User Comments, Suggestions, or Complaints | Privacy Policy | Terms of Service | Advertising
Buy MLB playoff tickets, plus 2011 World Series, 2011 ALCS tickets and NLCS game tickets. We also have Texas Rangers playoff schedule, tickets to Red Sox games and Yankees game tickets. Plus, buy Phillies baseball tickets, Tigers playoff tickets and the biggies like ALDS baseball tickets and 2011 NLDS tickets. |
Demarini, Easton and TPX Baseball Bats
|
AllianceTickets.com has cheap MLB Tickets. Get all your Colorado Rockies Tickets, Seattle Mariners Tickets, San Francisco Giants Tickets and all your favorite baseball tickets here. We also carry cheap Denver Broncos Tickets, Seattle Seahawks Tickets and Denver Nuggets Tickets. |
Page rendered in 0.6200 seconds
54 querie(s) executed
Reader Comments and Retorts
Go to end of page
Statements posted here are those of our readers and do not represent the BaseballThinkFactory. Names are provided by the poster and are not verified. We ask that posters follow our submission policy. Please report any inappropriate comments.
Except the Yankees. They lost.
Hmmm, LeBron would be 'coming of age' and choosing his sports allegiances during the mid-90's. Who was really good during that time? Well, probably not the Bulls, Cowboys, and Yankees because LeBron's not a frontrunner!
Hmmm, LeBron would be 'coming of age' and choosing his sports allegiances during the mid-90's. Who was really good during that time? Well, probably not the Bulls, Cowboys, and Yankees because LeBron's not a frontrunner!
But if he's stuck with them through the hard times...is he still a frontrunner?
If he's enough of a 'fan' for it to mean something for him to wear the cap, he's got to know as a 'fan' how the local fans will feel about it. It was a slap in the face to Cleveland fans.
Thank goodness he's a Cowboys fan, or else he might wear a Steelers cap in the Dawg Pound.
Ain't that the truth... to this day, I remain a Buffalo Sabres fan for no other reason than endless hours of Sega's NHL 94. Mogilny, Hawerchuck, and LaFontaine -- that was a fun line to play with.
Forgive me - why? Because he plays for the Cleveland NBA team? Because he's from Akron?
He doesn't play baseball - he has no obligation to root or not root for a specific baseball team.
When I first came to America, the first sport that got my attention was basketball and being in New York, I became a Knicks fan. As time passed, this baseball thing seemed more and more interesting and I became a Yankee fan. I never cared much for the rest of the sports, until Dreamcast came out and NFL 2K was the most awesome thing ever. Unfortunately, I sucked with every team because I found it impossible to succeed on offense in that game without leaning on the pass...and that is how I became a Colts fan.
guess that means i'm okay?
Yeah, LeBron rooting for the Yankees now really shows how he'll stick with them in the hard times. It's awful hard to have the largest payroll by 25% in the league and to have made the playoffs 14 years in a row. Sheesh.
Change it to Techmo Superbowl and that's why I'm a Lions fan. Yeah, that was a great decision.
He's probably talking about the Bulls when he asks that question(they still suck right?). And the Cowboys haven't exactly been a powerhouse lately either, although they're good again now.
Haven't the Cowboys and Bulls had some pretty rough stretches in the last 14 years? I didn't say each of his teams had to experience a rough stretch.
The Bulls are actually halfway decent right now, but I doubt he still roots for them, at least not openly.
No, the Bulls are (unfortunately) good again. Probably better than The Cleveland LeBrons.
I have no problem with that. Don't say you aren't a frontrunner when your favorite three teams are the three teams that every frontrunner in the 90's picked.
I'm not sure I understand. Are you suggesting that James roots for the Yankees because it will get him endorsement contracts?
Having seen many games in San Diego and Anaheim, where visiting team fans often are out in packs, I do the same thing. When I have watched the Reds or the Padres in LA or SF, I behave as you apparently do.
