My traitor heart

I haven't written alot about sports yet on here but don't mistake that for a dislike of them. I love sports, I'm just not as nuts for them as I used to be.

Let me take you back once again to those crazy days in the early and mid sixties in Detroit Michigan when I was but a slip of a boy. I was a sports mad kid. None of my brothers or sisters shared my love for baseball, football, and hockey, which was good for me because that meant that they'd leave me the hell alone when a game was on TV and they'd leave me alone when I would play in a pick up game outside. It also meant that the adults who swirled around my family when I was a kid who were into sports would buy me sports related stuff like baseball cards, Sports Illustrated and or Sport magazine, books about sports, and things like sports related tee shirts and baseball gloves and or bats.

I was, in those days, a "hometown" fan. I rooted for the Tigers in baseball, the Lions in football, and the Red Wings in hockey. I never cared much for basketball then and I still don't to this day. I also was into pro tennis, I had such a crush on Chris Evert!, and I was, and still am, a big fan of the Olympics.

My little world revolved around the Tigers in the spring, summer, and fall and I lived and died with them each day. In the fall and early winter I avidly followed the Lions, although I never had to worry about them going to the playoffs because they sucked. In the winter I'd follow the Red Wings until baseball's opening day rolled around and then I was back with my beloved Tigers.

I was lucky that I had such a good baseball team to root for. They had a tradition of winning and they almost won the American League in 1967 in a tight race that came down to the last day of the season, I almost wrote a book about that season but I decided that it's a bit too esoteric a subject for a book and that it probably would not sell enough so I shelved the idea. They did win it all in 1968 and the city could not have been happier. There had been racial unrest and rioting in '67 and when the Tigers won the World Series in '68 the whole city came together for a few days and it was like heaven. They scrapped and fought and made the playoffs a few times after that but they did not make it back to the promised land while I lived in Michigan.

As steadfast a fan as I was I soon became fickle. I got tired of seeing my football team lose all the time so in 1972 I became a Washington Redskins fan. I liked the red and gold uniforms and when the '72 Superbowl came on I decided to root for the Skins and I've stayed with them ever since, which is why it breaks my heart to see Joe Gibbs sucking so bad as their coach these days. He used to be a great coach but then he left to run a NASCAR team, NASCAR why do you screw me all the time?, and then he came back to the NFL but it's clear the game has passed him by. When my Mother passed away and we went to live with my Aunt and Uncle in Howell, Michigan I still clung to my Tigers. They were like a rock that I could cling to in a world gone mad. I was not allowed to watch many games at my Aunt and Uncle's house because none of their kids liked sports so we had to watch whatthey wanted to on TV and because the house had to be cleaned constantly for some unexplained reason, and my siblings and I were the ones who were forced to clean it incessantly. But my love for the Tigers remained and I followed them through the newspaper and through watching the scores on the news on TV. Then in 1975 after we moved south to Lee County, VA something changed in me, besides my voice getting deeper, having hair grow from strange parts of my previously almost hairless body, and gaining a new deeper interest in girls. I stopped following baseball so much because I discovered that I could make the pretty girls laugh so I became the class clown. Also that year the Reds were playing the Red Sox in the World Series. In those days around here, southwest VA/northeast TN, everyone was a Cincinnati Reds fan and you could not find a Braves fan if you tried. Reds games were only a 6 or 7 hour drive away and the Reds were winners then, those were the days of the Big Red Machine when they had Pete "Gamblin' Man" Rose, George Foster, Ken Griffey Sr, Tony Perez, and Joe Morgan. Not only was I the class clown, I was also a damn contrary teenager and I chose to root for the team everyone was against, the Red Sox. So I tossed off my Tigers and I took on the Red Sox as my team. I loved Fred Lynn and Jim Rice, it was their rookie season in 1975 if I recall correctly.

I followed them both and the Sox in general from then on. Of course it hurt like hell when they lost that series to the Reds and that they'd choke every year after that until 1986 when they saved their choking for the World Series against the Mets. I liked rooting for the Sox because I could still hate the Yankees like I had ever since I was a young fan and because even though I knew they'd break my heart they'd get close to winning it all every once in a while.


When they shocked the world in 2004 and they beat the Yankees in the playoffs and they decimated the Cardinals in the World Series I finally got to gloat and see my team on top. It was especially sweet for me seeing as how I had just had my massive heart attack that August and quadruple bypass surgery in September. I was happy as hell my team won it all and that I was still alive.


But after that when I found out how rabid a Republican Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling is and when I found out how many of the Sox who won the Series were evangelical Christians my zeal for them waned. And to be honest it was kind of a let down to see the team that always let me down win it all. I've since stopped being such a rabid fan but I do still follow the team, mostly through watching Baseball Tonight on ESPN after my gf goes to bed.


There is one team that I still root for every year no matter what, through thick and thin, even after living in other sports hotbeds like Roanoke, VA and Knoxville, TN and that team is the mighty Michigan Wolverines. I may live in Volunteer country now but I'm a maize and blue guy till I die baby. I could care less if Tennessee beats Alabama or not, all I care about is if my Wolverines beat Notre Dame and Ohio State, and maybe go to a decent bowl during the holidays.


I think it must have been preordained for me to be a Red Sox, Redskins, and a Red Wings fan. I mean I did have a mother after all who dressed us in red for some strange reason:
That's me and my siblings circa sometime in the late 1960's. I'm the little blond boy on the right on the floor. That's my sister Linda sitting beside me, my sister Sandy with her hands on my shoulders, my brother Karl next to her, and my brother Charlie next to him. How could I not have grown up rooting for teams that had red in their name and have left wing politics when I got dressed like that? By the way, I am totally rocking that sweater in that picture.