Johan Santana to Mets...

#26
#26
Vercingetorix said:
It well may be wrong, and like all opinions, of course it's biased. But it ain't uniformed.



Obviously I'm painting with a deliberately broad and sneering brush, but if you're an adult rooting for a top-payroll team in a city you've never been to and it's not your parents' team, then IMO you're a frontrunner. A persistent frontrunner, perhaps, if you've been rooting for them since you were a kid, but still a frontrunner. Why are these guys never fans of the Rockies or the Brewers or the Seattle Seahawks?
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do you know how many braves fans I can put into your category then? I became an A's fan because I thought Rickey was the man, Dennis Eckersley was God and the Bash Brothers were the coolest dudes on earth. I guess I'm a persistent frontrunner. Nevermind the fact the A's sucked balls forever in the '90s yet I was unwavered. Excuse me for growing up in an area with no Major League team within a 5 hour drive.
 
#27
#27
I have been to NYC and Shea twice. I have also seen the Mets live in Chicago, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Philly, Baltimore, Atlanta, and Miami (and Tampa for the last Spring Training game last year vs. the Rays). I was a front-runner with the Mets when I was 7. I've followed the same team since the 80s. I see where Vercingetorix is coming from though - that's how I feel about most Yankees fans. :bad:
 
#28
#28
For four years of high school in the 90s, my locker was next to a Braves fan with as many connections to Atlanta as I have to NYC. Needless to say, those were some trying times.
 
#29
#29
volfanbill said:
do you know how many braves fans I can put into your category then? I became an A's fan because I thought Rickey was the man, Dennis Eckersley was God and the Bash Brothers were the coolest dudes on earth. I guess I'm a persistent frontrunner. Nevermind the fact the A's sucked balls forever in the '90s yet I was unwavered. Excuse me for growing up in an area with no Major League team within a 5 hour drive.
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Note my usage of the term "top-payroll" in there. If someone doesn't have an obvious team to root for (local, dad's team, etc.), then I have no problem with him making a basically arbitrary choice as long with, as you say, he sticks with it forever. But perhaps you can understand why I have a certain level of contempt for someone whose arbitrary choice just happens to be the Mets or the Yankees or the Dallas Cowboys or the Detroit Red Wings. It's like an American who decides to get into English soccer and then starts rooting for Man United or Arsenal. Whether he's "really" a frontrunner or not, every Englishman he meets for the rest of his life is going to assume that he is.

FWIW, if you're going to pick a team for an arbitrary reason, you could do a lot worse than Rickey Henderson. Definitely my favorite player when I was in high school.
 
#30
#30
Vercingetorix said:
Note my usage of the term "top-payroll" in there. If someone doesn't have an obvious team to root for (local, dad's team, etc.), then I have no problem with him making a basically arbitrary choice as long with, as you say, he sticks with it forever. But perhaps you can understand why I have a certain level of contempt for someone whose arbitrary choice just happens to be the Mets or the Yankees or the Dallas Cowboys or the Detroit Red Wings. It's like an American who decides to get into English soccer and then starts rooting for Man United or Arsenal. Whether he's "really" a frontrunner or not, every Englishman he meets for the rest of his life is going to assume that he is.

FWIW, if you're going to pick a team for an arbitrary reason, you could do a lot worse than Rickey Henderson. Definitely my favorite player when I was in high school.
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I understand your point. If you're a an adult (really anyone over about 14) and you suddenly start pulling for a team that is tops in payroll and expected to contend for the Series then I cry foul as well. But this is a kid (i say kid because i have about 9 years on him) that neither of us know anythign about and it just irks me when people blow up on others when they know nothing about them. He possibly did start rooting for the Mets the year of the subway series or when Pedro went to the metropolitans, but we don't that and it's not fair to assume.

Out of curiousity, where did the Mets rank in payroll in 1992?
 
#31
#31
volfanbill said:
I understand your point. If you're a an adult (really anyone over about 14) and you suddenly start pulling for a team that is tops in payroll and expected to contend for the Series then I cry foul as well. But this is a kid (i say kid because i have about 9 years on him) that neither of us know anythign about and it just irks me when people blow up on others when they know nothing about them. He possibly did start rooting for the Mets the year of the subway series or when Pedro went to the metropolitans, but we don't that and it's not fair to assume.

Out of curiousity, where did the Mets rank in payroll in 1992?
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Is all of that a reference to me? I'm 28 and, per my above post, have been a fan since I was 7. You're the kid! :eek:lol: During the Subway Series in 2000, I had a supervisor who had just become a Yankees fan in the middle of their late 90s World Series runs. :banghead2: I was the one crying foul there.
 
