October Blues

We're now well into October, and for sports fans that means three things: baseball playoffs are starting, the hockey season is underway, and the Raiders are no longer in the running for a playoff spot. Living in the Bronx, home of the most successful professional sports team in the history of North America, has made one of those three things matter more to the community than the other two. Let me give you a hint: the Montreal Canadiens have three times as many titles as all three of the state of New York's hockey teams combined.

The important one around here is, of course, the MLB playoffs, and once again the Bronx Bombers are looking strong. But that's not why I'm writing today. You see, I moved from the beautiful Golden State to the Big Apple for three main reasons: to try city life, to avoid the real world, and to get away from Dodgers fans. I've been more or less successful when it comes to the first two, but the third has been an utter failure.

I've been through all the logical reasons for it. First of all, yes, the Los Angeles Dodgers used to be the Brooklyn Dodgers. I know. But most of the Dodgers fans I've seen have been about my age, so the Dodgers were long gone before they were born. You might be thinking to yourself, "Yes, but a lot of times team loyalties are passed down from generation to generation. Maybe the parents are Dodger fans." I get that argument. The whole "sins of the father to the third and fourth generation" thing. But it still doesn't add up, because I'm hardly ever in Brooklyn. I spend all my time in Manhattan and the Bronx, where it would still make way more sense to be a Yankees fan even if the Dodgers were still in Brooklyn. The other logical reason that I thought of, that they, like me, moved from California to New York after already developing their sports loyalties, can explain some of them, but certainly not all of them.

The worst part is that because of this new thing called "fashion," they're harder to spot. I used to be able to just look out for that cursed shade of blue with the white writing (let's be honest, there aren't any Royals fans to make me wrong). But now you can get any team's hat in any color with any color writing. It makes the enemy so much harder to spot.

That's life I guess. There are some things you just can't run away from. And, truth be told, I'm kind of glad. As much as I hate to admit it, I have some friends who are Dodgers fans. I've even got a friend who's a Giants fan but wears a Dodgers jersey regularly. I love them anyway. Although think how much cooler they'd be if they were Giants fans.