Question to the BYB community: Are there divided baseball loyalties in your family?

My family isn’t a baseball family. We’re a hockey family. I grew up on Stevie Y and the Wings like anyone else born in Detroit between 1985 and 2000.

When I was younger though, I’d watch the Braves. They had national coverage via TBS and I remember sitting home on lazy Saturdays watching this strange, boring game called baseball. The pace was agonizingly slow compared to the hockey we typically watched but my parents were busy doing whatever it was they were doing. So I just kind of zonked out on it. Fast forward to the summer of 2003 and for some reason, I got hooked on baseball and the Tigers. I still can’t explain why I remained a fan even after that season. I’m a late in life baseball fan but I really do enjoy it. Whenever the Braves are a national game, I can’t help but watch and root for them a little bit.

Dad was always a RedSox fan, his loyalties from when he was a kid and he used to watch Ted Williams. His fondest memory was when while still in the service WWII he went to see the redsox play the Tigers at Briggs Stadium, Ted Williams was signing autographs pre game after his batting practice. Dad says there was a crowd of kids, teens, young adults that swelled to a few rows, dad was down a ways in his service uniform waving his scorecard, Ted Williams saw dad out of the corner of his eye, signed another with the crowd, stopped and walked over to dad. He shook his hand talked to him and smiled when dad told him his name was also ‘Ted’, signed the scorecard and went back to the crowd of kids.
Until the day dad died just over 20 years ago he would talk about that special day in his life at least a couple of times a year.

Uncle Charlie was the Yankee fan in the family, his team loyalties never wavered, the two of them would always have some teasing obviously from all the Yankee pennants and World Series wins. He saw DiMaggio in his prime, and his favorite was Mickey Mantle. Back in the mid 80’s I took Uncle Charlie to an autograph signing with Mickey, and he not only got the ball signed, Mick allowed everyone to take a picture with him. Mick and Uncle Charlie shaking hands, and he kept the pic in the living room next to his ‘cigar smoking chair’ until he passed last December.

My parents were from Mass. and Rhode Island, but for family and work reasons moved to Detroit and Highland Park in the mid 40’s. I came along in 1947 and went to my first Tigers game in late July 1954. I was hooked on the ‘green grass’ the size of the field and size of stadium and the seating, and just hypnotized by the kid in the outfield who threw the most accurate and bullet throws, yep Al Kaline. Little did I know in late 1957 my parents would move back to Boston. I have never rooted for another team, or loved a player as much as our Tigers and Kaline. I went to fenway every year 4/5/6 or more times the rest of his career. Both Dad and Charlie always told me I couldn’t have chosen a better Tigers’ player and hero on or off the field.

My family grew up in Detroit and were huge Tiger fans. My mom told me stories when Dad would take her to Briggs Stadium to see Hang Greenberg play. Anyway, my only sibling is my sister and she’s a huge sports fan. She moved to Denver back in the 70’s, is a Bronco season ticket holder and owns partial seasons to the Rockies. In 2009, when it looked like both the Tigers and Rockies were gonna get to the playoffs (sorry to bring up bad memories), I asked her who she would root for if they met in the series. She admitted she would now root for those guys wearing the purple.

I told her Dad would spin in his grave.

I’m also a huge Braves fan. Not so much anymore, but from ‘89-’05 I loved them. I was 9 years old when Sid slid and I still remember watching it at my grandma’s house. Skip Caray’s call might only be 2nd to Dan Dickerson’s call of Magglio in the ALCS, I don’t think I could pick between the 2.

There were times it was Atlanta/Detroit equally, but mostly it was 70/30 Atlanta/Detroit. Then the Braves that I grew up loving were falling apart. Maddux, Glavine, Smoltz, Chipper, all past their primes and declining. And it was also the time the Tigers got interesting. Magglio, Pudge, Guillen, Bonderman, Granderson… suddenly the dead franchise that I knew as the team who will never break .500 seemed to have some kind of a future.

The only family member who was not a Tigers fan was my grandpa, a Reds man. I’m glad he got to see them win it all.

Though I lived most of my life in Michigan most of my mom’s side of the family grew up rooting for the Yanks which is probably why I started out rooting for the Red Sox (even though they always were on the receiving end of a beating). However, as I’ve moved farther away from Michigan, and wanted a way to stay in touch with my roots, I’ve been watching a lot of Tigers games and have gone to a few as well over the last 2 years (love Comerica Park).

Great post. Part of what I love about sports so much are the many meanings they have for people outside of simply watching the games themselves.

In my immediate family we are Tigers (and all Detroit teams) fans through and through. It’s hard to imagine ever shifting my loyalties to another team. I have lived outside of Michigan at times and was never tempted to root for anyone else but my home state’s teams. When the Detroit Shock (WNBA) moved to Tulsa I was crushed and now enjoy watching all of the league’s teams without caring much who wins.