Some fans, however, take the opposite approach and as Shredder noted, and seem to need to say "Look! I am a (Yankee, Cub, Red Sox et al) fan!"
I didn't think it was strange or a stab in the back, given how good the Yankees have been during the last 12 years, and his position in life, but it was obviously a very bad PR move. He will hear about it periodically from Cleveland fans and media, unless he goes on a Jordan-type run, which IMO he will not, although he is a great player. He is from Akron.
I sat in front of Flip Saunders at a Twins-Cleveland game a few years ago, when Flip was still coach of the Timberwolves. He is from Ohio, and is apparently a Cleveland fan. His son was rooting vocally for the Twins as Flip was very quiet through most of the game. He clapped a few times when Cleveland scored, but it wasn't totally obvious that he was rooting for them....that's the way I think smart people play that situation. They had a good time at the game, pulled for their own teams, went home, and no one booed them or really even noticed.
Of course, the Cowboys and Bulls were dominant in the early 90's, but the Yankees sure weren't...
In this case, yeah. The guy is an icon in Ohio and has been since he was a freshman in high school, and has been marketed as the savior of a downtrodden franchise and to some extent actually has been. In the big picture, of course, it is trivial, but I can see why it would bug people in Cleveland and Northern OH.
*snicker*
I was born in San Francisco and my godfather, who raised me, worked for the Giants as part of the groundscrew, both at Seals Stadium and Candlestick. I grew up listening to Russ Hodges and Lon Simmons for a very practical reason. When the game was over (and there were a lot more day games in the early 60's), my godmother would start cooking dinner, as my godfather would get home about 90 minutes after the game. As you can imagine, I grew up a huge Giants fan (which stopped about 2 years into the Dusty Baker mismanagement plan).
In the late 60's, my godfather couldn't stand Charlie O. Finley and the A's. Hated them. I followed suit, but decided to find a team to root for in the American League. In perfect pre-teen logic, I picked the team that was furthest from Oakland. My rooting for the Red Sox started then. Besides, I thought the way Luis Tiant pitched was pretty cool.
I had my favorites established by age 9. I don't remember knowing anything about pro sports when I was 6.
Ahem
My favorite game as kid was Tecmo Bowl, are you sure you're not a Raiders fan?
Luckily I went with the frontrunners of 49ers and A's back then and stick with them today.
As my Wikipedia experience has taught me, not even close.
Assuming that LeBron was playing basketball since he was about 9 months old, and was ready to choose his favorite team when he was 6-7, he was doing it right at the moment when Jordan was the sport's biggest star and his team was solidifying into a dynasty. The Cowboys became a juggernaut a year or two later. The Yankees of course weren't a good team until 1994 and not a great team until 1996 - LeBron would have been 9-11 then, but if he didn't get into baseball until that age (just as I didn't get into basketball until that age), then they would have been a frontrunner's choice.
Best friend in elementary school (middle of Nevada desert) liked the Dolphins. I thought the orange and aqua was cool. Fully enjoyed Dan Marino's run - never stopped thinking they'd win a Super Bowl. Learned about the importance of defense and the running game. Stopped liking them when they fired Don Shula. Adopted the Bucs when they hired Tony Dungy - just liked his class and the new team colors that came around then. Coincidentally moved to Tampa and have rooted for the Bucs since, though Jon Gruden has made it harder. The Colts became my AFC team when Dungy got there. Rooting for laundry is one thing, but now strikes me that rooting for coaches is pretty unusual.
With all the other sports, it was more normal. A friend took me to a Jazz game when I was a jr. high kid in Utah and have rooted for them since. Gained interest in baseball as a college student in Missouri and became a fan by listening to Jack Buck. Became conscious of hockey in Tampa only a few years ago, went to some games, and now love the Lightning. Adopted the Devil Rays at that time because every orphaned child needs pity.
