Throw a dart, pick a team?
It’s hard to be a fan.
Hey, it’s easy, you say. Pick the team your family loves.
But what if they don’t? What if they don’t really care?
Go back to where you’re from, you say.
I was born in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Should I support the Packers or the Lions? I’ve lived for a substantial amount of time in North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Washington and Kentucky. Timberwolves? Seahawks? Bengals? Twins? The formerly Minnesotan Dallas Stars?
You build up love for a team over time, you say.
Yet I never really cared about basketball. Baseball is another story. I remember staying awake, listening to the Minnesota Twins Radio Network on a radio in bed in 1991 as the Twins push through to the World Series. I got the family to watch it on TV and suddenly the players in my head were real on the screen.
Less than a year later I convinced my parents (for the low, low price of no commercials) to let me watch the 1992 Super Bowl between the Washington Redskins and the Buffalo Bills. I knew nothing about football or NFL teams, but it felt like it was something I needed to do.
I was a Vikings fan, for a time. I married one in 1999, and it seemed like the right thing to do. After we got divorced in 2003, I didn’t want to be a Vikings fan anymore.
I fell in love with the Boston Red Sox in the 2004 World Series — the year of Yankees defeat, pine tar helmets, Boston anthems and Curt Schilling’s bloody sock. It felt natural to hate the Yankees. Then all the players I loved left the team, and the Red Sox cap I bought seemed false. I have it still, and it’s been to a dozen countries, but does that make me a Red Sox fan?
Just pick one, you say.
I finally just picked the Green Bay Packers. where I was born in Michigan’s UP is a solid sector of Packers Nation, and I liked their out-in-the-woods, cold weather quality. There’s something about the Northwoods that feels home to me, whether it’s in Minnesota, Michigan or Wisconsin. I’ve been a fan for four years.
By that thinking, I also picked the Minnesota Twins as my baseball team, right? They’re from Minnesota, I listened to them as a boy, and I like their workmanlike attitude. I’ve been a fan for less than a year.
But what kind of fan does that make me?
Despatches | {Wyoming} 