2026 Baseball Fandom

 This is my first baseball fandom post.  I did one for the start of the NBA season and next up is baseball.  I’ve been an Atlanta Braves and Boston Red Sox fan since the 70s.  I don’t remember the specifics of how that came about.  Boston was one of the best teams in the 70s and were on TV and in the news on a regular basis though they only made the playoffs once.   The Braves started being broadcast nationally in 1977.  Sometime soon after that I started seeing those telecasts.  It seemed like they were on every night, and my baseball fandom really took off.  Not a big surprise, but many of my favorite players of all-time come from those teams.  In 1995, I finally got to enjoy a championship when Atlanta won it all.  What a feeling it was to get one after watching them fall short in the seasons before that.  The 2004 Red Sox Championship my was first with Boston and it felt just as good.  The following championships for both teams (Atl 2021  Bos 2007, 2013, 2018) have a special place with me but those first hit a bit differently.  So many memories are specific to players and games.

The teams I don’t like are the Yankees, Mets and Cardinals.  I can live with most others but those three…  Yankees and Mets are fairly obvious as rivals to the Red Sox and Braves, but also beat my teams in the World Series.  I still remember the Cardinals beating the Braves in the playoffs in 1982, the first season I got to see them play in the postseason.  I haven’t forgiven St. Louis since. 

My dad took me to my first baseball game.  It was in the late 80s in St. Louis.  Braves-Cardinals.  Atlanta lost on a suicide squeeze.  When the reliever came into the game I knew we’d lose and sure enough.  Still it is a great memory for me.  I’ve been to games over the years, from more in St. Louis, one in Colorado for their initial season, minor league games and a game in Seoul, South Korea which was fun.  It’s been a few years since I’ve been to a baseball game.  I’m close to St. Louis but the hassle of going to the “big city”, cost and effort have taken away some of the luster as I’ve gotten older.  I do want to go back but I’ll do when it makes sense for me.  Maybe even this year. 

 

Bob Horner

My favorite player of all-time is Bob Horner.  A slugging corner infielder, he once hit 4 home runs in a game, but he struggled with injuries throughout his career.  Still, he was my guy.  He went straight from college to the majors (Braves) and won Rookie of the Year.  I saw the infamous game between San Diego and Atlanta where a huge brawl broke out.  Horner had a cast on his arm due to injury and was watching the game from a booth but ended up on the field to join in on the “fun”.  He had a career .277 batting average and belted 218 home runs across 10 seasons.  Unfortunately, he played one season with the Cardinals, but I don’t hold that against him.  He also played one season in Japan hitting .327 with 31 homers in 93 games.  I can’t say what specifically drew me to him, but I liked him from the start.  I even had a custom McFarlane action figure made of him.

Carl Yastrzemski is my second all-time favorite player.  A Hall of Famer with 3,419 hits, Yaz played 23 seasons (all in Boston) ending his career with a .285 average and 452 home runs after taking over for Ted Willaims in left field.  He also played first and DH as he aged out of the outfield.  He won an MVP, a Triple Crown, 3 batting titles, 7 Gold Gloves and was an All-Star 18 times.  By the time I first saw him in the 70s he was already in his mid-30s.  Baseball probably only had one nationally televised game back then so who knows when I first saw him play.  I do remember seeing him on This Week in Baseball.  I can’t lie, I think I was drawn to the last name at first, but the player and person drew me in over time.  He was such an amazing player.  I wish he could have won a championship.  He so deserved it.  He made it to two World Series (’67 and ’75) hitting .369 in 17 games with 3 home runs and 9 runs batted in.  I’ve always enjoyed knowing he starred on the big stage. 

My favorite current players are: Mike Trout, Jose Altuve, Craig Kimbrel, Freddie Freeman, Mookie Betts, Xander Bogarts, Shohei Ohtani, Bobby Witt Jr., Bo Bichette, Fernando Tatis Jr., Ronald Acuna Jr., Paul Goldschmidt, Nolan Arenado, Chris Sale, Andrew McCutchen.

I started collecting baseball cards in the ‘70s.  I really enjoyed making competing all-star teams with the cards I had and do my own game simulations.  I’d even do box scores for them sometimes.  Like most kids of the time, I didn’t care for my cards properly.  They were separated by teams with a rubber band around them and old cards would be discarded over time.  There have been multiple breaks in my card collecting over the years and I may be coming to another of those.  Too many things competing for space, money, and time.  I’m still working out details but hope to have that plan come to fruition soon.  I may still collect on a smaller scale, but I just don’t know yet.

