr, etc.. hoist the cup over and over again in the 80's making them the last dynasty the NHL has seen.

With a 'small' market team we weren't able to keep our great draft picks once they became stars or acquire star players due to not having enough money. Now with the cap in place I'm very excited for this upcoming season. The Oilers can now get a star player or two and make a run for the cup.

CrazyJoe

I think i was born back in 1980 with a New England Patriots hat on. My Father has had season Patriots tickets since the early 80's and i have been going to every home game since i was 8 or 9. So I stuck it through a my share of 2-4 win seasons, Making the last handful of season's much more enjoyable.

VintageJeff

Back in 1988 or 1989 I believe I was 10 or 11 and my favorite uncle Jim died from cancer. We used to watch the cubs and the sox here in Chicago with most of my family being Cubs fans. Well Jim was both a Sox and Cubs fan and we used to watch games etc. Well my uncle was a very good guy and made friends with everyone. When he died the Cubs dedicated a game to his honor and also donated some money to their charity Cub care i believe in his name. The whole family was brought to the game and brought out onto the field before the game. We got to meet Harry Carey, Ryne Sandberg, Mark Grace, Dunston, Dawson, Steve Stone, Sutcliffe, etc. Got signed balls, etc. All in all it just made an impression on me at a young age that the Cubs were something special. The treatment we received at that game is one of the happiest and saddest days of my life. I will always be indebted to the Cubs organization for making one of the worst times in my life bearable and making the impression on me that my Uncle lived and died for something and was special to others besides myself and my family.

rbdjr1

Lived in Cleveland Ohio in the 50s and early 60s (guess my age? LOL!). And, as a kid, was treated to many a game at the ballbark (i.e., old Cleveland Municipal Statium). The Tribe was cool. Loved the "million dollar" scoreboard, and the great fireworks that "blew-off' anytime the tribe hit a homer. Even as a kid, I loved all those 50s and 60s baseball players.

I still get "goosebumps" when I see a vintage Indians Team card

rbd

WinPitcher

As a kid growing up in the late 50's early 60's almost everyone I knew was a yankee fan. It was easy to root for them. I however had to be different and since I had always liked the NL over the AL I , being from NY chose the METS.

Today however, i really do not have a favorite team. I like all the teams (even the mariners) I consider myself a fan of baseball. I just do not care to root for a certain team. (anymore)

Steve

fsjeter

Nothing as heartwarming as VintageJeff but here goes:

Basketball: I was born and raised in Indiana so the Pacers was the only logical choice. The ABA days were good. The NBA days haven't been as forgiving.

Football: Since we didn't have a team, I liked the Cowboys. They were my team because my brother liked the Steelers. Unfortunately, the Cowboys couldn't beat the Steelers in those days. In 1985, I watched Grambling State play Mississippi Valley State in the first Circle City Classic. MVS had a receiver that had an extraordinary ability to get open and hold on to the ball. Some guy named Jerry Rice. He got drafted by San Francisco so I started following the 49'ers. I claim them along with the hometown Colt's. Even though I moved to Las Vegas in '99, I still root for both.

Baseball: Another tale of two cities. Growing up in Indiana, there's really only three or four Baseball teams that people root for; the Cubs, Reds, White Sox, or Expos/Nationals. We only had a AAA team called the Indians. For the longest time, they were the farm team for the Cincinatti Reds before switching over to the Expo's and then back to the Reds. For me, it was a no brainer to choose the Reds and the Big Red Machine was somethin' special to watch in those days. I was also a Reggie Jackson fan in those days and when he went to the Yankees, I started dividing my time between the two teams. I still root for both.

DirtyDog48

Favorite Team - New York Giants. In 1961 the Giants were the darlings of New York City and one of my older cousins was an up and coming Madison Avenue ad executive. I got to hang out with my cousin's buddies from work at an NFL Championship Game Party as the Giants travelled north to Green Bay to visit the Packers.