I don't really know why I became a Kansas basketball fan. I lived in Missouri (although just over the state line) and everyone around me was a Mizzou fan, and Mizzou was really really good (the Doug Smith/Anthony Peeler days) while KU was just getting off probation. I think I liked Roy Williams and I liked the colors so I cheered for them, much to the ire of my classmates.
I've always been interested in how people from areas without professional sports select the teams they will cheer for.
Rooting for Dungy is pretty easy, though. As a Steelers fan, I want Tony's Colts to win every game except the ones where they have negative implications on the Steelers playoff status. He seems like an intellectual, sensitive guy and I love the way he runs his teams.
Rooting for Belichick, on the other hand? Maybe rooting for him to acquire some sort of festering venereal disease...
What's terrible is that I have the opposite I have a knee-jerk anti-success fandom. I moved from Boston to the South Side of Chicago in the middle of 2005 and there was no way in hell that I could ever be a White Sox fan, simply because they were in first place by about 43 games. I became a Braves fan in the Rick Mahler era and then dropped them about '96, and my favorite non-Red Sox teams are Pittsburgh and Kansas City.
I became a Bears fan because I really like bears.
If I lived where we didn't have hometown teams, I don't know who I would have followed. Video games didn't exist and other than NBC's Game of the Week on Saturdays, there wasn't much baseball on TV. In football, it might have been the Patriots because I loved their cool helmets with the revolutionary minuteman playing center. When they got Jim Plunkett, that probably would have sealed it. In basketball it probably would have been the Pittsburgh Pipers because of Connie Hawkins. I have no idea who I would have adopted in baseball. I was so absorbed in the A's, I didn't really care about any other team. I suppose whichever team was playing the Giants would have been my favorite.
So pretty much I root for Detroit teams, Alabama, and Michigan. I cannot imagine putting in a full effort in rooting for someone else (and I currently go to a school with the #1 team in college football, I could care less and hope they lose November 3rd). If my favorite team is out of it-I usually root for players I like more then the teams they play for.
I went to the Tigers-Braves series this summer, I wore my Detroit hat and shirt to the game, but was not an ####### fan, though I did openly cheer for my team. Atlanta fans do not deserve any respect.
WORD.
As far as LeBron's hat goes, what it was was a stupid PR decision. If he was five years older, he probably would have said to himself, I may be a Yankees fan, but wearing an Indians hat is really going to make these people love me
Some fans, however, take the opposite approach and as Shredder noted, and seem to need to say "Look! I am a (Yankee, Cub, Red Sox et al) fan!"
The best are the people who try to start trouble at a road game for one of their team's minor-league affiliates. One of the biggest douches I've ever encountered was a guy who was relishing the chance to wear full Mets regalia and cheer for whichever Mets scrubs he had heard of when the Red Barons were hosting the Norfolk Tides. Unfortunately it seemed like the only names he recognized were Shinjo! and Timo Perez, so he kept silent unless one of them was batting, except for his outburst of scorn when the Mets took the lead after a meltdown by Amaury Telemado or Greg Kubes or somebody.
Yeah, he was sitting by himself.
How did someone living in Seattle become a lifelong fan of a team 2,000 miles away, that plays in a city he's never been to?
I emigrated to the US from England with my family in 1966, when I was eight years old. I know that both countries share a common language, but believe me, the culture is different, especially if you're eight - and especially if no-one tells your mother that American boys don't wear short pants to school. I'll remember that day for the rest of my life.
One of the first things that I really connected with in this country was baseball. I had never played it before, but the other kids seemed willing to give me a chance, perhaps because I was an outsider. I played Little League for two years - right field, of course, because no-one ever hit the ball there. Eventually I learned the rules, and got drawn into the history, and the glamour of the game. It became the first thing about this country that I related to, and loved, on a gut level. I could quote Ted Williams' batting stats when I was in 8th grade- and he retired long before I came here.
In 1969, when I was 11, the Seattle Pilots played their one and only season in the American League, and what had been an interest turned into a passion. I can remember listening in bed on the radio to an extra-inning game, hoping that my parents wouldn't be able to hear...