Video games and fantasy baseball have always been part of my fandom.  On Nintendo I played Baseball Stars a lot.  I think I also played some RBI baseball.  On Sega I played the Hardball games with Hardball III being my favorite.  I played that a ton.  Over time though I got away from console games.  I’ve played the simulation game, Baseball Mogul, on the PC for some years now.  I still enjoy and play it.  It has all the players from the history of MLB, and you can start your franchise in any era.  Back in 1992 or 1993, me and my work buddies did a fantasy league where we’d use stats from USA today to determine our weekly winners.  It was fun.  Now Yahoo fantasy has been my go-to for decades. I did a subscription to Baseball Digest for a few years as well.

I did purchase the MLB TV package last season.  It was good but I didn’t find myself watching enough games to find it worth it.  I don’t think I’ll do it again this year unless a good deal comes along.  It is fun, but it just seemed there were too many competing interests to really sit down and watch as many Atlanta and Boston games that I thought I would.  Online my go to sites are Baseball Reference for stats and MLB Trade Rumors.

Wow that’s a lot of yapping.  I’ll try to do a fandom post every year.  Next year I’ll cut down on the words.  Happy Opening Day!

2025 NBA Fandom

 

My brother-in-law got me into the NBA in the late 70s, early 80s.  It started with the Statis Pro Basketball board game and playing basketball.  This was a time when the NBA Finals were played on tape delay until 1982 so seeing the players names really cemented them for me.  We played that game a lot.

Starting in 1979 games were on cable and I was able to start seeing the games consistently.  I was hooked. This weekend I purchased the NBA League Pass.  A first for me.  The grandsons are showing interest in the NBA.  I've already toyed with getting a subscription so maybe this helps grow their fandom.  I subscribed to Hoops and Basketball Digest magazines for the longest time.  Loved both of those.

I also played basketball for a hot second in junior high but I did play a ton of intramural basketball in junior college and in the Air Force.  My knees will attest to that.  ;)

My favorite teams are the Atlanta Hawks and Portland Trail Blazers.  I grew up on TBS, so I became a fan of everything Atlanta.  Somehow, and I still don't remember how, I became a fan of Portland even before that.  Doesn't matter I'm a true fan of both.  Portland won a championship but I can't claim being a fan at the time.  I think I remember it but.  Still I love that team.  My favorite players from each team are Dominique Wilkins and Damian Lillard.

My go to sports site for basketball stats is Basketball Reference .com.  I'm a stat geek at I love how easy it is to navigate and all the great information it provides.  Hoops Rumors is my go-to for NBA news.  Online I'm in simulation leagues on the free site Pennant Chase .com.  I'm also a big NBA 2K fan and I'm already playing NBA 2K26.  I don't do all the cool things the game offers but I still really enjoy it.  I play as an all-time team vs another all-time team.  I love playing with all the legends.  I'm working to play Statis Pro Basketball again.  I really enjoy being able to play players from any era as well as keeping the stats from the games.

I have two Dominique jerseys.  The classic Hawks red jersey ('82-'92) and his Team USA jersey.  The only other basketball jersey I have is a Buck Williams Nets white jersey ('83-'90).  My favorite basketball card sets are 76-77 Topps Tall Boys, 90-91 SkyBox, 91-92 SkyBox and 91-92 Upper Deck.

My best all-time starting 5 is below...  Plenty of room to argue.  I argue with myself over this all the time.  I have Hakeem right there with Kareem.  MJ is the GOAT in my book.  I've watched him and LeBron play a lot.  And it's no knock on LeBron.  MJ is just the best player of all-time in my opinion.

My favorite players in the NBA today.  The first three are in order.  After that it's more fluid.  I think Nikola Jokic is the best player in the sport today.  He's so fun to watch.  Very smart and just seems to be good at everything he does.

My favorite players all-time.

I've been wanting to do "fandom" posts for each sport for some time now.  This is my first.  Thanks for letting me just spit ball on what is probably my favorite sport right now.  Enjoy the start of the season!

The Battle for the 1985-1986 NBA Scoring Title As Only I'll Remember It

Dominique Wilkins (Atlanta Hawks)

The 1985-1986 NBA season saw one of the best battles for a scoring title.  Dominique Wilkins, in his fourth year in the league, beat out fellow hall of famers Adrian Dantley and AlexEnglish for the only scoring title of his career.  This is something that stands out in my fandom for two reasons.  First, Nique is my all-time favorite basketball player.  Second I was a junior in high school and in my English class I had to write in a journal every morning.  The instructor, a basketball coach, wasn’t picky about what we wrote about but we had to write something in coherent English.  I wrote every day for two weeks about the battle for the scoring title.  My teacher liked what I wrote and said he could tell I was a big fan.  

