I’ll never forget the first time I made my daughter cry. It was awesome.
She was barely a month old, and it was my first time watching her alone. My wife had gone to the world’s greatest grocery store, Trader Joe’s, and I fed Lily as I watched a baseball game. But not just any baseball game. The Detroit Tigers, the team of my youth, needed just one win to get to the World Series.
The game was a nail-biter. The score was tied. With two outs in the bottom of the ninth and the Tigers’ best hitter, Magglio Ordonez, up, I decided I’d better put Lily down, just in case something happened and I needed to celebrate wildly.
No sooner had I put Lily in her bouncy seat than Ordonez hit a pennant-winning home run, sending the Tigers to the World Series. It was the biggest homer in the team’s 100-plus-year history. In the Detroit sports world, it was the best “where were you when” moment in decades, maybe ever. The fact that I was 459 miles away in University City didn’t diminish my excitement. In St. Louis terms, it was time to go crazy, folks.
So I did.
I jumped out of my seat, stunned. Things like that don’t happen to my teams. My teams lose, usually in spectacular fashion. So I yelled. As loud as I could.
And that’s when Lily started screaming right along with me. I never heard a sound so beautiful! But alas, she was not excited that the Tigers had won. She was terrified at the loud noises I was making.
Someday when she gets home from therapy, I’ll tell her this story. And when I do … will she be sad that she missed the excitement surrounding her team, the Detroit Tigers? Or will she celebrate because her team, the St. Louis Cardinals, went on to beat her daddy’s team in the World Series?
Parents face many difficult decisions: Let her cry it out, or pick her up? Disposable or cloth? Let her watch Barney, or keep your sanity? I’m here to tell you, deciding whether to allow her to pick her own favorite teams or demand she follow mine is right up there. She’ll be forced to wear what I buy, go to school where I send her and eat what I provide. (And by “eat” I mean throw on the floor.) I really, really want to lord sports over her, too. I vividly remember playing games out in front of my childhood home, during which my brother, dad and I all pretended to be Tigers. I’m not playing catch with no stinking little Cardinals fan!
See, I’m a displaced fan. I follow all the Detroit teams—I was born and grew up there—but I have lived in St. Louis for eight years now. Lily was born here.
I need to know: Do I have the right to force her to follow my teams? Will she be the type of kid who follows my teams because they are my teams, or will she be the type of kid who follows my enemies because they’re my enemies? I grew up a Tigers fan because my dad was, my brothers were, my friends were. I had no more control over that than I did over whether I’d have two arms. Will that hold true if we’re in enemy territory?
And without a doubt, I am in enemy territory. The Cardinals saturate their own market like no other team in the country. It’s enough to drive an outsider nuts. You know what I hate about Cardinals fans? Everything!
Wait, that’s not entirely true. When I first moved here, I adopted the Cardinals because the Tigers were so horrible. I used to joke that I’d be a Cards fan until they played the Tigers in the World Series—then I’d roll my eyes and say dramatically, “But that’ll NEVER happen!”
And then it did. I liked the Cardinals until the day after they won the NLCS in 2006. That’s when some yutz called sports radio and complained because Joe Buck’s call of the Cards’ winning home run on national television was not enthusiastic enough in favor of the Cardinals. Of all the lame calls to sports radio—and are there any other kind?—that was the worst. So I took it upon myself to hold that one guy against an entire city of fans. I plan to teach Lily to do the same.
I’m doing my best to indoctrinate my daughter. She has a Tigers hat, Tigers shirt and Tigers bib. They will be replaced every time she outgrows them. If anybody attempts to give her non-Detroit stuff, that stuff will never get to her.
Still, I’m not sure if my plan will work. There are bad signs already. She drools a lot, she’s incomprehensible and she’s quite gassy. All she needs is a mullet, and she’d be a Yankees fan.
But there are good signs, too. She loves her little pink Tigers hat. When she was very young, just a few weeks old, we occasionally showed her pictures of faces in magazines (my wife read somewhere that it was a good idea). One day, I pulled out a copy of Sporting News (my employer) that had Albert Pujols on the cover. I admire him greatly, as a man and an athlete. I know of nobody in sports who combines such incredible talent with such unyielding devotion to hard work. Plus, he gives millions to charity. But as a Cardinals superstar, he is my—nay, our—enemy.
Lily looked at him … intently studied his facial features … and took a massive poop.
I’ve never been more proud.
I’m trying to be mature about this. I’m trying to tell myself that it doesn’t really matter whether she loves the Tigers or Cardinals, as long as she loves her daddy. But there is one sports line she better not cross. She better not love soccer.
