Okay, so you know I like baseball, but which team do I support?
This brings me to the first aspect of looking at Baseball from a “British Perspective”. As a newcomer to the sport, you initially want to watch any game you possibly can (often the one, or two, shown every week on Five). The teams are fairly irrelevant, partly because you simply want to watch the game, and partly because you don’t have much of a clue about which team is which anyway.
After a while, you reach a point where you decide to either just continue paddling in the baseball pool, or throw yourself into the deep end and start to follow a team. The trouble is, how do you decide which one?
My general supporting philosophy is that you should support your local team, however good or bad they may be. That doesn’t really work when it comes to picking an MLB team. So what should you do?
Well you could be boring and pick one of the big organisations like the Yankees or the Red Sox simply because they are well known. You could decide to base the decision purely on style terms (i.e. which baseball cap you think looks best!). Perhaps one team has a nickname that catches your ear (how many poor souls have been plunged into misery due to liking the idea of supporting a team called the Brewers?!). You could just decide to follow the home team from your first game.
As with most Brits, my final decision was a bit random, but essentially had some logic behind it. Norwich City (my local football team) play in yellow and green, and one of the first games I saw involved the green and gold wearing Oakland Athletics. I didn’t really know where Oakland was. Didn’t know any of the players. Didn’t know if the team were play-off regulars or perennial basement dwellers. But, I had made up my mind and was prepared to live with it for better or worse. Oakland were the team for me.
It turns out I was pretty lucky. The A’s are a great organisation to follow. Just like Norwich, they battle the odds by competing against teams with far greater financial resources than themselves. They are a bit more successful at it than the Canaries mind you!
However you decide which team to support, and whatever team you end up with, making this choice plunges you even deeper into a love affair with baseball. It isn’t until you start caring about a team’s fortunes that you really get a sense of what the Major Leagues are about. Of course, it isn’t the same as supporting your local football team. Following a team playing virtually every day in a different time zone via the internet is a very different experience from being a season ticket holder going to all of the games. That experience will be the subject of my next post.
