The Play In California Answers Reader E-Mails

Now I know what you’re thinking… people actually send e-mails to TPIC?!?! Yes, I know, this is a shocker indeed, and when I say e-mail I don’t mean spam or a request to help some king of a small African nation (though we do get a ton of those). Actually, this e-mail came from a trusty reader named Geoff:

After seeing your name come up a lot on Deadspin and reading your blog on TPIC often, I'm a little curious about your background. No, I'm not some creepy weirdo trying to get a phone number or address out of you, I just am very curious to how you formed your allegiances.

I am a current NorCal resident who has pretty much jumped on board all the local (East Bay) teams ever since I was a Freshman at Cal (i.e. Warriors, A's, Sharks). The funny thing is I grew up in Kansas City and had season tickets to the Chiefs for 15 years before entering Berkeley. I'm a little curious to how you became a Chiefs fan. I'm not calling you out or anything, but it's not too often you find a Cal/Chiefs/East Bay teams fan all wrapped into one (like me!).

So fill me in on your past and I look forward to hearing from you more on Deadspin and TPIC.

Cheers.

Wow, thanks Geoff! It really is nice once in a while to hear from readers who aren’t anonymous readers. Sometimes, when I see an anonymous comment, I fully brace myself for negative impact. This is a breath of fresh air though. I responded the email with a short hand explanation. However, I decided to elaborate on my alliances here in this post.

To start off, most of my childhood, and therefore developmental stages of sports interest, occurred in the late 80’s/early 90’s. Being a native to the bay, I naturally aligned myself with all of the local sports teams, particularly the East Bay. That meant the A’s, Sharks, and Warriors. I was also a fan of UCLA and Cal sports. The ironic thing is that as a Cal alumnus, I never knew that Cal was the same school as UC Berkeley until I went there. I remember in high school when I got accepted to Berkeley, I griped that “Berkeley has no sports teams.” That’s when a bunch of my friends, dumbfounded, looked at me and asked, “Uh, what about Cal?” They then pointed to a Cal hat that someone was wearing. My response “what about them?”

I also only liked the Sharks, and hockey in general mainly because of The Mighty Ducks. Kids have the worst choice in movies. I should know, because I did. To a 7 year old, The Mighty Ducks Trilogy was practically our Godfather Saga and watching Blank Check was like watching The Departed. I remember wasting many hours trying to perfect the Knuckle Puck only to wonder each time how the hell that guy did it in the movie. I was pretty stupid back then.

But back to the Chiefs.

In the late 80’s early 90’s, which I’ll call the Eighty Nineties, there were many stars in the NFL. There was Randall Cunningham, Phil Simms, Bo Jackson, even Jim McMahon. Yet all of these NFL some what super stars paled in comparison to the king: Joe Cool Montana. He was awesome. My dad is a Niners fan, thus he rooted for Joe Cool. I on the other hand, was just a fan of Joe Cool. I didn’t really care for the Niners. Back then, when I was five, I would pretty much choose my favorite NFL team by the coolness of their logos. And by coolness, I mean gayness. Thus, I was kind of a Dolphins fan, kind of a Patriots fan, and worst of all, kind of a Bucs fan. I mean how could a five year old not be attracted to these logos?


However, when it came to players, Joe Montana was my favorite. I don’t know why, but I just thought that the NFL QB was the most kick ass position in all of sports. In fact I still do. It must be neat to know that you can make a 300 pound lineman drown in tears after crushing his heart with a game winning last drive. It’s something that Alex Smith would like to experience once in his life.

Thus, when Joe Montana left the Niners to join the Chiefs, I followed him. I went from not so much a Niners fan, to a not so much Chiefs fan. Like I said though, those few years that Joe spent in KC were during my own development as a fan. When the day came for him to retire, my development was complete. I became a Chiefs fan.

That’s not me by the way.

So there you have it. Though I am pro CA in most sports, in football I am pro KC. Maybe in future episodes, we can learn how Ms. Auto became a Saints fan or how U12 became a Cowboys fan. Ace of Spades is a Niners fan and SimonstrummKimNguyen is just a fan of whoever he bets on, so no neat origin stories there.

Thanks again to reader Geoff for the e-mail. Hopefully, if we get more e-mails, I can make some more posts like this, because it was fun!

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