Go Orange Team!
Paulina is not an Astros fan. Paulina will be rooting for the Astros.
Tonight is game 7 of the World Series between the Washington Nationals and the Houston Astros. I live in Houston. There’s a pretty cool energy in the city. You can’t go very far without seeing an Astros hat or jersey. I'm actually a Cardinals fan, so I have to be careful about showing my allegiances.
Fortunately, that's not a problem for me, because I'm used to hiding my allegiances. We moved around a lot when I was growing up, which means I have an eclectic collection of teams I root for. As a teen, I decided to become a loyal, die-hard fan of the storied Green Bay Packers. I still remember being devastated after they lost the Super Bowl in 1997. I was a legitimately depressed sixteen-year-old. That’s kind of weird, but consider that, at sixteen, I tied much of who I was to being a Packers fan. It was a significant part of my personal brand, and I endured that loss as if I personally lost. I felt it. And, now as a thirty-eight-year-old man, I feel ashamed to say I am no longer a Green Bay Packers fan. I have sold them out for the Houston Texans. Good God, what have I done?
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
-TS Elliot
I didn’t mean for it to happen. It was a slow burn. A game here, a T-shirt there. Now, 12 years in Houston later, I am a card-carrying Texans fan. And I don’t just like them. I love them. I know the entire offensive line and all of their backups. It’s bad. I am sorry to Brett Favre, Aaron Rodgers, and the great people of Green Bay. I didn’t mean for this to happen.
But in my defense, didn’t I just change my loyalty from the green team to the blue team? I doubt that even one player on the Packers is actually from Green Bay. I know that not a single Texan I rooted for in 2008 is still on the team. The players are traded away constantly or released weekly. These teams are just uniforms and logos. There is nothing tangible keeping you a fan of the green team over the blue team, just the unwritten rule of fandom: “Once a fan, always a fan.“
There are no addendums or amendments to this rule. Breaking it is high treason, punishable by unrelenting ridicule and unprovoked bouts of public shaming. One friend moved to LA almost twenty years ago, and we still give him grief for rooting for the Dodgers. Another one adopted the Astros after growing up a Cubs fan. Though he lived in Chicago for only 1/12 the time he has lived in Houston, we have no choice but to put him in the stocks. This is silly. I'm being dramatic, right? Is any of this real?
Raised right.
Yes. I know it’s real, because I can feel it. I can feel it when I have to defend myself from the slings and arrows of my friends when they bring up my new Texans fandom. There is no “tangible“ thing that makes you a fan (good point earlier, Adam), because it’s the arguments, the losing seasons, the memories of where you were when, and the stories we remember. That’s why people don’t like fair-weather fans, because they feel like memory thieves. "This is my team, and these are my stories! You can’t have them, because I have been waiting for this win since 1997 or 1981 or 1908."
I get that, but also, get over it and let’s have some fun. It’s game 7 of the World Series, and I'm hopping on the bandwagon and taking my whole sorted fandom with me. I hope a non-Astros fan takes his son to the game tonight so they can steal some memories for themselves. The image of a fictitious father and son at game 7 is enough to give me chills. I might just steal some memories with my daughters tonight and let them stay up way too late and watch the game with me. Whether you’re a fan of the yellow team or the purple team, I hope tonight you’ll join all the fair-weather fans in Houston, and cheer for the orange team. It might be the first step in becoming a fan for life. I will root for the orange team tonight, but don’t get it twisted, I’d die before abandoning the red team with the birds on their shirts.
