Rudy Giuliani answering the Yankee fan at the debate made a comment that must look like an evasion to younger baseball fans, but which I understood. He was asked how he could root for the Red Sox in the World Series if he is a Yankee fan. Rudy’s basic response was “I’m an American League fan. After the series I go back to rooting for the Yankees.”
This is the way it used to be in my father’s generation. You don’t hear that sentiment much now, but older guys used to say that a lot when telling baseball stories. If you rooted for the Cardinals, you rooted for the National League team in the World Series. We see something similar with college leagues now, when fans are not only interested in the reputation of their team, but the entire Big East or Big 12. But it’s no longer a common idea among baseball fans. I don’t recall anyone even in my generation (I am 54) saying it.
It doesn’t mean that Giuliani was deceptive. It just means he’s old.
Note: My son Ben tells me there are still vestiges of the old way of looking at leagues, though he agrees it's more pronounced in other sports and at the college level. I think that's about right. People don't tend to use the words "I'm a National League fan," but they tend to favor the familiar teams that their own favorite has played. We had an interesting conversation about how isolated from other leagues fans were before television and sports magazines. Newspapers would carry only the box scores plus (maybe)a paragraph about any games but the home team's. Radio carried only the local team.
We must be the same age. The only exception I remember is that, because hatred of Yankees ran deep, I rooted for the American League in the WS starting in 1965. Before that, it was always the Yankees and, it still holds true, rooted for team that is playing the Yankees.
ReplyDeleteAs for the lack of information, that was true. A whole new world opened up to me when I subscribed to "The Sporting News" around 1966. There was a column about every tema in the majors every week. My knowledge of the NL started to expand beyond Koufax, Mays, Aaron and Clemente. That is when I became a baseball fan, not just an AL fan.
When I was 7 years old, I spent a summer in southern California (1961). What I didn't realize was that it was the first year the LA Angels (Anaheim wasn't in the picture yet) were in existence. The paper carried stories about AL and NL teams. What a concept! I was too young to remember that, at one time, Boston had an AL and NL team, so this was new to me. And the Dodgers used to be in Brooklyn? Where's that?