I need to get something off my chest, and I hope you won’t hate me for it: I’m a Dodgers fan.
This isn’t a surprise to those who know me well. I’ve never been secretive about it, but given that I live in the Bay Area, I haven’t been particularly vocal, either. It’s doubtful there are photos of me in Dodgers gear since I was a kid.
But with the team back in the World Series, it feels like a good time to come clean.
Maybe you’re wondering how a guy born and raised in San Jose — driving distance to Candlestick Park and the Oakland Coliseum — grows up rooting for a team that plays 350 miles away. Like many sports fans, my allegiance was passed down through my dad, Chava, who grew up in Los Angeles.
Most people find that an acceptable explanation. My dad’s from L.A., and kids like the teams their parents like.
Here’s the thing, though: My dad, who turns 82 this week, moved to San Jose in the late 1940s, a good decade before either the Dodgers or the Giants came to California. I always thought he was a Dodgers fan because the team moved to his hometown, but he actually started following the team when he was a kid and they were still in Brooklyn. Their hardscrabble rep earned his admiration.
“They were the Bums,” he told me.
He listened to the Dodgers team with Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Duke Snider and Pee Wee Reese that beat the New York Yankees in the 1955 World Series while he was stationed at Fort Bragg. He spent the next couple of years in West Germany, where Armed Forces Radio broadcast baseball games from the three New York teams: the Yankees, the Giants and the Dodgers.
Later, I found out a fascinating coincidence: My dad’s family had lived in Palo Verde, a largely Mexican-American community in Chavez Ravine that was cleared out in the late ‘50s to make room for Dodger Stadium. They had already moved away, but still.
Growing up as a Dodgers fan in the 1970s and early ‘80s wasn’t difficult, even in San Jose. Those teams with Steve Garvey, Dusty Baker and Davey Lopes were World Series contenders, and the Giants teams of that era were in the toilet. It wasn’t until about junior high — during the Giants’ “Humm Baby” years — that I realized most of my friends hated the team I loved. Wearing a Dodgers cap to school was an invitation to a day of razzing.
When the Dodgers played the Mets in the 1988 National League Championship Series during my senior year of high school, one of my best friends showed up in my journalism class to give me a T-shirt that read, “The Dodgers Lost the 1988 NLCS On My Birthday.” I still have the shirt — but I’ve never worn it because the Dodgers didn’t lose.
Still, I was home alone watching Kirk Gibson’s home run to beat the McGwire-Canseco-Eckersley A’s in Game 1 of the World Series that year and celebrated on my own when they won the championship four games later. My friends were all rooting for the local team.
It was easy to stay undercover as a Dodgers fan for the three decades after that because the Dodgers didn’t do much. I grumbled under my breath as neighbors and friends celebrated in 2010, ‘12 and ‘14 when the Giants racked up World Series trophies — but a small part of me was happy because I had cheered on Buster Posey and Tim Lincecum back when they were San Jose Giants. (My team loyalty ends at the San Jose city limits. Had San Jose actually gotten the A’s — or God forbid, the Giants — it’s possible my brain would have short-circuited from the inner conflict.)
My wife — who grew up in New Mexico, a state with no pro sports teams — was a half-hearted A’s fan until we got married and she gave in to Dodger Blue. Early after her conversion, we went to a game at AT&T Park where she insisted on wearing a Dodgers cap, something I’d never do in enemy territory. I predicted it might end badly and it did: After the Dodgers shellacked the Giants, a couple rowdy fans pushed her and heckled her as we moved with the crowd en masse. I actually think that incident inspired her to wear her hat more often.
Yes, I’ve infected my kids with this Dodger fever, too. Don’t yell at me. They’re free to root for whichever team they like — as long as it’s not the Giants. We’ll watch the games as a family this week, wearing our Dodgers caps and rooting on Clayton Kershaw and Cody Bellinger.
And when the Dodgers win, I’ll just remind them not to wear their caps to school and keep their smiles to themselves.
