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)
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