The final score that day was Green Bay 37, Giants 0, but ever since that day when I got the chance to hang out with the grown-ups, I've been a diehard Giants fan.

tennesseebanker

I can remember my brother used to love the Cowboys and one day when I was very young they were playing the giants on t.v. Of course I was going to pull for any team other than the one my brother was pulling for. I believe the Giants upset the Cowboys that day and ever since I have been a major die- hard Giants fan. And thats not easy living in Tennessee. Every since then when the Giants and Cowboys play we always call each other and give each other grief.

tennesseebanker

I can also remember laying in my bed when I was very young trying to get reception of WLW from Cincinnatti on a cheap desktop radio with no antenna. The reception was almost always poor but just getting to hear a few innings was great. This was the Mid to late 70's so the Big Red Machine was strong then. I think I fell asleep many nights listening to MArty and Joe.

Robby

The year was 1958 , I was seven years old ! I was in kindergarten , and my school progress was way behind the other kids ! To find out why , my parents took me to the doctors office , and after numerous tests , it was determined that I had a hearing loss in my right ear ( nerve loss ) , and I had to wear a hearing aid ! Not knowing how severe my hearing loss might become , my parents decided to send me to a special school for the next three summer's , to take speech lessons , read lips , etc. ! At the time , Illinois State University in Bloomington-Normal , Illinois was one of the top places in the country for college students to learn to teach the handicapped ! So off I went , in the Summer of '58 ! My new home for the next 8 weeks , living in a college dorm with other kids with different forms of disabilitie's ( the deaf , hard of hearing , eating disorders , the mentally retarded , etc. ) ! We had a House Mother and a House Father , and under them were college students working to run the dorm ! Parents were only permitted to visit us twice during our entire stay ! So my first room-mate that Summer , was a kid named Greg Sperry , who just so happened to collect baseball cards ! He had thousands of them ( or so it seemed at that age ) ! He asked me who My favorite team was , and not having one , I looked at his cards , and picked out a Cardinal card , cause I thought they were the coolest card with the cardinal bird logo ! Always loved the Cardinal bird ( State Bird of Illinois ) , and that's how I became a Cardinal fan , because of a baseball card logo ! That Summer , Greg got to leave before I did , to go home ! When he left , I looked under his bunk mattress , and picked up around 200 cards ! And thus , I owned my first baseball cards , to which I STILL HAVE SOME OF THEM TODAY ( although they are really beat up ) !............................Robby.........

Stingray

It was sometime in the 70s, you drive up to the stadium, park a block or so away. You make the walk to the stadium and things are starting to liven up. Some street vendors with there t-shirts, hats and pennents, the guy selling penuts in the brown paperbag. Going through the gate you can smell the hotdogs at the concension stands and the smell of beer all around. This old stadium, I think to myself as I walk around the concourse to get to our section. But from there you take the walkway from the concourse into the stands and you see that green, green grass, your hooked. That is the way I felt and miss that feeling down at old Tiger stadium.

Stingray

zef204

In 1984 my grandfather took me to a dozen Cubs games including a playoff game against the Padres(I still hate Steve Garvey!) I was 8 years old and learned how to keep score at these games and had some great time with my grandfather. Most of the family are Sox fans so times are tough right now, but since I was 8 Wrigley Field has been my favorite place in the world to be. I have goosebumps thinking about it and I was there just last Sunday.

Going up the stairs and getting a view of the green grass and the ivy is simply breathtaking. My grandfather died in 1988 at the age of 90. He was 10 years old when the Cubs won the World Series last. He was at one of the games at West Side Grounds with his grandfather.

Axtell

Back when I first started being conscious enough of sports to wanting to follow a team in the mid 80s, and being here in california, I had an abundance of sports teams to choose from to follow.

Everyone was either a 49ers or a Raiders fan in football, and a Giants or A's fan in baseball. So I started looking around a bit, and wondered why you had to root for the team that just happened to be closest to you (even though they were both hours away).

So I looked at which teams were the worst, and figured those teams could use another fan a lot more than the teams I mentioned above (rooting for the underdog has long been my thing). So I chose the Seattle Mariners and Tampa Bay Buccaneers to root for.

There were (of course) some really lean years, especially at my last job where everyone was a 49ers fan and I'd have to put up with a lot of good natured ribbing.

All in all, I'm very glad I chose those teams to root for.

