Baseball, Fatherhood and Multitasking
February 1, 2012 1 Comment
Kauffman Stadium
Believe it or not, I have been a Boston Red Sox fan for over a decade now. I found this team in the way I have found other teams I root for in my history. To spite my father. You would think after he moved several states away over a decade ago and the time in between would have helped to ease my interest in a team I picked, not because of proximity to where I grew up or any sort of other real connection, but just because I liked to razz my old man, who as you can guess, is a New York Yankee fan.
I live in Kansas City, and before George Brett retired in 1993, this was home to the spunky, competitive Royals. However, in the last 20 years or so, the life has nearly been drained from Kauffman Stadium. Milquetoast ownership, bad management from the front office to the bench (but one of the best prospect and player development machines in the majors), the Royals have set new standards in the word low, which statistically could occupy a separate post all together.
Give Royals fans credit. Kauffman Stadium is full on Opening Day, full for every game when the cross-state rival St. Louis Cardinals come to town, nearly full when the Twins come and when they are competitive (mostly because of Minnesota transplants and because it’s just a six hour drive down I-35 to KC) and sparsely populated the rest of the time. We’ll be hosting the 2012 All-Star game as well. It’s a good time to be a Kansas City baseball fan in general, just for that fact alone.
So let this be said. If the Royals could, in a bad year, be flirting with staying above .500 from wire-to-wire and, in a good year, compete for the division and make the playoffs two out of every five or six years, this would become the baseball town it is meant to be. Sorry Chiefs fans, if the Royals didn’t suck the NFL would be riding shotgun in Kansas City.
This is all a lot of blah, blah, blah to get to my question and/or my point.
My son and probable future Royals fan.
Here is my question, and my dilemma. A question to myself, and to you, the reader. What am I to do as a new father? This past November my wife and I welcomed this guy into the world. Little David Louis stands the possibility to grow up in a town where the baseball team is no longer the pride of its citizens. Which is a shame. Even those in my generation barely remember the glory days. They remember letting guys like Carlos Beltran, Jermaine Dye and Johnny Damon go to places like Houston (then New York) and Oakland (then Boston) more than Bret Saberhagen, Frank White and Hal McRae.
Here is another fact of life I didn’t expect to happen since my son was born. I have become increasingly irritated and impatient with Dayton Moore’s inability to find at least serviceable starting pitching and reluctance to find someone who can bring in some damn runs. Two things that never used to enter the head space of yours truly.
I can tell you what I won’t do. Raise him as a Red Sox fan. I am looking forward to taking him to ‘The K’ and talking to him about players I never cheered for, but know plenty about. So by rule, I believe I should become a Royals fan. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll still keep my subscription to MLB.TV in order to watch Sox games and even keep subscriptions to other Red Sox publications I’ve had for quite some time. However, I believe if you live in a town with a team in the majors, you are mandated to bond over that team with your son. I’m not from one of those cities, so this shift seems logical to me.
I’m not going to be the dad who brings his kid to a Royals game with the Indians in town and wear a Boston hat to the game while the Sox are in Tampa. That’s a douche move. You know that rulebook that is full of unwritten rules? Well, it doesn’t exist. But if it did, it would fall somewhere between not allowing your son to play in the mud and making him wear a helmet on his bike past the age of seven. Ok, I may not win that last one as long as my wife is breathing.
As a baseball fan in general, I dig into the history, the numbers and study every game box score like I’m searching for the cure for cancer. In mid-July you can find me eating breakfast at our dining room table and reading about Dustin Pedroia going 1-for-4 against a pitcher he normally bats .302 against and getting upset at it like my life actually depends on it.
That said, it would seem disingenuous to pretend to be a Royals fan in front of my son, but not do anything beyond that. When my kid asks me why we traded his favorite player for prospects and Angel Berrora, I want to give him an honest answer.
What am I to do? Drop the Sox as my team and take up the painstaking task of becoming (gulp) a full-time Royals fan? I’ve thought about this for several weeks. And today I believe I came to the only logical and most diplomatic conclusion. I’ll be a fan of both teams.
Now I know what you are thinking. “What will you be teaching your son about loyalty to one team if you have two ‘favorite’ teams? This is a cop out, sir.” It’s a fair question and accusation. And nothing in life is easy. When Boston comes to town, what do you do? Do you look your four year old in the eye and say “I can’t cheer for your team with you today, because your old man’s team is in town.” No. I’ll even go so far as to don some sort of Royals garb if we make our way to the ballpark when the Sox are in town. Painful as it may be. This is parenthood, no?
Sports loyalties can sometimes know no bounds. But not this time. While I may still be up past everyone and their bedtimes watching a West coast road swing against Seattle with a Pedro Martinez jersey on, I won’t cheer against my son’s team. At least not to his face.
But who knows, he may grow up to be a Milwaukee Brewers fan and all of this will be moot. In which case I’ll have no problem rubbing it in his face if the Sox ever sweep them in an interleague series.