Detroit Tigers games are the soundtrack to family reunions on my mom’s side of the family. Every July we meet at a camp or someone’s house someplace in Michigan and once the game comes on a circle of lawn chairs forms near a radio broadcasting the game. I don’t always feel like I fit into my extended family but that common bond of being a Tigers fan without question is one thing we all share.

NYC. All of my Dad’s family still lives there (my Mom’s side relocated to the west coast when she was in college). My Dad has lived in Michigan for 30 years and has become a Tigers fan, more-so recently when I was young and became a diehard Tigers fan. My Dad’s family is made up of all hardcore Yankee fans: the obnoxious, stereotypical Yankee fans. My uncle loves to brag about how CC is superior to Verlander due to the fact that “the Tigers play in a pathetic division. CC would win 30 games if he pitched in the Central.” My uncle is an ignorant person who has the luxury of rooting for the easiest team to defend in sports, and disregards the enormous pile of statistics that back up the fact that Verlander is not only the deserving Cy Young winner, but also the AL MVP. It’s such an easy job being a Yankees fan, and I refrain from talking baseball with them.

It sounds like I am not alone in loving the Braves and Tigers. I grew up listening Ernie on my grandfathers knee, watching George and Al do the games on TV – good ole channel 4 and then in the height of our awesomeness – aka the next summer after winning the 84 Series, my mother moved me to North Carolina. With now being 800 miles from my beloved Tigers, I had to get my baseball fix somehow. I began following the Braves on TBS and they quickly became my second favorite team with my true love being our Tigers.

Now that I am fast approaching 40 and am married, living back in the Midwest, I have to deal with a wife that is from Minnesota and is a diehard Twinkie fan. She also loves Notre Shame, the Minnesota Vikings and the Toronto Maple Leafs. She used to be a North Stars fan but refuses to follow them since they moved to Dallas and the Wild…well, they’re not the North Stars.

I grew up (and still reside) in Columbus, Oh. My little league team for three straight years (the first of which was ‘84) was the Tigers. My high school used the Olde English D as their hat (Dublin), so I’ve always worn Tigers attire and between ‘84-’87 my fandom was cemented, even though the rest of my family is pro-Cleveland.

Fast forward to ‘08, and I started dating my (now) wife, only to find out that she considers herself a (gasp!) Yankees fan (her dad was one…blah, blah, blah). But she is coming around to the Tigers, thanks in large part to my infant son who I dress in Tigers gear — if that doesn’t pull at a mom’s heartstrings, I don’t know what will. We’ll see where her loyalty lays in the 1st round of the playoffs, possibly….

Nope. My family is Tigers all the way. My grandpa was a big Tiger fan (Brookens was his favorite in his later years) and that love apparently has trickled down through the generations unpolluted. My mom, for example, campaigned for Kaline’s number to be retired to such an extent that she was both in the paper and on the TV news for her efforts. She also made the TV news, multiple times, when she attended Ernie Harwell’s wake. In my family, we honk our car horn if we’re driving when the Tigers do something great. When I was little and asked for bedtime stories, they were thinly veiled biographies of various Tiger greats from the ‘68 team. Suffice it to say, we do Tiger fandom right and nobody (I’m aware of) has escaped its grasp.

My wife, on the other hand, was an Indians fan when I met her. Luckily, the great shining light of my love for the Tigers has since purified her and she is reborn a fan of all that is good and right. I have yet to convert her mom who remains, like most in Cleveland, a fair-weather fan of the Tribe.

My grandma is a Bears fan, my dad likes the Packers and I’m a Lions fan. My dad loves Notre Dame, my mom and brother like MSU and I’m the Michigan fan in the family (at least everyone hates Ohio State). My brother is a huge bandwagon fan and likes the Miami Heat, my dad was a big Bulls fan during the Jordan years, and I’m a Pistons fan.

First memories of baseball was the 84 season, if a season like that doesn’t hook a fan for life nothing will. All of my family, even the ones that don’t like baseball, like the tigers and at least know if they are doing good or not and will always take a trip to Detroit to catch a game if there is room. My Dad moved to Tennessee and then to Vegas and still a strong Tiger fan.

Like another poster or two above me I was also a pretty big Braves fan growing up. All of their games were on basic cable (thanks TBS!) and when Detroit started playing on PASS, my parents weren’t going to pay for it. By this time I was a huge fan and had to have my baseball fix so it was either the Braves or Cubs, and I can appreciate Harry Carrey today but couldn’t stand him back then.

Surprisingly, my mother was worried that I was going to become a Rays fan when I moved to Tampa this past year from overseas. While I like the Rays and appreciate them as a team and what they have accomplished in the East on a (relatively speaking) small budget, there is no way that after 11 years of following the Tigers while overseas and about 14 years following them while living in MI that I can just switch Loyalties like that.

Speaking of the Rays… Anyone going to be at the afternoon game Thursday?

Jumped to their bandwagon when Detroit started sucking in the early to mid 90’s. Bad move.