#32
#32
ukvols said:
Is all of that a reference to me? I'm 28 and, per my above post, have been a fan since I was 7. You're the kid! :eek:lol: During the Subway Series in 2000, I had a supervisor who had just become a Yankees fan in the middle of their late 90s World Series runs. :banghead2: I was the one crying foul there.
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my mistake... I was originally think dbbake (or however you spell his name) was the one claiming to be a Mets fan. I thought you just chimed in as another mets fan. Either way you're only two years older, not sure how much of a kid that makes me...
 
#33
#33
volfanbill said:
I understand your point. If you're a an adult (really anyone over about 14) and you suddenly start pulling for a team that is tops in payroll and expected to contend for the Series then I cry foul as well. But this is a kid (i say kid because i have about 9 years on him) that neither of us know anythign about and it just irks me when people blow up on others when they know nothing about them. He possibly did start rooting for the Mets the year of the subway series or when Pedro went to the metropolitans, but we don't that and it's not fair to assume.

Out of curiousity, where did the Mets rank in payroll in 1992?
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The Mets ranked first in total payroll in 1992, actually.

I'll freely and unapologetically admit that I am as unfair as possible when goading bangwaggoners. And really, it's only fans of about a dozen or so teams in all of American sports. When I run into somebody from the south and he just happens to have been a Mets or a Yankees or a Dodgers fan his whole life, then I tend to cry foul. Because those same guys usually just happen to be Dallas or Pittsburgh fans in football, and Lakers or Bulls fans in basketball, etc...
 
#34
#34
Bears, Mets, and Knicks here. I am hoping for Lofton to get drafted and see a lot of PT, so I'll have somebody besides the Knicks to root for. Right now, I only follow the Knicks via highlights on ESPN.
 
#35
#35
But one more thing about the Mets -- and this ties in to your comment about Braves fans earlier, VFB: all a "long-distance" Mets fan usually has to do to get me to shut up is tell me that he watched their WOR games on cable growing up. I started following the Braves in the early 80s (shudder) because they were the closest team to Knoxville and my dad would bring me down here to games occasionally, but it sure made it easier to root for them when I could see 140 games a year on TBS. It's easy to see why someone without a local team might have started following one of the three superstation teams. A southern Mets or Cubs fan who mentions WOR or WGN to me gets instant credibility.

(The Cubs are an interesting case, actually -- you get guys who are almost anti-bandwaggoners, guys who want to just buy into all that glamorous angst and make it their own. "Oh, it's so horrible that we haven't won the Series in 100 years, even though I've only been following the team for six of them..."

The Red Sox were of course the same way until they started winning. Now they're just the Yankees Redux.)
 
#36
#36
i am actually cheering for the cubs to win a world series as soon as possible just so i won't have to hear about the curse ever again.

i have the same issue with titans fans. Most didn't become fans when the Oilers moved to Tennessee, they became fans after they started winning in Tennessee... However, I got into an argument about it with an old boss and he informed me the first poster he ever got was one of Earl Campbell. I had no choice but to hang my head in shame for calling him out.
 
#37
#37
also, thanks for the bit on '92. I had no idea. I just know I have one friend who is a mets fan and I have no idea why. He would have been nine in '92 and i figure that's a good age to pick a team.

On a side note, I've almost adopted the Mets as my NL team, but only because of my two years in Norfolk watching the Tides play (at the time, the AAA team). I watched several current Mets come through there. Even met a few. And of course, David Wright is the local hero there being from Chesapeake.
 
#38
#38
Ah, the golden early 80's Braves. Thats when I started watching them too. Good ole TBS hooked me and my whole family on them. One good year (1982) and nothing but heartaches untill Sid Freaking Bream slid. I guess we could count Murphy's back to back MVP's or maybe even Bob Horner's 4 home run game (that ended in a loss) as good times. But when you can weather the 80's as a Braves fan consider yourself a true fan.
 
#39
#39
volfanbill said:
i am actually cheering for the cubs to win a world series as soon as possible just so i won't have to hear about the curse ever again.

i have the same issue with titans fans. Most didn't become fans when the Oilers moved to Tennessee, they became fans after they started winning in Tennessee... However, I got into an argument about it with an old boss and he informed me the first poster he ever got was one of Earl Campbell. I had no choice but to hang my head in shame for calling him out.
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Earl Campbell was a monster. I'm still not sure that he wasn't the best running back I've ever seen, even though it seemed like his career was only about 15 minutes long.

I'll never forgive the Titans for calling themselves "Tennessee." There's only one team that plays Tennessee football, and it doesn't wear powder blue.

