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A vast majority of the Sporting fan landscape is dotted with miserable lemmings who are forced in to an inherited fandom. Not one of choice, because like myself, most of us are born in to our rooting interests. We latch on to the team that our fathers followed or the team that we grew up around. During one of our most naïve periods of life, we make a choice or a choice is made for us and the rest is history.

Growing up, and to this day, I'm a diehard Redskins, Terps (Hoops), Wizards and DC United fan. I love the Caps, but my family wasn't a hockey family, so to claim to be a fan of the Capitals leaves me feeling a little off. Baseball was a little more difficult, my father hated the Orioles. Something to do with the Senators moving away and the Orioles being the only show in town, this somehow made him a full-fledged Orioles hater. As you may have guessed, innocent, sponge like me soaked up this hatred and wanted nothing to do with anything from Baltimore (That hatred has spawned to include the Ravens).

Left without a baseball team to root for, a young impressionable seven year old me (Imaging shorter, but same large head, and a bowl cut) did what most misguided fans do, I picked a winner! The winners at the time were the Toronto Blue Jays, and I was hooked. I watched all of their playoff games, then World Series number one. I memorized the lineup from top to bottom, I knew the pitching staff like the inside of my catcher's mitt and I was there, well on my couch anyway, when Joe Carter snuck a World Series winning homer over the left-field wall. That was me, future Red Sox fan, unaware of the fandom laws I was breaking as I ran around my living room fist pumping in stride with Joe.

After a few season of bad Toronto baseball I began to forget about my love for our neighbors to the North. So having only one other option since proximity was out, I chose to follow my father's team once again, I became a fan of Red Sox nation in 1995.
From my early days as a Blue Jay junkie, up until 2003, I started to get burnt out on the games I loved as a child. It had to do with consuming the same type of stats, seeing the same type of highlights every night and being that I was starting College at the time, I craved a new experience. Enter the 'Beautiful Game.'

I must be attracted to blue or teams from outside the USA because I was once again enthralled with a winning team in blue, but this time it was a soccer team, Chelsea FC. Over the past eight years I denounced my pledge to Chelsea FC and moved across London to my beloved Gunners of Arsenal. I also follow Ajax FC of Amsterdam. (Took a trip to Amsterdam after College, fell in love with the City)

If you don't want to hear "whining" then you should stop reading now, otherwise continue at your own peril.

So how many times have you watched a game (or even played in one) where the referee or umpire made a bad call that you felt cost a team a real shot at winning? I'm sure all sports fans have gone through it. And what's the typical response to that? It's the old, "Well it wasn't just that one call. They had plenty of other chances to win the game." or "They should be good enough team so that calls like that don't matter." Well, I'm here to say, "Fiddlesticks!" (It's a family friendly blog. I'm trying to keep it clean here.)

So in the span of about a month, I have given up season tickets to both the Redskins and the Nationals. Before I continue, I should define what I mean by season tickets. To me, it means a plan that includes several games over the course of the season. In the case of the Redskins, it was the entire season. In the case of the Nationals, it was a 20 game plan. There were a number of issues that came up to help to make these decisions. Economy and the performance of the team were common in both, but there were others specific to the teams and sports.

Over the course of my post-college adult life, I have owned or been part of a group that owned tickets to the Redskins, Nationals, Orioles, Capitals, and Terps Men's Basketball. I'm down to just the Terps now. My alma mater holds a great place in my life, and they could be in a losing season...I'll still watch them anytime.

For the Orioles and Capitals, it came to distance and time commitments respectively. Baltimore is not that far, but committing to every Sunday game (and for awhile, several weeknight games as well), just wasn't great. The nail in the coffin for the Orioles was when the Nationals arrived in town. The Capitals are a great ticket to have, but my work got in the way and I just could not commit to any games ahead of time to justify keeping those tickets.

The Nationals was easy. The 20 game plan was not onerous. We even actually split the tickets so I was only obligated to about 10 games a season. But in reality, why should I prepay for games they decide I should buy when I can show up on virtually any gameday, 10 minutes before first pitch to buy the exact same seats and probably have a 90% chance of getting them? It sounds harsh, and I'm becoming what the team does not need...a fan who barely spends money on them. Note to the Lerners, I'm probably not the only one.

The Redskins was much tougher, yet was easily justifiable. I once had season tickets in the upper level for a couple of seasons during the Norv Turner era. Then I had given up until a friend decided he was interested in getting premium seats (lower level). So for the past few seasons, we have been 20-30 rows from the field, in the end zone, cheering on those fans. This past season, we were upgraded to the club level to test out the seats there. But ultimately, it was not enough to keep our interest. Besides some personal issues, the Redskins simply don't have the draw any longer. The price was not justified and while the fan experience there is great, watching games on TV is almost as good as being there. After you weigh in parking, getting there, and the simple hassle of possibly not sitting an entire half, it was too easy a thing to drop.