I went to only four Pilots' games, but probably listened to 90% of them on the radio. I lived and died with Jerry McNertney, Don Mincher, Tommy Harper, Steve Hovley...and Jim Bouton. When the Pilots left for Milwaukee I was heartbroken. There was no way I was going to root for the thieving Brewers! The only thing to do was pick another team. Ray Washburn, a major-league pitcher of the time, grew up in the next street over from us, and though I had never met him, I decided to root for his team. Washburn had pitched his entire career for the Cardinals, but was traded over the winter of 1969-70 to the Cincinnati Reds, so that became my new team. The first year I rooted for them, they went to the Series, losing to Baltimore in five. (I can remember sneaking off to the gym at school to listen to the radio broadcast of the WS games, where the coaches would let us listen to it.) Having the Reds go to a World Series that first year probably cemented my affection - I've been a die-hard (and that's understating it) Reds fan ever since. I cannot conceive of rooting for another team. Though I follow the Mariners, I'm first and foremost a Reds fan.
The best moment of my life, bar none, was when Yaz lifted a routine fly to Cesar Geronimo with two out in the ninth inning of game seven of the 1975 World Series. There is no feeling in the world like rooting for a team that wins the World Series. It's better than sex. Really. I feel very fortunate to have seen the Reds win three championships, the 1990 WS clincher coming on my birthday. What a present!
Anyway, I played first base in high school (three years, hit .214 with NO extra-base hits), but realised that I didn't have the talent to play in college. I still wanted to be involved, so I was student manager/statistician for the University of Washington baseball team for four years. Don't laugh - it paid my way through college, and I got a letterman's jacket, blanket, and ring out of it. And there's no difference between athlete's letter jackets and a manager's - a handy fact when dealing with girls...
Baseball makes me feel like an American. It lets me connect with the culture as passionately as any native-born son or daughter. It IS America.
Two last things. Yes, I also love soccer. And yes, the Spitfire was a better fighter than the Mustang. :-)
Personally, I could care less. As long as the Indians are the team to win the next Championship, I don't give a rat's ass what LeBron does. This kind of stunt does nothing but fuel the media speculation about him leaving Cleveland after his first contract though, which I do find annoying.
I also don't get why fans shouldn't wear their teams colors in other stadiums. I understanding not acting like an idiot. But every normal person should feel free to wear the colors of the team they support.
Wow, I disagree with that. LeBron doesn't earn any respect from me by picking "America's Team" in every single sport, but at least allow him to be loyal to the team that he has chosen. Wearing the hat of a team you don't like in order to pander to local fans is despicable. He should have just gone hatless and kept quiet when the Yanks did something good.
WORD.
I liked to use the Bruins so I could be Ray Bourque. I didn't see a need for more than one good player in that game.
Come to think of it, I was a mild Bruins fan for a few years - until I saw a hockey game on TV.
The best part about being a Bears fan in the early 90's was that in video games I could use my favorite team when I mastered the game enough to punish myself with a weak squad.
Your dad should have his kids taken away!
Just kiddin.
At age 15 I had nothing else to do during the summer so I got into the habit of watching the Phillies games on TV, and that was it. I suppose Harry Kalas converted me, although I thought the color man (Larry Andersen) was more entertaining at the time. It certainly wasn't because the team was very exciting, although they did convince me that the Beech/Grace/Loewer rotation had a chance to be the Maddux/Glavine/Smoltz of the new millennium.
That's a touch strong, don't you think? "Despicable"? The wise thing to do is make a show of being a fan of the local team. People do it all the time. It's not despicable, it's good business, and what's more, if you're not an idiot, then nobody ever finds out.
Just ask Hillary Clinton.
EDIT: Or just about any politician, for that matter.
Despicably good, to be specific.
I settled on the A's when I was 51. Hey, I never claimed to be a fast learner.
Ok. How about "lame" instead.