A minor-league team is a good reason to support a major-league team, at least if you get a chance to go to the games enough to get to know the players. I used to know a few guys in Knoxville who were Blue Jays fans because of the Knoxvllle Blue Jays. And hey, the Mets might be a good team to get behind right now. I hear they've got a heck of a new pitcher...
 
#40
#40
**ORANGEBLOOD** said:
But when you can weather the 80's as a Braves fan consider yourself a true fan.
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I'm not sure that 14 division titles in a row was enough to make up for having to sit through all those years of Bruce Benedict, Len Barker, Brad Komminsk, Rick Mahler, Terry Forster, etc. etc. Yuck.
 
#41
#41
Brings back memories of fulton. I always liked that place. Back when Bedrosian and Horner and Chambliss and Murphy and Hubbard all played. I went to alot of games back then. My dad skipped out on work and took me to a business mans special one day. He was a car salesman in cleveland, tn at the time. They were playing the reds at the time and Dave Concepcion hit a foul ball
into the club level and it would have bounced right to us had it not landed in a beer cup. Some folks at his work were watching the game on good ole tbs and they thought they saw him on tv. After several remarks they dismissed it as a look alike. Then two pitches later he fouled off another pitch that went straight to my dad for all of his work to see. LOLOL what were those odds going in. Teach him to call in sick lol. I still have the ball and he still has not lived it down. :eek:lol:
 
#42
#42
Vercingetorix said:
A minor-league team is a good reason to support a major-league team, at least if you get a chance to go to the games enough to get to know the players. I used to know a few guys in Knoxville who were Blue Jays fans because of the Knoxvllle Blue Jays. And hey, the Mets might be a good team to get behind right now. I hear they've got a heck of a new pitcher...
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the only thing holding me back is that they are from NY. Makes it very, very difficult for me to be able to cheer for them.

But there is nothing quite like AAA ball. You've got three things going on in AAA ball. You've got the obvious talented young guys that are just waiting on the call from NY. They are really fun to watch. Then you have the players that just aren't quite good enough to ever go any further. The intelligent fans know it and sadly, so do those players. It's a little painful to watch them giving 110% knowing this is as far as they'll ever go. Then you have the former major leaguers that just won't give up and are just waiting for the injury bug to hit the Mets so they'll get a 15 day call up. The Tides had a few of those guys including Michael Tucker and Jose Lima. Did anyone know Jose Lima was an absolutely incredible singer?

By the way if anyone is ever in Norfolk during the summer and is craving a fried twinkie, Harbor Park is your destination. AAA ball and a fried twinkie, what more could you ask for?
 
#43
#43
Vercingetorix said:
. It's easy to see why someone without a local team might have started following one of the three superstation teams. A southern Mets or Cubs fan who mentions WOR or WGN to me gets instant credibility.
(The Cubs are an interesting case, actually -- you get guys who are almost anti-bandwaggoners, guys who want to just buy into all that glamorous angst and make it their own. "Oh, it's so horrible that we haven't won the Series in 100 years, even though I've only been following the team for six of them..."

The Red Sox were of course the same way until they started winning. Now they're just the Yankees Redux.)
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I hate the Cubs. I'm a Cardinals fan because they were the first team I remember watching on TV and they stuck with me, ironically one of the first Cards' games I remember seeing was them playing the Cubs on WGN.
 
#44
#44
justingroves said:
I hate the Cubs.
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I don't like the Cubs either. But I'm willing to grudgingly allow that watching their games on WGN is a "legitimate" reason for a southerner to be rooting for them.

Their fans are at lot worse than you'd expect Midwestern fans of an historically terrible team to be.
 
#45
#45
volfanbill said:
Did anyone know Jose Lima was an absolutely incredible singer?
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I saw video of Lima singing the national anthem at some game a couple of years ago, but his wife was standing right next to him, and I was too mesmerized by her fantastic chest to have any recollection at all about the quality of his voice. His wife must have pipes like a cathedral, though.
 
#46
#46
Vercingetorix said:
I don't like the Cubs either. But I'm willing to grudgingly allow that watching their games on WGN is a "legitimate" reason for a southerner to be rooting for them.

Their fans are at lot worse than you'd expect Midwestern fans of an historically terrible team to be.
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Do you hate me because I like the Cardinals? :p
 
#50
#50
justingroves said:
Do you hate me because I like the Cardinals? :p
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The Cardinals have always been a popular choice among southern baseball fans, thanks to KMOX. It used to be that most everybody in western Tennessee grew up rooting for the Cards. It's not as jarring as when you run into some guy from Alabama who swears he's a lifelong Red Sox fan.

Plus the Cards are not one of the dozen or so American sports teams that I was talking about earlier that are so alluring to the aspiring frontrunner. Great baseball tradition and town, yes. Glamorous, not so much.
 
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