Who do ya love, who do ya hate?

[edjs]

Growing up in Southern California, I always have been a Dodger fan. More because of my older brother, who I absolutely adored growing up, and to this day is the biggest baseball fan I have ever met. Everything we did had to do with the Dodgers, we would sneak out little transistor radios under out pillows at night to listen to the game when we had to go to bed before the game was over. This was in the mid 70s, so we had guys like Steve Garvey, Ron Cey, Dusty Baker, Reggie Smith, etc. The one guy on the Dodgers that I just could never like was Davy Lopes. We used to hang around after a game until the players came out and try and get autographs. Lopes would come out and run to his car like he was trying to steal a base, he would never sign more than one or two, if even that. He drove a gold Corvette, and would take off out of the parking lot, leaving behind a lot of disappointed little fans. I remember one game after the Giants, Jack Clark from the Giants came out, the absolute enemy San Francisco Giants, and he stayed around about a half hour signing and posing for photos, and here comes Lopes running for his car. It was hard to hate the Giants after that. As far as another Giants player I really like, Brandon Crawford is one of the nicest, most humble guys you could ever meet. A great guy, with a really awesome family. From the Dodgers, Terry Forster was an awesome guy. He lived next door to a kid I knew, and we would go knock on his door and ask his wife if Terry could come out and play, and he would. It was pretty awesome to be a kid and get to play catch with a pro ball player.

As far as the NFL, I grew up a Raiders fan, probably because the Rams were so bad when I was a kid, and the Raiders from those years were so much fun. Ken Stabler, Fred Bletnikoff, Dave Casper, et. al. When they moved to LA I was thinking this was just for me, my reward for having been such a great fan. I also was a USC fan, and we drafted Marcus Allen, so what could be better? Well, they treated Allen pretty bad, which soured me on the team, and having them in LA, you started hearing the rumors of what the guys were like. Then when they moved back to Oakland, I figured good riddance, and decided to find another team. I finally started following the Packers, and have been a fan ever since. Brett Farve was the guy that cemented me as a fan, he would take you on such a roller coaster ride every game, making such amazing plays and then throwing an interception, it just kept you in suspense. USC died for me too, amid all the scandals, recruiting violations, etc. I lived for awhile in Idaho, and started watching Boise State, but never really got back into NCAA.

Hockey is my favorite sport, which is weird since I knew nothing about it until I was in my 20s. As a kid I thought it was up there with roller derby and professional wrestling, more of a staged event than a sport. When I was in the army, my roommate was from Michigan, and his mom would record a bunch of Red Wing games off the TV and send him the tape. We would get pizza and beer and watch game after game on a weekend, he explained how the game worked, and I was hooked. I think Nick Lidstrom is the perfect human. Steve Yzerman, Gordie Howe, and Pavel Datsyuk are right up there, too. However, my favorite Wing has always been Darren McCarty. From other teams, Teemu Selanne is super cool. I went to a fan fest for the Ducks once. As you can imagine, Teemu's line was forever long. The people running the event came up and said that the event was ending and there was not enough time left for everyone to get up and get Selanne's auto. He saw what was happening, came over and told them this was his booth, we were his fans, and the event would be over when he decided. All matter of fact, leaving no room for any other option. He stayed until everyone was done. Really classy, nice guy. As a retired military guy, I can tell you George Parros and Brent Burns are really amazing in their support of the troops. I tried to get Parros to take a photo with me when I was in uniform, and asked if he would pull my top over my head and act like he was punching me. He thought about it really hard, but just couldn't do it in the end.

I never liked basketball at all.