Here's my formulation:
If you or a friend/relative is or was employed by the Yankees in some capacity, you get a pass.
If you're a native New Yorker, you get a pass.
If you're descended from a native New Yorker who was a Yankees fan, you get a grudging pass.
If you live or have lived in New York and prior to that had had no team, you get a more grudging pass.
If you're a legal adult, have never lived anywhere near New York and have no New York natives in your family, you don't remember who Stump Merrill was, and you're wearing a Yankee cap, I think I have the right to call you out.
For him to attend a playoff game in Cleveland, and very transparently and openly root against the Cleveland team, is quite rude. And rather pointless, unless he was trying to cater to the NY and national media, in which case this might have been a PR plus for him rather than a minus (albeit a mild one, in either direction).
I agree he was probably trying to be funny and "rib" the Cleveland fans, but that's about an impossible task in this scenario. It can probably be chalked up as a mild example of the kind of poor judgement we can expect from a normal 22-year-old.
We moved to Philly in right after the Reds lost the WS to the dreaded Yankees in '61. I flipped in the space of a year and of course, suffered the heartbreak that was '64. I think I flipped because of 1) peer pressure 2)the Phils had a lot of young players and 3) it was just hard to follow an out of town team long distance in those days.
I started following the other sports at about 11 or 12, rooting for the locals. I usually had secondary favorites based on the players or the style of the teams. I liked the Redskins of the Hogs days, Portland in b-ball in the Walton days. I hate the Cowboys and the Knicks, even if I could appreciate certain players like Emmitt Smith and Willis Reed. I didn't like Jordan so much.
The best time I ever had at a sporting event was in the Montreal Forum circa 1980, the tail end of the Broad Street Bully days. I think Montreal had won a bunch of Cups in a row. There were some goofs on the bus and they cheered loudly and lewdly for the Flyers and eventually got tossed. Fortunately, I was sitting amongst some Quebecois and we behaved pretty civilized and had a great time talking about hockey (of which I knew little) and doing some good natured joshing. The Flyers tied the game in the last few seconds, which left the Habs fans a bit down.
At this point, I would say that you could probably do this with the Red Sox too.
Bootlick.
Just ask Hillary Clinton.
The New York Times weighs in on this white hot political controversy.
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
I know who signs the checks.
I was a Padres fan until I moved to VA in 78 and had the Tidewater Tides to cheer for, my Mom's family is from NY and I went to my first Met game in 82-83, I can't remember though I know I have the ticket stubs at home. Really there was no better time to show up in the Tidewater area to become a big Mets fan. So I would say I became an official Met fan around 9 or 10.
I went to HS with Alonzo Mourning though he was a Senior when I was a Freshman(never met him). So I became a fan of whatever team he played for with Georgetown being by far the toughest to stomach.
Being a Charger/Mets fan made Sun 9/30 probably my toughest day of fandom, though this is the first time(last year) I can remember them both being competitive at the same time.
Oh and I love sports because while being so miserable a week ago, what better gift can I be given than to come to work this week fresh off my Bolts handing the Broncos(I live in CO) their worst home loss since the merge.
Really? Where in Nevada? I had almost the same experience, I picked the Dolphins in 2nd grade because a friend liked them, and I lived in a small town in the middle of Nevada.
As for me, I picked the Giants because being from Northern Nevada, they (and the A's) are the closest thing to hometown teams we have.
My father thought this was a simple thing: if a team from your division is in it, you root for them ("Go, My Division!"); if not, you root for your league (American/National). This formula had me rooting for the Brewers in the 1982 World Series, even though I knew very little about them at the time. I had asked my father who to root for, since our team wasn't in it and I vividly remember how he told me this, like it was some totally self-evident unassailable truth. Anyway I cried. It was the first world series I paid attention any kind of serious attention to. (I was 8.) Since then I've had warm feelings for the Brewers (and Paul Molitor, et. al.) and irrational antipathy for the Cardinals. And the insipid National League. The lifeless, wooden suck-hole of the National League, which is a stinking turdmagnet that sucks and stinks and also is sucky.