To the battle itself.  During the last week of the season the players were within a point of each other.  It was definitely something that could go one way or another depending on an injury or particularly bad or good game.  Dominique stepped up and average 39 points per game over his last six games while Dantley and English averaged 32 and 29 over the same timeframe respectively.   This included a 57 point effort against the New Jersey Nets.  While this is a blip in NBA history, it was huge to me.  I was at my peak of NBA fandom as was the NBA itself.  Boston won the championship that year while Larry Bird won MVP.  I was 17 and had started watching in 1979 at the pivotal time in league history that ushered in Magic Johnson  and then Larry Bird.  Basketball was it to me in the eighties. 

For some reason this memory has always stuck with me.  I lived in a small town in New Mexico and I can’t remember exactly how I got all my information.  It would have had to have been via ESPN or maybe the USA Today.  The other option was reading the local paper the next day but I don’t remember them running box scores though they might have had small write-ups of each game.  No matter, it was exciting to me.  I have always loved Dantley and English as well and to have three great scorers battling it out in such a manner was fun.  You just never know what memories will stick out when you think back to different times in your life of fandom.   

Adrian Dantley (Utah Jazz)

Alex English (Denver Nuggets)

 

Fandom: My Views and Journey as a Fan

Alfred Jenkins

Fandom.  The state or art of being a fan (per Merriam-Webster).  That in itself is pretty straight forward and doesn't sound difficult or hard to comprehend.  If you are a sports fan you are saying "fandom isn't a hard thing" and you are probably right.  I'm just a little different...

As I grew up in New Mexico WTBS was my link to the sports world as well as whatever would be shown on the networks in the 70's.  For me this meant seeing coverage of all the Atlanta pro teams - Falcons, Flames, Hawks as well as what seemed to be a Braves game every night.  The only "local" team would have been the Dallas Cowboys who were on TV every Sunday.  I was a fan during the 70's and 80's until Tom Landry was fired.  No biggie right?  Well for me I ended up latching on to more than one team in each sports.  So not only was I fan of the Hawks but I also liked the Portland Trail Blazers.  While following the Braves I also am a fan of the Boston Red Sox and instead of just following the Falcons I'm also a Buffalo Bills guy.  College has me following many teams from Michigan (my #1) to Texas Tech, Georgia, and New Mexico.  I know that doesn't seem too far out of the realm of normalcy.  Still some people just don't get it.  How can you be a fan, a true fan, of so many different teams.  I wish I had an answer .  It is just how I've always been.

 And it was worse at times.  I also was a fan of the San Diego Chargers, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and Denver Broncos (John Elway era).  In basketball the Spurs, Warriors, Kings (when they were in Kansas City) and sometimes Seattle (back when they were in Seattle only) were teams I've always liked.  In baseball the A's and Royals were the only other teams I've had any real love for but I always find myself rooting for them.  In hockey...ugh that one is really complicated.  Calgary and Boston are at the top but Toronto, Buffalo and the New Jersey Devils were there for a short time.  I'm a casual hockey fan so that makes it even harder. 

So you may think yeah it is a little different but so what.  Where this all comes into play is when I'm I'd talk to folks about sports and who we root for.  If I started naming off all these teams I got some really weird looks and people questioned whether or not I was truly a fan.  So I started whittling things down and decided two teams per sport was enough.  Doesn't mean I've dropped those other teams completely but it allows me to have somewhat normal conversations with other sports fans and I can devote my time, and money, to less teams.  I still root for those other teams but I'm just not that hardcore fan.  This last week I rooted for, and so enjoyed, the Spurs as they Trounced the Heat for their fifth championship. 

Joe Ferguson

So it probably seems like now I'm talking (typing) to just talk.  Is there a real point to this?  Maybe not but bear with me.  There is so much that goes into being a fan.  Where you grow up.  Being in New Mexico I really didn't have those local teams so I latched on to teams for different reasons.  Coverage on TV, players who I really liked, or cliché as it may sound even the uniforms of the team.  No matter why I chose a team I am a hardcore fan.  I live and die with them each season and always come back the next season no matter what.  I still get made fun of for my love of two teams.  Some friends speak of my baseball team as "BosLanta".  *sigh*  It is all good.  I take it with the fun in which it is intended.  And at it's core that is what it is all about.  Fun.  At the end of the day who I root for in sports isn't a life changing discussion.  But I am sports fan.  It is a big part of who I am and I enjoy those discussions. 

One other aspect of fandom for me is I'm always rooting for someone.  No matter who is playing I'll be rooting for one team.  In my mind I'll either like or dislike one team more than the other so I'll have a rooting interest.  Maybe it is rooting against Yankees who I dislike on principal or rooting for the New Jersey Nets when Buck Williams played for them.  Yeah that is an old reference...  It is one more thing that allows me to enjoy games when my teams aren't playing in them. 

So fandom is an easy thing at it's core and it is with me as well.  Just because I have two teams in each sport to root for doesn't make me any less of a hardcore fan.  Again it is all about fun and sports is definitely that for me.

Eddie Johnson, Kansas City Kings