ne(one)piphany

Those of you who don’t care about this nation’s greatest sport might want to skip over this entry or catch a NASCAR race.

Tonight I have tickets to the first-ever regular season matchup between the Seattle Mariners and the Chicago Cubs. matter eater lad asked me, “which team do you root for?” and I’m really at a loss. Actually, the real (implied) question here is, “If Satan left the air conditioning running on high before leaving on that three-week cruise and the Mariners and Cubs were in the world series… Who would you root for?”

I’m from Chicago and have been a die-hard Cubbies fan since I was nine, having acquired my allegiances from my father. So I know that it’s not even worth thinking about such a question (and this year, like every other when the fanbase is expecting a good year before the season starts, is shaping up to be the same way). Things started off well with a pennant race and a postseason run in 1984, with a talented and personable bunch that included Ryne Sandberg, Lee Smith, Leon Durham, Jody Davis, Ron Cey, Larry Bowa, Rick Sutcliffe, etc. Of course, anyone who knows baseball can tell you the rest of this story.

Going to college in Boston didn’t help at all. Besides, I was jaded by then, and had more grown-up things to worry about. (By the way, Red Sox fans are the biggest whiners in existence! The last Red Sox World Series flag is more recent success than either Chicago franchise has had!)

But the Mariners, the Mariners are the team that brought me back to baseball. I’m no fair weather fan, either. I decided to start following the team at the beginning of the 1998 season, coinciding with the start of the only two years in the second half of the 90’s that they decided to be, well, Cub-like. But they had that quality that had drawn me into those Cubs teams, the one that meant that no matter how much they were blowing up on the field you still knew that they were nice guys with a load of talent (Seattle Mariners 1998 slogan: “You’ve gotta love these guys”). And it helped that it was never difficult to get tickets at the late, lamented Kingdome. The last two and a half years have just been a bonus for me.

So who do I root for? After much thought, I’ve decided: I’ll be happy whoever wins, but in the end it has to be the Mariners. Why? Because I have to live in this city, and things are already depressing enough in the winter.

Anyways, who cares? As they say, it’s a beautiful day for baseball.