http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-hometeam6oct06,1,510591.story?coll=la-headlines-california
By Robin Fields and Kimi Yoshino Times Staff Writers
Times Staff Writers
October 6, 2004
By late Tuesday morning, the crowd had gathered at Sonny McLean's, a Santa
Monica tavern that is Fenway Park West, for expat Boston sports fans.
"Being inside these walls, it's like stepping through a wormhole into Boston,"
said Marty Laquidara, a 36-year-old comedian from Wilmington, Mass. "There's not
an R in the whole place."
Millions who move west readily adopt to Southern California's sunny, laid-back
lifestyle. But they just can't abandon the intense sports loyalties of the
hometowns they left behind.
In sports, as in life, nothing matches the passion of first love.
On Tuesday, as the baseball playoffs opened, Southern California fans of the
Boston Red Sox and the St. Louis Cardinals cleaved to their own as their teams
took the field against the Angels and the Dodgers.
On most days, many of them said, they bear their adopted home's baseball teams
no ill will.
"I want the Dodgers to win," said Brian Merriman, 32, who moved to Los Angeles
from St. Louis in 1997. "Unless they're playing my team."
Merriman even said he hoped the Dodgers-Cardinals series lasts the week.
"I want the Dodgers to go all the way to Game 5," Merriman said, "and then
lose." Sports business experts have a name for guys like Merriman: "Displaced
fans."
Long-distance rooters have come to play a major role in big-league sports
marketing. In a study earlier this year, the Chicago-based Migala Report
newsletter found that 72% of online merchandise orders for 50 professional
sports teams were shipped out of state. Technology lets fans living far from
their sports roots follow their teams in a way that was impossible 15 or 20
years ago, the report's publisher noted.
DirecTV and TiVo have allowed transplanted Angeleno Caleb Dewart, 30, a Red Sox
fan, to keep the faith.
"I've watched every single Red Sox game, except for Saturday afternoons, [when]
the games are blocked out," Dewart said.
Expat fans often gather at sports bars and restaurants, bonding with people whom
they have nothing in common with but fandom.
It may be a flimsy pretense for a group identity. Kurt Vonnegut famously, and
more generally, called such groups "granfalloons."
But Whitney Moulaison, a business instructor at the University of Oregon, said
they often exhibit an inclusiveness that they might not experience at home.
"All the other differential factors about them as individuals fall away as their
affinity for the same group brings them together," said Moulaison, who
specializes in sports marketing and sponsorship.
Laquidara and two friends arrived at Sonny McLean's an hour before game time,
settling into a reserved table that sits atop a replica of the old Boston
Garden's famed parquet floor.
Alongside their beverages sat their screenplay, a work in progress about two
crazed Red Sox fans who trek across the country to watch their heroes take on
the Dodgers in Game 7 of the World Series.
Lynn McGill, 49, said watching the Red Sox at Sonny McLean's with other former
Bostonians assuaged her homesickness.
She reluctantly moved from Beantown to Marina del Rey last year, when her
husband changed jobs. In the world outside the bar, she said, everything still
feels foreign.
"This feels like home," she said. "Everyone looks familiar."
Though Cardinal fans say they haven't found an equivalent watering hole
dedicated to their redbirds, their loyalties remain similarly immutable.
John Burnes moved to Los Angeles from St. Louis 11 years ago, but estimates he
watched or listened to 140 of the Cardinals' 162 regular-season games this year.
"It's a birthright," he said. "The hometown just trumps everything."
He watched Tuesday's game at home with friends, clad in his 1942-style Cardinal
cap and Mark McGwire T-shirt.
When he cheers on his Cardinals at Dodger Stadium, he said, he chooses more
low-key team drag, out of respect: a Hawaiian shirt with a subtle team logo and
his blue cap, which blends with Dodger blue.
"The Dodger crowd is pretty cool. Loud, but funny," he said. "I've had hot dogs
thrown at me at Wrigley Field," where the Chicago Cubs play.
Children of Red Sox and Cardinal fans often pick up their parents' loyalties
even as they grow up around the Dodgers and Angels.
Ted Haus, 40, a former Vermonter, has spent years wearing his Red Sox gear
around his Oceanside home. It paid off. His two children — despite their
California roots — were decked out Tuesday in Red Sox hats and T-shirts even
though their mom was in full Angel regalia. Red Sox pitcher Pedro Martinez even
tossed Katey, 11, a ball during batting practice.
"I feel like Dad's brainwashed them," their mother, Peggy Haus said.
*
Times staff writer Richard Fausset contributed to this report.
