There are three things I hate in life: the New York Yankees, the University of Michigan football team, and tomatoes. While the three may seem somewhat unrelated, my hatred for all stems from the same source: my parents. Somewhere on the sets of chromosomes my parents gave to my two younger sisters and me is a gene that codes for love of Ohio State football and the Boston Red Sox. Being fans of both teams requires a great deal of passion, which in turn translates to intense dislike for their biggest rivals.
Any New Englander past the age of eight can tell you the long, sordid history of the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry. For most of the last 80 years, the Yankees have used their large wallets to dominate the Sox and Major League Baseball itself, while the Red Sox have been baseball's loveable chokers. This has inspired a great hatred of the Yankees among Boston fans. At any Fenway game, no matter whom the Sox opponent is, the bleacher fans will start chanting "Yankees suck" at the top of their lungs. Any baseball players who takes off his B and puts on pinstripes is blacklisted in Boston no matter how good he was when he played here - Roger Clemens is a case in point.
Similarly, Ohio State football fans hate Michigan. The meeting of the two teams almost always has an impact on the winner of the Big 10 championship. The rivalry has raged for almost 100 years, during which time Michigan has compiled a 55-35-6 record against OSU. During the 1990s alone, Ohio State went into its annual game with Michigan undefeated three times, and in all three games, the Wolverines spoiled the Buckeyes' record.
Anyone who has ever been to Ohio can testify that there is absolutely nothing to do there, so college football enjoys wide popularity among people who are looking for something to do other than watch paint dry. Being passionate about Ohio State football runs in the blood of Ohioans, and with this comes a hatred of Michigan. My grandfather, mother, several of her brothers and sisters, and now a cousin attended/attend OSU, and they all follow the football team avidly. My grandmother has a button in her toilet paper roll that plays the OSU theme song when someone moves the roll. When I visited my Aunt Jenny over Thanksgiving, she had a computer-generated picture on her refrigerator of Osama bin Laden in a Michigan sweatshirt.
When my parents taught me to do the vital things like read and use the toilet, they passed along to me their loyalties to particular sports teams. My parents both grew up as huge baseball fans because their parents were. My mother, a Cincinnati Reds fan as a child, is still bitter about baseball's exclusion of Pete Rose from the Hall of Fame. My father, who grew up a Pittsburgh Pirates fan, is still bitter about the destruction of Forbes Field. Every year, when my family drives though Pittsburgh over Thanksgiving, he takes us to the place where a piece of the outfield still stands.
As adults, my parents chose to root for the nearest local team - the Boston Red Sox, and they passed baseball along to me. My dad starting to take me to games on a regular basis when I was eight, and in I am exceedingly proud of the fact that I owned a Dwight Evans folder in the second grade. My love of baseball exploded as soon as it was sparked. I am the only person I know who owns a Red Sox rug, matching trash can, and pillowcase. And I am still bitter at my father that he never woke up me up to watch the end of Game 6 in the 1986 World Series.
My mother shared my father's passion for baseball, and she also trained me to tune into the OSU football games on television every weekend during the fall. Last Thanksgiving, when my family was driving from my aunt's house in Ohio to my great-uncle's house in Pennsylvania, we all agreed that the OSU football game had to be on the radio. It was the only time during the entire 30 hours we spent in the car that we could agree what type of station to listen to.
I recently realized that though they play two different sports, the Red Sox and the OSU football team are very similar. Both are perennial underdogs, and in the time that I have followed them, they have developed a reputation for choking at the last minute. Rooting for teams with these attributes has shaped who I am as a person. It has taught me to be optimistic, to always look to the future, and to find a silver lining in every defeat. The passion required to root for these teams (and hate the Yankees and Michigan) has taught me be fervent about the things that are important to me in life.
This phenomenon of passing sports loyalties down with chromosomes is not unique to my family; any corny baseball movie will prove that. Sports are so important in American culture because they are a medium for communication and interaction between people while providing entertainment. They bring parents and children together for parents to pass on traditions, and they bring communities together to rout for local teams or athletes. The sense of tradition associated with teaching a child to play catch or buying him or her his first ballpark frank is a comfortable medium for Americans to express affection - and one that does not disappear no matter how old children get.
In case you were wondering about the tomatoes - both my parents hate them, so we never had them in our dinners while growing up. As a result, I grew up saying hold the tomatoes, and I developed a dislike for their texture.