And neither was I. It’s complicated, but I still have a soft spot for the Cubs due to my grandma and the fact that I was born in Joliet, IL and went to at least a game a year growing up before moving to Michigan.

My dad’s a marine brat and grew up mostly rooting for the old-school Senators and the Giants. He lived in Hawaii when they had the Giants farm team… his absolute favorite player as a kid was, of course, Willie Mays; but he most grew up in Virginia close to DC. He’s never really had a “team,” though, since they “took his team away from him” and moved to Minnesota. It kinda gives him more of a reason to hate the Twins now that he’s a Tigers fan. Anyway, he never really had “his team after the Senators moved,” he was always just a fan of the game in general and would watch a random game if it was on.

Anyway, my mom grew up in Iowa. Her mom was a huge Cubs fan. HUGE. Like, so huge that when she started to get dementia in her last years she would forget my name or if she’d eaten that day, but would still remember what happened in the Cubs game last month and knew the exact stats of Mark Bellhorn. My mom liked the Cubs a bit too, but my uncle (always the hippy, antt-establishment type) started rooting for the White Sox just to be contrary.

So, needless to say, I kind of grew up a Cubs fan while also going to quite a few Sox games with my uncle.

That all changed when we moved to Michigan from Illinois (after living in CO for a few years) in 2001. For some reason the very first Tigers game I went to that summer was terrible. They lost to the Pirates. But there was something about that team that I just couldn’t deny. I started really following them after that… maybe it was stupid to keep following a losing team so intently, but I did. Our entire family just sort of started following the Tigers, and, by extension, all Detroit sports.

But my dad, the one who didn’t really have “his team,” now watches pretty much every pitch of every game… probabaly more games than I do, since I work nights. He’s obsessed. Literally obsessed, lives and dies by pitches. My parents live in Texas now but following the Tigers make them feel even more like Michiganders now even though none of the people in our family are natives.

Anyway, I still have a soft spot for the Cubs, like I said. I’ve also been watching/listening to the Cardinals a lot since I moved to the greater St. Louis region (downstate Illinois), but that’s mostly because all of my coworkers are Cards fans and they’re on like every radio station so it’s really hard to get away from them.

Some of you met my brother in law from Ohio at the BYB meet up this summer. He’s a pretty cool guy, though a Tribe and Browns fan because he grew up in Canton, OH. His wife, my sister, is a big Tiger fan, and the two daughters went to U of Michigan, so he obviously didn’t have much say in sports fan matters. My six year old niece (who was also at the meet up) is a Tiger fan as well. But as far as my immediate family of bro and sisters, we’re all die hard Tiger fans. My bro in Chicago went to MSU, but the rest of us are U of M alums.

I grew up in southern Indiana my dad was a Reds and Cardinal fan two of my uncles were Cub fans which I root against to this day but I was raised to love baseball. My uncle Charles was a big wheel with American Moters in St.Louis and we would sit behind the Cardinal dugout Imean 1st row the first 19 years of my life, that warped my perception of M.L.baseball. Iremember seeing Bob Gibson vs Tom Sever in 1969 and both were knocked out by the 5th and a guy named Ted Sizemore won the game with an inside the park home run in the bottem of the 13th best game I ever saw. Imoved here in 1990 with a future ex wife from here and an infant daughter and a new team to root for.I know almost everyone disagrees with me but I disliked Sparkey from his Reds days and I did like Ernie but I was ready to see him go at the end which probably comes from being raised elsewhere but my prize kid is a Tiger fan which Iguess she gets from me and her mom. The rest of my family are Cardinal fans.My Mom and Dad thought Tiger Stadium was great and my Dad became a backdoor Tiger fan coming up every year and seeing a couple of games(Dad loved Sparky) but they are NL people but not me and my kid. And I have to say me and the kid loved to go to Detroit and boo Albert Belle we got to boo him in 3 different uniforms. My folks and my brother and his family came up on 08/29/99 for the last walk through the park and it was so cool I still have a Budweiser cup with infield dirt from that day.They’re NL people too bad at least my kid see’s the light

At least in professional sports, my immediate family doesn’t have any divided loyalties. My younger brother has been a Braves fan since the early-to-mid 90s—he was a fairly successful little league pitcher, and who else did you look up to at the time other than Atlanta’s killer rotation—but he’s a Tigers fan first and foremost. I think there’s a picture floating around somewhere of us three “kids” (all in our mid-late 20s) with Wings-Tigers-Lions gear on; I should get a copy and put it on my profile. Now my Grandfather, he bleeds red and blue for the Pistons, however, his brother (my great-uncle) is a huge Lakers fan. Back when Detroit won it all in ‘04, the two of them effectively stopped being on speaking terms, and haven’t really gone back, even yet…

As far as college loyalties—it’s kind-of funny. My immediate family is all UM fans. My aforementioned Gramps, however… cheers for OSU just because he knows it annoys my dad.