Rules of the Game

In my view, there are only two acceptable reasons for becoming a fan of a particular team.

1. The franchise is the "hometown" team in the area where you spent your formative years.

2. The team is the favorite of your parents, passed down like a birthright.

That's it. We here at WMD allow no exceptions. Do I quiz people about their fanaticism? No. My standards are my own and I've adhered to them exclusively throughout my sporting life. I'm not here to judge, though you bandwagoners out there know who you are and are surely ashamed of your very existence.

I grew up in a Bay Area suburb east of San Francisco. Both my parents are huge sports fans and I inherited that trait. I officially adopted the Oakland A's as my team at age 12 after a few years of following both them and the Giants, my Dad's preferred side. It was the arrival of Billy Martin that sealed it along with equally excited peers on the playground as the franchise rose from a long Dark Age, replete with abyssmal attendance (at least one game in the later 70s was attended by less than a thousand people) and rumors of sales and moves (to Denver, usually). By 1981, I was full-fledged Kelly Green and Fort Knox Gold, when the A's and Their Amazing Aces (the headline of an SI cover story, which meant a lot more then than it does now) reeled off 11 straight wins to begin the season.

My Dad, having grown up in The City, was mostly responsible for my backing the 49ers. He'd tell stories of old Kezar Stadium, John Brodie and Hugh McIlhenny, the "Alley Oop," Y.A. Title to R.C. Owens. The Niners, during this time, were often horrid, a long hangover from those "almost" teams of Brodie who could never get past the Cowboys. Until Bill Walsh came along. And that's the other reason. Why, I could not possibly tell you, but before I embraced a pro team, I had latched on to Stanford. I'm going to guess it was because of their entertaining offensive style. It surely wasn't because of any repeated success. But my first favorite gridders were Guy Benjamin and Kenny Margerum. The first football game I ever attended was a Stanford-UCLA tilt I begged my Dad to take me to (and he was just as pleased as I was when John Naber gave the home side a last-second win with a field goal), so when Walsh jumped to the pros, I happily went with him. And then there was Joe Montana. No going back after that. I mentioned earlier how I watched The Catch by myself. I couldn't stand to be around anyone else. I was so tense. Not simply for myself, but for my Dad, long-suffering--especially at the hands of the Cowboys--and on the verge of irreversable cynicism where the Niners were concerned. He was working that day, so I never did get to see his face when they pulled it out. But I know I wept from sheer happiness. For Dad.

So, pretty simple. Nice organic melding with the local clubs, one that has held firm for 25 years or so. I also follow the Golden State Warriors, though professional basketball lost its allure for me right around '94 when every team ran isolation plays and pretty much destroyed the beauty of the game. I have been watching more NBA lately, due to an opening up of the game thanks to rule changes, the Suns and once-in-a-generation talents like LeBron, Wade and Melo. And also because AJ wants to watch the Lakers all the time.

Ah, AJ. He's a bit young still for ardent fandom, but his first question when I pick him up from school is, "Are there any sports on?" In our hundreds of channels universe there always are so we often watch 3 or 4 games a night, sometimes simultaneously. And his favorite teams? Pretty much whomever is leading at that point, which can cause a lot of flip-flopping during NBA games. He does favor the A's because of my social conditioning since his birth, but it's a tenuous connection, especially after he learned the Hard Lesson of Baseball Economics when his favorite player--Big Hurt--jumped ship this off-season to the Blue Jays. He literally cried when I told him, but hours later was asking if we were supposed to root for Toronto now. I suggested instead we cheer for a torn ACL, but I don't think he got my meaning. He has adopted the Bears as his NFL team, after they demolished Seattle on Sunday night earlier on this year. I may have contributed to that with my endless repetition of the SNL-accented "'Da Bears," which he found quite humorous, but their unbeaten run to start the year was likely just as much to blame. He even delighted in their crushage of the Niners.

So yeah, he's highly impressionable at this age, which is not at all surprising. My childhood friend Kool Breeze provides an example of how kids are drawn to success. His favorite teams are the Reds, Vikings, 76ers and Dallas (nee Minesota North) Stars. He grew up in the same town I did, but those of you with knowledge of sports history will notice all those teams were highly competitive in the mid-70s, when he first found the sports fan within. To his credit, they remain his teams today, 30 years later. And it's probably instructive to remember what the televised sports landscape was in those days. I found my teams mostly by listening to the radio. We got one baseball game a week on TV, Monday nights with Curt Gowdy and simple linescore graphics, and just like today, the "good" teams were featured more often, so a far-flung kid in Livermore saw as much of the Big Red Machine as he did of John "The Count" Montefusco.

History is important, especially in regard to baseball. It's a thread I can access whenever conversations with my father wane. I can ask him what it was like watching Roberto Clemente. If he remembered Don Larsen's perfect game. It's the same with my friends. Donny is the most nostalgic person I know and that trait led him to his greatest betryal.

Like me, his summers were filled with the A's. We obsessed over them, trading snail mail and phone calls when we went off to college. When we both landed in LA, we constantly trooped over the Sepulveda Pass to watch games together. He once called me at 2 in the a.m. to scream about LaRussa asking McGwire to bunt. It was a bond. Which he broke at some black point in the '90s when he threw over the A's in favor of the (now) hometown Dodgers.

I said he was nostalgic and among the dozens of (crappy) reasons he has given me over the years, only one really rings with truth. He's a student of history and who ammong us hasn't read "Boys of Summer" and wanted to run out and buy a Brooklyn Dodgers cap? He would pour over the Baseball Encyclopedia, Snider and Koufax, Reese and Drysdale. Legends. So he came at it from a serious place. Lots of little nicks and cuts over the years (his favorite player--Jose Canseco--being traded literally from the on-deck circle, the budgetary down-sizing after the Haas family sold the team, Mt. Davis) rendered the A's second-tier, dwarfed by the weight of Dodger Blue and Chavez Ravine, a short drive away.

He was pretty fucked up when I told him about Drysdale, how he'd died of a heart attack, and bawled his head off, one of only 3 times I've seen im cry in 30 years of knowing him (another was when BJ Lohsen beat him out to join me as Little League co-MVP when we were 11 and he had every right 'cause BJ Lohsen was shit). Sports can do that to ya. Even if it's a newly-embraced and long-desired mistress instead of your faithful wife of over 20 years. And even through that, we reconciled. I even joined him for a time in rooting for the Blue, annoyed to distraction by certain un-named columnists and their campaign against Billy Beane disciple and short-term Dodger GM Paul DePodesta. The thread, the constant, was frayed and stretched, but it ultimately held, even as I continue to bust his adulterous balls, which is easier when the A's are perpetual contenders and the Dodgers still search for an identity.

My role as a father is to prevent this sort of behavior in AJ. He has to follow the two rules at the top of this post. And while that would make him well wiithin his rights to root for the Angels, he'll be lookiing for a new place to live if that happens. But mostly, when he's a teen-ager, sullen, embarassed by his Dad's mere presence, we'll still be able to talk about last night's game or maybe he'll ask me about Reggie Jackson and what it was like to see him play. I'll hope he eventually remembers it fondly and passes the thread on.