I Am A Sports (Love) Bigamist And Proud Of It

My writing "mentor", Bill Simmons of ESPN came out with 20 rules for sports fans back several years ago. He wrote at the time that one should not root for more than one team in one sport no matter what the circumstances. He also stated that one can not jump on bandwagon teams or wear NBA jerseys in public. He discussed at length pulling for home teams, but gave vague ideas on what to do if you moved three million times as a child. I have written Mr. Simmons, my "mentor", numerous times asking for additional clarification on these rules but I have never gotten a response. This is mainly because Mr. Simmons apparently answers e-mails that are humorously whimsical in nature. I, obviously, do not meet these qualifications.

So I have to say that I root for more than one team in one sport and I have no regrets. This breaks one of the major rules that Mr. Simmons seems to fret obsessively over. However, I have never stuck with one woman (and for the most part neither should anyone and the same is true for women with men) and I have never stuck with just one team. And like my history with women, I have no regrets. Ever.

In 1979, I was seven years old and lived in Atlanta, Georgia. My father took me to my first ever baseball game. The Braves played the Dodgers. Phil Niekro pitched for the Braves and I think Sandy Koufax pitched for the Dodgers (Just kidding. I don't know who pitched for the Dodgers that day). The Braves, as usual and expected during those colorful times, lost by one run. However, I was hooked. I was hooked on the Braves and eventually became hooked on Atlanta sports, period. This was despite living in Boston prior to living in Atlanta only a few years previously. It was not until living in Atlanta was I exposed to sports full scale. In 1980, Atlanta football had a magical run when the Georgia Bulldogs led by Herschel Walker (before he ended up with five or fifteen additional personalities) won the national championship and the Atlanta Falcons led by, pretty boy and booze hound before finding God, quarterback Steve Bartkowski won the NFC West title before losing in a gut spilling NFC Divisional Play-off game loss to the Cowboys. Though this loss was a harbinger of things to come in my Atlanta sports fan experience I was hooked on Atlanta sports. The Atlanta Hawks were the first NBA team I started to root for. It went on and on.

Had I stayed living in Atlanta I probably would have not stepped out on Atlanta's teams. However, it did not work out that way. It turns out that it has never worked out that way with the women in my life either. Go figure. I ended up moving to Jacksonville, Florida and then to the Washington, DC area in the following couple of years. I stayed living in the DC area for four years and then moved out to northwestern Virginia for a few years after that. During this time, I maintained my interest in Atlanta sports teams. However, during the 80's the Lakers and Celtics dominated professional basketball. I picked the Lakers. Mainly because of my interest in the city of Los Angeles. All I can say about LA is that it represents the best and worst in America all wrapped up into a sprawling world of plastic surgery, clogged highways, smog, and every other nationality in the world. To me, LA seemed far away and magical. I became interested in LA as a city and it's sports franchises. I became interested in the Lakers and the Dodgers (and those teams were also pretty good through the majority of the 80s). My best friend in DC created a electric tackle football league where he created a likeness of me who ended up winning three Super Bowl championships for...the Raiders...who happened to be in...LA. Except his version of me was the professional football version of Madonna, which I later figured out probably made me appear looking like a drag queen or Todd Marinovich. Anyways, I started pulling for the Raiders only after they destroyed the Redskins in the Super Bowl.

If anyone asked me what my favorite team was during my formative years I would have picked the teams in Atlanta. However, I also pulled for the teams in Los Angeles because I was obsessed with the city and also I was an electric football hero playing for the LA Raiders.

In 1992, I visited both Los Angeles and San Francisco for the first time. I fell in love with both cities and as a result I claimed the Bay Area's teams as rooting interests as well. The LA Raiders eventually moved back to Oakland so my interest in them...for better or worse...remained. I picked up pulling for the SF Giants (despite their bitter rivalry with the Dodgers) and not the Oakland A's so I did not break the rule of cheering for both a city's teams in the same sport. Somewhere in the mix, Wayne Gretsky ended up in Los Angeles and played for the Kings. In 1993, the Kings (coached by Barry Melrose who had, at the time, the best hockey mullet in the history of the NHL) went to the Stanley Cup Finals against the Montreal Canadians. I remember watching every Kings play-off game that season. I watched the stellar Game 7 versus Toronto where Gretsky pulled off a stunning victory. Then I watched Marty McSorley get called for having too much curve on his stick and the Canadians scoring a crucial power play goal and winning Game 2 and eventually stealing the Cup. The play-off run by the Kings mirrored my relationships with women very closely. A series or relationship should never be decided by anyone's curved stick. Ever.

My interest in LA and it's sports teams dates back to the 80's. In the 90's, San Francisco joined Atlanta and Los Angeles as my favorite American cities. Atlanta was my first love. Their teams will always be my favorites. Just as one's first love will always have a special place in one's heart. However, in real life there always is other women/men and it is the same with sports teams as well. We are not biologically wired to stay with one significant other and nor are we wired in a mobile age to pull for just one sports team either. We have our favorites, but we also have our memories of other experiences good or bad with people and sports teams. We never love just one person. We end up being in lust with more than one person in our lives. Same as sports teams. Just like with relationships I have no shame in this regard. My favorite teams are in Atlanta and I will always love them. There have been other women in my life. There have been even other women in my life during other relationships. I have no regrets for any of this. Life is too short for regrets. The same is true with my sports teams as well. So if that makes me a sports bigamist then so be it. I am not going to be ashamed of it and neither should anyone else.