How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Dodgers

Fernandomania!

The first baseball game I ever watched was a Dodgers-Cardinals game. I will never forget it. I was at some store like Walmart or Kmart or something, some store where they have a million televisions lined up in a row and barrage you with some inane thing that is being displayed on every single set. Only this wasn’t inane. It was magical.

Unlike most baseball fans, I didn’t have parents who engraved baseball into my head at an early age. So I didn’t have this thing where I had to be a Brewers fan because I was from Wisconsin. In fact, the way my brain is wired, I have always avoided cheering strictly for the home team. There was something “too easy” about that, never mind the constant stream of information you receive about these teams from local news networks and the like. When you live out in the country and do not get cable (we wouldn’t be eligible for Directv service, it would turn out, until the very late ‘90s), you can imagine how badly this turned out, especially when you hated Brett Favre and the local news was sure to update you on his each and every bowel movement.

But there was something about baseball that captured my imagination from the very beginning. I picked the largest screen this particular chain store had and parked myself in front of it for the hour or so my parents shopped. I couldn’t possibly move; I might miss some of the action.

I decided for some reason that I really liked the Dodgers and their plump Mexican fireballer Fernando Valenzuela. Therefore, the Cardinals were the bad guys and I must root the Dodgers on to victory. I was hooked. The fact that the Dodgers won the game right before I had to leave only sealed the deal. I was set to be a fan for life.

Over the years I bounced around a bit in terms of fandom before latching on to the Oakland A’s and their Moneyball philosophy. They were my other favorite team growing up anyway, what with Jose Canseco and Rickey Henderson and the like. They were a fun team to watch. The fact that their General Manager, Billy Beane, seemed a few inches smarter than the rest of his colleagues helped make my decision.

I managed to convince myself that the American League was superior because of the Designated Hitter, because after all, pitchers pitching to other pitchers is something akin to cannibalism, isn’t it? It just never seemed right to me. Until something clicked in my head recently, watching several National League games in a row: they’re more exciting. There’s more strategy involved. It’s more of a thinking man’s style than the bash ‘em out American League style provides.

I started to remember the old fondness I had for the Dodgers, and since with the A’s I was an adopted Californian anyway, I figured the time was right to hop back on the LA bandwagon. It made sense anyway since I never liked the Giants (can’t stand Brian Wilson) and Rockies (bunch of farmers and hillbillies on that team; their farm system is an actual farm), and the fact that the Diamondbacks didn’t exist when I was a kid (therefore making them a shady team with questionable justification for existing), so it was a natural fit. I will still hope every season for a Dodgers-A’s World Series, but it is with the Dodgers where I stake my claim, now and forever. (I’m a bandwagon jumper in reverse, you might say. My favorite basketball team is the Clippers. I love cheering for bad teams. Since the Clippers are in LA, and the Dodgers are in LA, and I no longer give two scoops of Kellogg’s Fuck All about football since before the lockout, the LA connection just makes sense.)

Now, being a Dodgers fan isn’t without its problems, as fandom presents problems wherever you go with it. Growing up, the Yankees were my least favorite team by far. To this day, I wouldn’t be opposed to New York being physically cut out of the United States and forced to exist as a separate island onto itself. Their big star at the time was Don Mattingly. So to me, Mattingly embodied everything evil and hateable about Major League Baseball. The fact that he was a total loser whose teams never won a championship while he was playing was one of the best, purest forms of joy I have ever achieved in my life.

So of course he’s the manager of the Dodgers. Which is fine, though, because I am of the belief that coaching does not matter at the professional level. You have a bunch of spoiled, pampered millionaire athletes. You’re not going to be able to tell them what to do. LeBron James has never been truly coached in his life. He plays a certain way and nothing Mike Brown or Eric Spoelstra can say to him will affect him in any way whatsoever. The only time a coach truly matters is when he screws something up so badly, it actively works to hurt the team. The best example I can think of is Dusty Baker’s propensity for chewing up and spitting out young pitchers. Dusty Baker is a total idiot, a true black mark on the Dusty name.

So Mattingly’s not really a problem. Ned Colletti is a problem. He’s a total dumbass. Frank McCourt and his seeming autistic child getting hit repeatedly over the head with a hammer understanding of business management is a problem. Fans showing up in the third inning and leaving in the seventh is also a problem, but since I’m tucked away in Wisconsin and don’t have to encounter these people, I’m willing to ignore that one. The worst fans I have encountered in my life are by far Cubs fans. I don’t know if I can think of a single Cubs fan I would describe as a “good person.” Any person from Chicago that I actually like is a White Sox fan or doesn’t care about baseball. There are no exceptions.

I know I’m extremely late to the dance on this, but as long as I don’t get tarred and feathered for having gay opinionz 4 u, I plan on writing regularly on here about the Dodgers and their various trials and tribulations. It should be really interesting, especially now with them possibly looking at being overtaken by Major League Baseball (and you know how well *that* is going to go), and with them being a really bad team, but still doing just well enough where you can delude yourself into thinking they may be able to sneak into the playoffs if absolutely everything breaks right for them. I know we have a Giants fan on here, so I look forward to getting into many a lively debate with him and then crying myself to sleep when the result is them beating the Dodgers by ten.

Such is fandom. I hope Fernando would approve.