Split Loyalties

This Friday I went to a professional baseball game for the first time in years.

I grew up going to baseball games, but I'm really not a huge baseball fan. (After my Jane Austin confession a couple months ago, I feel a little bad admitting this publicly to my mother, except I think she already knows.) My dad grew up in the Salt Lake area with three sisters and no brothers, and didn't have much exposure to baseball as a child. My mom, though, grew up in Reno, Nevada, and she and her family were Giants fans to the core. So when we moved to Los Angeles, it meant my mom (and her little brother) had an opportunity to expose all of us kids to some of her favorite childhood memories.

I didn't really take to it, though. Baseball games seemed long and slow to me, and during the window of time when I was old enough to babysit and my sister was still young enough to be babysat, I would happily volunteer to stay home - we would eat TV dinners, and she would go to bed, and I would get to stay up late watching movies. I thought that was more fun than a trip to Dodgers Stadium.

In retrospect, though, I have a lot of nostalgia for baseball games. I associate baseball games with the 4th of July, Subway sandwiches, my Uncle Kevin, baseball cards and stale gum, sitting on the grass in the outfield to watch fireworks. It may have seemed kind of boring to me at the time, but baseball formed some good memories.

On Friday the Tigers were playing the Dodgers, and so, being the passionate baseball fan that I am, my loyalties were horribly split. On the one hand, I am living in Michigan and I was actually at Tigers Stadium, so it seemed like I ought to cheer for my home team. But on the other hand, the Dodgers sort of are my home team. They're the ones I grew up watching. But on the third hand (if you can have one), as third-generation Giants fans, my siblings and I were not supposed to like the Dodgers (my dad would probably appreciate it if I note that he never saw the point in abiding by this rule - but then again, he was connected to the Giants through marriage, not blood).

My interpersonal instincts didn't help me with my dilemma, either. I kept wanting to cheer for the Tigers because everyone was cheering for the Tigers. But my friend Sara (the organizer of the trip) is a Dodgers fan and was cheering for the Dodgers right next to me, and cheering for the Dodgers along with her would have the added benefit of making sure she wasn't alone in her loyalties. Not that she really cared who anyone else was cheering for. I mean, she thought I really ought to be cheering for my true home team, but that was for my sake, not hers.

In the end I just kind of ended up cheering for both of them. And I decided that next time I need to be more decisive because it takes a little fun out of the game when you're perfectly content with any possible outcome. Still, the game was pretty fun. It was raining when we arrived and the game got started an hour late, but once the rain let up the weather was perfect. I was a little disappointed that they didn't have a real organ, because I used to always imagine a little 80-year-old woman with white hair and a baseball cap playing Take Me Out to the Ballgame at Dodgers Stadium when I was younger. And nobody did the wave, which was also disappointing. But the Tigers won (even though the Dodgers lost). And I had fun.

Oh, and there were fireworks :)