Sports : For the love of baseball, and it’s teams

Well, summer sports season is over, fall sports it just around the corner, and now we can devote our full attention to the Major League pennant races, and there are some good ones right now.

The length of the season, the number of games and the regional loyalties of baseball make for some interesting situations for fans.

See, I have always believed that in baseball, it is possible to have a FAVORITE team, but also have other teams that you pull for – teams that you like but they aren’t your FAVORITE – as well as teams that, under no circumstances do you ever want to see succeed.

My favorite team is, sadly enough for me, the Kansas City Royals. I became a Royals’ fan way back in 1973 when my family made a side trip to the then-brand new Royals’ (now Kauffman) Stadium. These were the days when the Royals were just beginning to become the team that would win seven division titles, two American League pennants and a World Series from 1976 to 1985.

I spent three years in the Army in Fort Riley, Kansas in the late 1970s and one our favorite weekend forms of entertainment was weekend road trips to KC to watch the Royals in their division-winning years. And, then, of course, we lived in the Kansas City area for almost eight years from 1997 to 2004, so our family’s loyalty to the Royals is well ingrained.

But then there are my other teams. The St. Louis Cardinals have always been my favorite National League team. I learned that from my Dad, who grew up listened to Cardinal games on the radio as a kid. We started taking vacations to watch the Cardinals when I was 10 and that loyalty has never waivered; although I did pull for the Royals in the 1985 World Series.

Then there are three other teams I always like to see succeed. One is the Colorado Rockies. I have aunts and cousins there, and when I was young, Denver was always kind of a western home to us. Another is the Anaheim Angels, mainly because of their association with the Cedar Rapids Kernels and the fact that they might be the best organization in baseball. And then there’s the Boston Red Sox. I have always liked the New England mystique of the Sox, Fenway Park and their incredibly loyal and crazy fan base. And the fact that they are the arch-nemesis of the New York Yankees.

The rest of the Major Leagues I am fairly ambivalent about; I have lots of Twins’ fans, so while I’m not a fan, if they win I’d be happy for them. The White Sox are interesting, but nothing to get too worked up about. There really are only three team I really do not like and really enjoy watching them lose.

First it the Tampa Bay Rays. There is no explanation why I don’t like the Rays, other than any team that plays in Tropicana Field should not win.  While their farm system has done a good job of developing talent, in a year or two when they can’t afford to pay these guys and they all leave to free agency, all the people I see running around now with Rays’ caps on will be stuck with them.

Then there are the Yankees.  I despise the New York Yankees. If they were playing the Taliban’s baseball team, I’d wave a Taliban pennant. The Yankees and their late owner ruined the competitive balance of baseball, which makes all the more enjoyable when they lose. They are arrogant and cocky and are proud of it. While I don’t like the Rays, their one good point is that they and the Red Sox could conceivably knock the Yankees out of the playoffs. And that would be really, really funny.

And then, of course, there are the Cubs. I guess it really isn’t so much that I don’t LIKE the Cubs; it is just fun watching them lose. The Cubs are not baseball; they are a TV show. At times they are gut-wrenching drama (see Steve Bartman, 2003), at others they are crushing tragedy (see the September collapse of 1969, and the 1984 NLCS, not to mention the last two years of the playoffs).

But for the most part, the Cubs are comedy. Between Carlos Zambrano, Lou Pinella, Milton Bradley (yeah, I know he’s gone now, but that’s good for at least a couple of years), and bizarro-world losses, they are basically a really expensive sitcom.  NBC should add them to the their fall line-up as a reality show; that would get the network out of fourth-place.

Look at this past Saturday. Carlos Marmol, their “ace” closer takes a 1-0 lead over the Phillies into the ninth inning, then proceeds to walk five batters and throw a wild pitch. There were probably at least 10,000 people in the stands at Wrigley Field who could have done that well.

The reason I don’t want to see the Cubs win is simple: the fun would end. They haven’t won a World Series since 1906; they haven’t won pennant since 1945. For 104 and 65 years, watching them futility try to win, then come up with creative new ways to blow it is one of my favorite forms of summer entertainment.

Ah, baseball!