One day, I hope to reacquire some of these tickets. I may sound like a fair weather fan, but a dozen or so Terps games is plenty. Add in the occassional ticket I'll be purchasing as a one-off game for all these teams, I'll still end up going to 25 or so sporting events live each year. Which means I'll essentially creating my own season plan.

Now that one week of the 2009 Major League Baseball season is under wraps, let's play a little fact or fiction:

The Tampa Bay Rays will make the playoffs in 2009: Fiction.
One piece of fiction about the 2008 Rays was that none of their players had career years. Are you kidding me? Just look at their pitching staff: Grant Balfour, J.P. Howell, Matt Garza, Andy Sonnanstine, and James Shields all had career years last year, so if even a couple of them fall back to earth in 2009 it will mean that the Rays won't make the playoffs. Add to the fact that the competition in the AL East is better in 2009 than it was in 2008, and you've got the Rays being left out when October comes around.

You know we've been looking at Peter Angelos so wrong. Maybe he knew all the problems and got rid of the players at the right time. Miguel Tejada, Rafael Palmiero, and Sammy Sosa...all suspected performance enhancing drug users.

Sosa - The Orioles used his bat for a year. His arrival came with the departure of Jerry Hairston, Jr. Hairston was a problem as he was a better than average second baseman and had to share time with real starter Brian Roberts. Sosa came in with the Cubs footing nearly half of his salary. Orioles opted not to pick up his 2006 year, as he waived the option prior to the trade. Excellent move.

Palmiero - Provided great years for the Orioles, though apparently juiced up. First solid first baseman since Eddie Murray left. In what was going to be his final year anyways, he tested positive. No harm, since it occurred in August or September and the Orioles were already out of the race.

Tejada - This is the one that boggles the mind. How did Houston not see this coming? The Orioles manage to dump him off to the Astros for nothing. He immediately comes under scrutiny for PEDs and now faces charges today of lying to the courts. Another good move, and possibly the best of all.

Amazing. Maybe we've had Angelos wrong all these years. He's genius!

Mark Teixeira, a Maryland native, was introduced as a Yankee. Mark recounted his love of baseball and his dad taking him to Orioles games as a child. He smiled as he said he was a fan of Mattingly even though he loved Cal (Ripken) & Eddie (Murray). He would wear a Yankees cap in the late 80s and early 90s to Yankees/Orioles games. Teixeira then regaled the audience what it was like to be a Yankee. As Bill Simmons said in his most recent mail bag article, "More!" Maybe Teixeira appreciated the Nationals offer even though he didn't sign with them. After all, he didn't trash the Nats.

The above headline comes from an article in Monday's Baltimore Sun which highlights the Baltimore Orioles current promotion for today's game against the Texas Rangers. "If the Orioles defeat the Rangers Sunday, the 'We Win, You Win' promotion will reward fans with a complimentary ticket in the same seating category to any future non-prime game." The reason for this promotion is because the O's have a record of 1 win and 12 losses this season on Sundays. But I wonder if the promotion would draw more fans if instead of rewarding the fans for a win if it served as sort of a money back guarantee, meaning if the O's lose then each fan in attendance would get to go to another game as sort of a refund for having to suffer yet another loss.

So I'm torn. I want the umpires to have the tools to effectively call the games. But I don't want 3 hour games to turn into 4 hour games. While it didn't factor in the win loss column, in the Mets-Yankees game yesterday, a Carlos Delgado home run was waved off even though it was real.

Wrapping up my Major League Baseball season preview by division, here are the AL East teams listed in order of predicted finish. While I admit it is not easy for me to be objective about the AL East, I'll give it my best shot.

Boston Red Sox. It pains me to say so, but the Red Sox have done everything right over the past four plus years to build a championship contending team. It pains me so much to say that previous sentence that I can't say any more about this team.

Erik Bedard has finally been traded to the Seattle Mariners, in exchange for 5 prospects. At least one of them will be starting on Opening Day. But that's not saying much for a team who traded away their only two "names" this off season. Of course, Miguel Tejada may have drawn unwanted attention to Baltimore. Still, some argue an everyday player vs. a starting pitcher is better...to some degree.

What's amazing about this is maybe Peter Angelos is trying to "out-Angelos" and "out-Snyder" Dan Snyder. As Q mentioned in his post a couple of weeks ago, Snyder is morphing into Angelos. Apparently the Empire Strikes Back as Angelos has now resorted to 2 weeks of talk before the trade occurs. His timing rivals Snyders amount of time spent jerking around Head Coach candidates.

Ahh, just what we need, another DC-Baltimore fight.