This post was supposed to be about Shin-Soo Choo

So, I was going to just write up a short thing about Shin-Soo Choo getting called up to the big club now that Andy Marte's getting sent to the disabled list, but then I got myself distracted by thinking about calling him "Big League Choo," as he's often referred to by Let's Go Tribe commenters, who love giving dudes goofy nicknames. Because, seriously, I had a flashback to sitting in the back seat of the car on a roadtrip up to Canada, my step-brother and I stuffing as much Big League Chew gum into our mouths as we possibly could, because we were gross little kids.

From there, my mind skipped to being seven years old and playing incredibly half-assed baseball in our backyard with my step-brother and his then-best-friend Erik, in between playing baseball on our Nintendo, of course. This was back when I used to bat lefty and had a modicum of hand-eye coordination. We took turns as batter, pitcher, and catcher, and had to climb over the fence to fetch our one baseball a lot. I, of course, had a big crush on Erik, who was about four years older than me. By the time I was in junior high, Erik was in juvie, and my step-brother and I were fans who lost our interest during the 1994 strike. Steve went to football (he was the deviant University of Michigan fan in the family), and I went to writing stories about vampires in my notebook during math class.

And then, I wanted to post about me, and the first time I fell in love with baseball, because these things get a little confusing. I haven't been a fan of the same team for my whole life like a lot of people. Part of this is because of where I live. There's this part of Ohio, west-central to northwest, where there's this strange intersection of about four teams' fanbases. Anyone on the street could be a Reds fan, or an Indians fan, or a Cubs fan, or a Tigers fan. We're used to living with each other and not stabbing each other in the eyes. It's not like living in an area like Chicago where the White Sox fans and the Cubs fans seem to actively hate each other. It's not like the Pacific Northwest, where your local team is the Mariners, and that's who you get. You kind of get an option.

I'm the child of two Cubs fans, kids who grew up in northern Indiana, where that's who you root for. My mom is from Oakland originally, and her parents are from St. Louis, so the Athletics are her American League team, and she's kind of soft on the Cardinals. My dad likes to fit in where ever he moves (and he moves around a lot, thanks to his job), and has a habit of becoming a fan of who ever is local in addition to his fondness for his Cubbies. He's picked up loves for the Braves, and then the Reds, and then the Red Sox, and now he's got a local minor league team in Indianapolis, so he's all over that. So I'm from stock that has a certain malleableness to its baseball fannishness.

My dad moved to Cincinnati in the winter of 1989, and finally having the option to take me to some baseball games in 1990, he did. I developed a crush on Chris Sabo, whose goggles made me like him. I made stupid Berman-isms about Joe Oliver. I regularly point out that my fondness for crazy sports outbursts comes from being a Reds fan when they had Marge Schott and Lou Piniella and the Nasty Boys. Sometimes, I get upset that Eric Wedge and his Indians don't engage in crazy antics enough. If Mark Cuban ends up buying the Cubs, I'll probably pee myself.
It was a freaking magical year, and the last time I've ever been lucky for a team. (I was secretly hoping when I fell head over heels for the Indians in 2005 it'd be the same story, but alas, it was not to be.) I got into a fistfight with my grade school boyfriend over the World Series (he really liked Oakland, I guess), and my babysitter bet her friends that the Reds would win the World Series, and let me stay up late to watch Game 4.

We danced around on the couch.

I stayed a Reds fan after that, and was truly convinced that I would grow up and damn you, gender inequality, maybe get a chance to play A-ball someday. My dad helpfully pointed out that I had very little athletic ability that did not involve having decent reflexes and being able to be choreographed. (Then again, on the plus side, equitable answer, Dad! Thanks for pointing out my failures on the actual level of, you know, my abilities and not my genitalia!)

And then the strike happened and everyone was like, "screw baseball!" and my step-mother got pregnant, and then my dad moved to Rhode Island. We tried to go to a Red Sox game in 1995, but it just wasn't the same.

So I pretty much forgot about baseball except to watch the playoffs a couple times, mostly because my mom wanted to see how the Indians did in 1997, and then an online friend of mine was a big Yankees fan, so I bandwagoned for her during the playoffs for a couple years. I denied the existence of the Diamondbacks when they won and the entire SUNY-Binghamton campus tried not to explode in outrage.

I'm not sure how I fell in love with the Indians. I started listening to the radio broadcasts on the way home from my summer classes in 2005, which let out around 7:00 pm that year. I rooted against the Indians for two straight weeks, for no real reason. And then I started to fall. Coco Crisp was a silly name! Jhonny Peralta sounded pretty cool! Grady Sizemore stole home! Travis Hafner was... well, until he took a fastball to the head...

And then I turned on the television and basically died because some of those kids were so young. Grady Sizemore and Jhonny Peralta are pretty much my peers. Which makes watching baseball a little weird, and yet, enjoyable.

We all know how 2005 ended up (depressing and choke-tastic), but I was sold. I was so sold.

The fondness is a little different this time. For example, I no longer know who the first and third base coaches are for my favorite baseball team, and I certainly don't make collages about them. No one will go outside and play half-assed baseball with me while biding time before they get themselves sent to juvie. And I don't think I'm going to grow up and play baseball anymore (mostly because I'm already grown up. And because now I know that people are jerks). It feels different being a fan now. The game's so different, and I didn't worry about whether or not my favorite players were juicing (more on that in the future!), but I'm glad I found it again.

And thanks to Shin-Soo Choo, whose nickname made me think about bad chewing gum that made kids emulate dipping, which made me think of being a gross seven year old.

Actually, thanks to Shin-Soo Choo for getting called back up because if Ben Broussard had to get traded for someone, I'm glad it's somebody I like just as irrationally. And he brings great joy to one of the ladies who works as an usher in the lower level, and her raucous cheering brought great joy to me the last (technically also the first!) Indians game I attended.

So rock on with your bad self, Choo. You made me get all pensive and nostalgic in my sports blog. And I'm hoping that's okay.