LeBron comes off as a dips*** for doing this, not much more. As for pandering to some kinda NY media thing, I don't understand it. Does he REALLY wanna play for the Knicks someday? Yikes.
I was born and raised here in Seattle. We were both born in '77, so it works out pretty well. I was almost 2 when I went to the '79 All-Star game (and don't remember a thing). My father was a HUGE baseball fan his whole life and he passed away in '85 when I was 7. Some of the best memories I have of him are of the two of us going to M's games together. No matter how bad the M's do or how badly they're run I'll always enjoy their games. I don't think I cared about football until I was 10 or 11 ('hawks) and basketball until I was 13 or 14 (Sonics). To this day, I could care less. Started following hockey after Gretzky moved to LA, and a huge Ave's fan for the last 10 years or so (my wife being from Denver).
In baseball, I root for whoever eliminated the Yankees and I root for them to beat everyone worse than they did the Yankees so that I can raise the "at least we were the only ones to put up a fight" argument that I learned as a Knicks fan in the '90s. The one exception is that I would die before I rooted for the Red Sox.
In basketball, I do the same, except the Knicks haven't made the playoffs in a while, so it's not as easy, lately I've been rooting for the Mavs/Cavs/not Steve Nash/not Dwayne Wade.
In football, if/when the Colts and Giants are eliminated I root for the team with the highest ranking black front office personnel.
Then I moved to Ohio and wised up.
Indians
Browns
OSU
COW
I became an Indians fan in 1989 so you know I am not a fairweather fan.
What if LeBron was born in Boston and is playing for the Celtics but went to a Red Sox-Yankees game wearing a Yankees hat at Fenway and telling the fans to deal with it?
How would that go over?
Edited for clarity.
Because he couldn't stand their possessive fans?
I can't see what good it would do for Cleveland fans to make a huge issue out of this. There's simply no upside in quarreling with their superstar over such a silly thing.
Central Ohio Wesleyan?
College of Ohio Wesleyan?
Something Wesleyan?
Or do you just root for cow colleges in general? But then you repeat yourself, having already mentioned Ohio State.
I like the "root for the team that eliminated you" most of the time. So you follow them throughout the playoffs and claim that anyone they beat, you could have beaten too. And you were just unlucky when they beat you.
I was rooting for the Cardinals over the Tigers.
But once in a while, a team makes you so angry that the hate overcomes you. Like I'd never root for the NY Rangers. I would never root for the Miami Heat. I would never root for the 2007 Phillies because of Rollins and his big mouth (but I'll forgive them quickly now that they were swept).
A better question is if you can root for the other team that shares your city. I say you can never show an ounce of loyalty to that team that fights yours for newspaper and television time. The only time it's permissible to root for them is when they play your division rival in a way that directly impacts your team's success, and even then, it should be painful to root for them (like Yankees over Braves during interleague play). I will never understand the "I'm a fan of the city" people. I think they may, in fact, be communists.
Oh, that? That's, um...not for Boston at all! That's, um, in honor of his grandfather, Boey Bathright! Yeah, that sounds plausible enough.
I'm sick of hearing how Dwayne Wade is doing something that "reminds me of when Michael used to"-Doug Collins. I'm sick of hearing how Dwayne Wade is teh clutch. I'm sick of hearing how Dwayne Wade is a winner. I'm sick of hearing how Dwayne Wade is such a complete offensive player when he can't hit 3s. I'm sick of seeing Dwayne Wade get away with the most egregious abuse of the travel rule currently in the NBA. I'm sick of watching Dwayne Wade shoot free throws because he was "fouled". I'm sick of Dwayne Wade.
Steve Nash...I just plain don't like. Kidd is/was better and he never got anywhere near the level of adulation.
Don't mess with the Scots.
You must be Registered and Logged In to post comments.
<< Back to main