Can You Really Change the Team You Root For?

I have written enough about politics and especially the candidates running for president recently.  Let’s talk about something important and fun: baseball.  We are approaching spring (in fact, to those who follow the meteorological seasons, we are already in spring).  And, as everybody knows, in spring, a young man’s fancy turns to thoughts of … baseball.

During the “Rock Star Rookies” session at the Cubs Convention back in January (clearly, both types of winter), a fan stood up and said to Kyle Schwarber that it took a Hoosier (Kyle played college baseball at Indiana University) to change him from a White Sox fan to a Cubs fan.

On the day the Convention started, the Chicago Tribune had an article on Ben Zobrist, who grew up in Eureka, Illinois.  The athletic director at Eureka High School said that, while Eureka is normally split 50/50 between Cubs fans and the St. Louis Cardinals fans, with Ben signing with the Cubs, “a lot more people will be rooting for the Cubs now.”

Which raises a question.  How do you change the team who root for?  A movie came out about six years ago, “Looking for Eric.”  One of the characters in the movie decides he is going to root for a small local football team (i.e., soccer team {it’s an English movie}), instead of Manchester United, which he felt, under their American owners, had left the little fans behind.  The other characters ripped on him for being disloyal, one of them saying:

“I told you this, eh.  As bloke once said, you can leave, you can change your wife, you can change your politics, you can change your religion, but you can never, never change your favorite football team.”

Which I understand.  Because even if you could change who you root for today and tomorrow, what do you do about the past?  How do you change a lifetime of memories? 

Maybe more than others sports, baseball is about more than just today.  It’s about yesterday and last year and before that, too.  When you go to the park or watch a game on TV or the radio, it’s not just the players playing today.  It’s the memories of other games and players, too.  On Opening Day, it’s not just this year.  It’s Opening Days 20, 30, 40 years, too.  Standing in 1976; freezing in 1996 (and a lot of other years). 

And it’s not just the memories of games; it’s the memories of whom you went with, too.  When the Cubs won a 12-inning, five-hour-and-one-minute game against the Pirates on May 15 last year that I went to with my daughter, there was the memory of the 4-0 victory over the Braves in the “Lloyd McClendon game” on May 15, 1989, that I went to with my son.  When I go to Opening Day with my wife this year, I will remember going with her to Opening Day 40 years ago, too.

And when I go to the Cubs game on May 28 this year, I will remember the game my Dad and I went to 50 years ago, on May 28, 1966, when we sat in the first row of the bleachers and watched Ron Santo hit a three-run home run in the bottom of the twelfth inning to win the game.

Maybe you can pretend to change whom you root for, but deep down, I agree with the fan in “Looking for Eric”: “You can never, never change your favorite [baseball] team.”  Because you can’t change all those memories – and it’s memories that being a fan is really all about.