Cubfan

I grew up outside of Chicago as was 6 or 7 in 1966. Luckily, we got WGN on our TV and they televised over 100 Cubs and White Sox games each year, which was fairly unusual back then. The White Sox jumped channels in 1968 or so which left the Cubs as the only team on TV to watch. One of my favorite memories was playing sick in 6th grade to watch the Cubs opening game. It was the famous Willie Smith game. I probably watched over 100 games each year until college.

WinPitcher

Kieth around 1966 and 7 those cubs were among my fav teams

santo, williams, banks, beckert, kessinger, adolpho phillips, hickman, hundley, holtzman 9-0 etc etc etc

jenkins,

i can still remm them guys like it was yesterday


i have always been a fan of the game, not just one team.

the mets if I had to choose one.

steve

baseballfanatic

Listening to older fans talk about the game. Everyone where I grew up was either a Phillies or a Mets fan, so in order to be able to make sense of a lot of what they were saying, I started to watch the Mets games on WOR channel 9 and the Phillies games on UHF on channel 17. We were one of the lucky families because we had a rotor to turn the aerial on top of the house so I could catch both the NY and Philadelphia games. No one really talked about the Yanks and just enjoyed rooting for the underdogs of that era. The more I watched the more I learned so I could join in the conversations with the old timers. They always had the upper hand because they would always "cheat" and tell stories of the older players which started me reading tons of baseball books on the older players and the history of the game. I could get a gist of what they were saying from all the reading I was doing, because conversations always went like this:

"Johnny Briggs is having a heck of a start this year"

"Yeah, but he aint no Richie Ashburn. That boy could hit"

"Wanna talk hitting? I saw Mantle hit some clouts that still havent come down yet"

"Yeah, that boy could hit, but when it comes to bat control, no one could hit like Hornsby"

The more names I heard, the more I got into reading the history of the game and became more and more fascinated with some of the old timers stats. I started following the Phils with the Bunning and Short rotation and wished what it would have been like to follow them when they had Roberts and Simmons in the same rotation.....

NewJerseyMeatHook

Twins, Vikings, North Stars.

Grew up near the Mall of America, er, Metropolitan Stadium. A blue-painted chair still hangs from the ceiling at the Mall representing the farthest homer hit there by Harmon Killebrew.

Oliva, Carew, Puckett, Page, Marshall, Eller, Tarkenton . . . etc.

smallstocks

True story. I was in kindergarten and my older sister ran by me in school and said they were watching the baseball World Series. The year was 1969. I asked who was playing and she said the Mets and the Oreos. I thought the Oreos were a cookie so I decided to root for the Mets. The rest is history!

Mike

julen23

Being a hip 7-year old in 1979 I really liked Sister Sledge. I also liked the Pittsburg Pirates too.

The rest is history....

Julen

mtcards

In the 4th grade, our pencil dispenser we had in the cafeteria had those striped NFL team pencils in it (Not the solid ones, but with stripes. You could by the solid set in Kmart and such, but the stripes were only dispensed individually). I was not a sportsfan yet, but knew that some of the kids were willing to give you 25 to 50 cents for Steelers and Dolphins pencils and up to a buck for a Cowboys pencils. Always though that was cool, so I started collecting them and making a profit. Made a bet in 1979 with another guy who was a Steeler fan, my two Steeler pencils for his two Cowboys pencils on who won the Superbowl. Of course I lost when the Steelers won 35-31, but I watched and was a Cowboys fan then and the rest is as they say..history. I remain a Cowboys fan to this day, although I do root for the hometown team..the Titans. Looking forward to the Titans suffering to 4-5 wins this year.

SDSportsFan

Favorite teams - Padres and Chargers...since they're my hometown teams

Lakers since San Diego has never been able to support a pro basketball team for more than 4 years at a time

Avalanche...since they and I both moved to Colorado in 1995 (first time I'd been near enough, and was able to watch hockey)


Steve

Stone193

I rooted for the Dodgers then when I was in school in NYC jumped over to the Yanks but then.....

she influenced my rooting interests!

rmoss

They moved to Atlanta in 1966 and became the closest team to me. Ted Turner had the good sense to televise all their games even on the Charlotte station he owned back then. I could get the Braves locally on Channel 36 in Charlotte. Voila, I became a Braves fan. Loved them even when they were terrible.