I grew up in Cubs land. One of our neighbors lived and died by the Cubs. Well, lived and wandered around in a state of profound depression by the Cubs. Sadly, seeing as they were, you know, the Cubs, there was a lot of the wandering around bit. Others were nearly as committed.
Now, my household was sort of baseball agnostic. As I remember it, my dad tended to follow mostly just the Bears (more sighing, more often than not, although I did have the entire "Superbowl Shuffle" memorized back in the day... "We are the Bears shufflin' crew, shufflin' on down, doin' it for you...") and baseball we just didn't watch that much.
And my mom grew up in Sox land, so there was that influence, albeit a small one.
The Cubs are just kind of ever present, so even if you're not a real fanatic, they kind of impinge on your consciousness more than the Sox. There's the whole WGN thing, there were the day games that were on TV virtually every day in summer. It was almost harder to ignore the Cubs than not.
I went to college and grad school on the south side, where there was much more of a Sox presence, even if just because their part was closer. But those were also, at least for much of it, the years of the Bulls, and they trumped everything.
As not a super fan of anything, I suppose I've tended to be a fair-weather fan more than anything else, which sort of makes me feel guilty. But, basically, I'm mostly ambivalent about sports, and so I get caught up in whatever's making the news.
Now, since leaving Chicago, I find myself mostly just wanting all teams associated with Chicago to win. Sadly, this often leaves me looking at the sports pages muttering "frickin' Cubs" or whatever.
Two years ago (three years ago? shows how much attention I pay) I got completely caught up in the Cubs pennant run. Watched all the time, was tangentially caught up in the Red Sox, just because it was all so much fun. And then they tanked. And it was awful. Just gut wrenching. I gave a horrible lecture the day after their total collapse, and apologized to the class that the Cubs had gotten me so very down that I couldn't summon up energy to attempt to make the revolutions of 1848 interesting.
I'm unwilling to let that happen again. But tonight I found myself turning on the game and getting involved and pumping fists and all that. At least until I had to leave. Sigh. I may not be able to help getting involved.
In the meantime, I'm going to critique one of the sportscasters. Frankly, I could probably critique a bunch of them, but I only watched for a while and so have one thing that I really noticed. I don't know her name, but the woman who was broadcasting during the pregame was just so bizarrely dressed to my eye. She had flowing blond hair, big chandelier earrings, and a fur coat with a very dramatic collar. The coat made a certain amount of sense, as it was apparently quite cold. The hair, whatever. I think it's the earrings that set my teeth on edge. She looked like she was dressed for a fancy dress party, and the guy next to her should have been in a tux. I feel sort of bad for being bothered by this, because on the one hand, she should be able to wear what she wants. But it ended up just looking really weird to me. Really.
Uh. Anyway. Go Sox!