Growing up, I thought baseball was the most boring sport in the world. It took forever, nothing exciting happened, and when it did, I didn’t particularly care because I didn’t have a “favorite team” in the first place. It was basically a sport that was on when basketball wasn’t (which is probably one more reason I didn’t particularly care for it).
I still played it growing up, but enjoyed it about as much as I enjoyed pre-season conditioning in high school basketball. For the record, I did not enjoy pre-season conditioning in high school basketball. But I did it anyway. Needless to say, not having a team to support and not enjoying the actual playing of the sport left me quite jaded about baseball.
Also, I sucked at the Nintendo 64 Ken Griffey Jr.’s Major League Baseball in junior high (watch the intro, then skip to about 4:20 to see the gameplay and you'll understand), and that’s like…the best baseball game of all time. So that was always a degrading procedure when I’d have to play that game with my friends and lose 14-1.
After living that many years not liking baseball, you’d think I would have hated it by the time I was in college.
Well…I did. And, worse, I was in a region where everybody within 450 miles worshipped the same team. Always having been a guy who supported teams that nobody in the area liked (Arizona Wildcat college basketball ((and AZ Wildcat Softball)) and the Chicago Bears while living in Texas), it was mind-numbingly painful to see these Minnesota Twins-obsessed fans who were all infatuated with both a team and, more specifically, a sport that I truly couldn’t stand.
I still played it growing up, but enjoyed it about as much as I enjoyed pre-season conditioning in high school basketball. For the record, I did not enjoy pre-season conditioning in high school basketball. But I did it anyway. Needless to say, not having a team to support and not enjoying the actual playing of the sport left me quite jaded about baseball.
Also, I sucked at the Nintendo 64 Ken Griffey Jr.’s Major League Baseball in junior high (watch the intro, then skip to about 4:20 to see the gameplay and you'll understand), and that’s like…the best baseball game of all time. So that was always a degrading procedure when I’d have to play that game with my friends and lose 14-1.
After living that many years not liking baseball, you’d think I would have hated it by the time I was in college.
Well…I did. And, worse, I was in a region where everybody within 450 miles worshipped the same team. Always having been a guy who supported teams that nobody in the area liked (Arizona Wildcat college basketball ((and AZ Wildcat Softball)) and the Chicago Bears while living in Texas), it was mind-numbingly painful to see these Minnesota Twins-obsessed fans who were all infatuated with both a team and, more specifically, a sport that I truly couldn’t stand.
Those weird Twins fans understood (and loved) stuff like this...
Well, turns out I ended up rooming with possibly the most Minnesota sports-loving person in the entire region (yeah…it’s like something out of a cheesy sitcom). I mean, my roommate could tell you the hometowns and high school baseball stats of guys who are on the Twins minor league teams. He knows the high school and college football stats for probably 90% of the Minnesota Vikings. He lives and dies with every Minnesota Golden Gopher touchdown, wrestling pin-fall, and hockey goal.
Although I clicked with him better than probably anyone on the campus of Augustana College, we were exact opposites when it came to sports.
But…after a full year of listening to him tell me about Minnesota Twins trades, players sent down to and brought up from the minor leagues, and season-ending injuries that would devastate the team, I realized that I knew the entire Twins roster without seeing a single game. I was also fascinated by the fact that there were individual players in Major League Baseball who, for one season, were paid almost half as much as the Twins ENTIRE roster's total payroll. And the Twins were still somehow playoff contenders.
So, I figured I should give them a chance.
The conversion...
It just so happened that I began to disprove my entire life’s schema about baseball. It might have been the fact that my roommate, who I genuinely enjoyed being around, watched games every night in our room and it was easier to just sit and watch them than it was to leave. It might have been the fact that all of my friends would sit around and have beers while watching the Twins play (and usually play some drinking game based on hits, strikeouts, runs, etc.), and I certainly wasn’t going to be left out of that. Or it might have just been the fact that I was tired of fighting a losing battle against Minnesota sports team-obsessed fans (just kidding, I still hate the Vikings).
Whatever it was, my roommate’s passion had rubbed off on me. I was a Twins fan. I’ll say it again: I was a Twins fan. Then, in the 2006 season (my junior year), the Twins ended up winning the A.L. Central Division and the excitement around that process basically cemented the fact that, from now on, I would be responding with “Twins, baby!” when asked which baseball team was my favorite.
There I am at the Metrodome, actually being a Twins fan...
Can he do that?...
Now, I justify my Twins fandom as not being a bandwagon jump (one of the most loathsome acts one can commit in the sports universe...I think the last sentence of that link's story sums it up nicely) due to the logic that I was never a baseball fan to begin with and, therefore, did not abandon a team I had once supported for a winning, locally-popular team. I simply began to truly appreciate the Twins and what they accomplish in Major League Baseball, as well as the efforts the organization puts into its regional fan bases to keep the connection with fans strong not only in the heart of Minneapolis-St. Paul, but also out in rural communities three, four, and up to six or seven hours away. It’s a group of hard-working athletes who do everything they can to win. It’s just about impossible not to respect them. And, consequently, it makes their success all the more enjoyable.
Unfortunately, the Twins lost tonight to the Chicago White Sox (a club I’ve grown to dislike) in a playoff tie-breaker game that would have made them Division Champions and thus would have gotten them into the American League playoffs. In a gut-wrenching, 1-0 loss, hundreds of thousands (and possibly millions) of fans had their hearts broken by an always-lethal Jim Thome home run that put Chicago ahead for the win.
So...now what happens?
Three years ago, I wouldn’t have cared (and probably would have laughed at the “whining” Twins fans who took their baseball just a little too seriously). Tonight, it just sucked. Straight up. Now, there is no doubt in my mind that there are Twins fans who are much, much more upset than me right now (it’s safe to say my former roommate is one of them). The problem is that, now, I empathize with those fans and I’m quite frustrated that I won’t be watching the Twins and supporting them in the playoffs, enjoying beers with my friends while the Twins tried to win the pennant, and celebrating the joy that can only come from that fiery passion that a sport ignites in the hearts of competitors around the world.
Instead…I’ll have to sit around waiting for basketball season to start. And for one of the rare times in my entire life, that does not appeal to me anywhere near as much as the thought of watching Justin Morneau hit a walk-off game-winner or watching Joe Nathan seal the win in the bottom of the ninth with a low fastball. It’s a weird feeling, but thanks to my friends, this region, and the Minnesota Twins, it’s one that I hope lasts for a long, long time.
But man…do I hate Jim Thome right now…
Have you had a similar experience? Let me know which team won you over (or lost your love) over the years. Which teams would you cry for in a championship loss or celebrate with ecstatic joy for in a championship victory? Do you even like sports? If not, which video game, computer operating system, or awesome book series won you over? Leave a comment and let me know so I can look into any and all of them. Maybe I'll be converted to those too...
