Fandom, et al

I'm a Giants fan. Yankees fan. Knicks fan. Ask me who I'm voting for and I'll tell you that I usually vote Democrat but I did vote for Bloomberg until he started in with that whack term limit change nonsense. I will, however, never root for the Bulls whether Michael Jordan is running the 2 or Derrick Rose is breaking cat's ankles laying it lefty.

Let's get that straight. As far as my sports teams, there's been no waffling. I've rooted for the same teams since I've been seven. Loyal to a fault. But even though I root for the Yankees I generally can't stand Yankee fans. You know the guy that's been a fan since 1996; the one that comes to the games because he gets tickets from the company but doesn't know who's playing first base and is more interested in who Derek Jeter is dating; the guy wearing the Yankees jersey with the player's name on the back of it.

You know the type: Bandwagon Fan.

First you're a San Francisco 49er fan, then you're a Dallas Cowboys fan. You used to be a "die hard" Bulls fan now you're the world's biggest Lakers fan.

You Bandwagon Bastard.

Being Bandwagon Fan is deeper than sports. We're talking about your moral fiber here. What do you stand for? You're disloyal; untrustworthy. Prone to bouts of unprovoked hysteria; phony. Don't want you around my children; seedy.

I have no patience for flighty, airheaded Bandwagon Fan. You've never visited the city; don't know anything about it - it's attractions or state flower - yet you know everything about Lebron James and his pregame meals. "Lebron likes to eat steak before each game. Medium well." Why are we breathing the same air? It's like when someone says they voted for Bush for his SECOND TERM and I'm like why are we still talking?

Bandwagon Fan is the guy that always feels the need to justify his fandom: well I'm a Cowboys fan because when my daddy was in Vietnam the guy who saved him was from Dallas.

Yeah, whatever you frontrunnin' flake.

Only thing worse than Bandwagon Fan is No Sports Guy. Like when you go to some function with your girl that you absolutely dread going to but you're trying to avoid the fight so you go and you're herded into a room with the rest of the guys there under the same exact circumstance and you're forced into making small talk and decide to talk sports because that's the one last common denominator and no one there is a sports fan and one other guy there - Misinformed Sport Guy - thinks that Reggie Jackson is still playing and you find yourself missing Bandwagon Cowboys Fan.

My cousin is a Jets fan. Calling him a Long Suffering Jets fan would be the height of redundancy like saying the phrase "I thought to myself" calling something "very unique" or saying "stupid reality show".

When Mark Gastineau left the Jets for Bridgette Nelson he was there. He was there for Marino's fake spike and Al Toon's umpteenth concussion. He's talking about going to Miami and watching the Super Bowl - if even from a local bar - should the Jets get past the Colts in the AFC Championship Game. I get it. Being a Yankees and Giants fan you sometimes take for granted rooting for a team that hasn't won. Then I remember I'm also a Knicks fan. The Knicks haven't won in my lifetime. They won when I was about one or two but that doesn't count.

My barber is also a Knicks fan but he's what I call Die Hard Crazy Fan. He's the fan that can't see the greatness of players that aren't on his team and says absurdities like "Larry Bird sucked" and offers why-didn't-the-GM-think-of-that? nuggets like "the Knicks should really trade for Kobe Bryant." I want to tell him how idiotic he sounds but he shaves me with a straight razor so I'll usually end up saying something like "sounds like a good idea." I'm a Knicks fan but I'm objective enough to know that they suck and they've sucked for a long time. They've recently upgraded to Terrible from Horrible so there's hope yet.

I understand Long Suffering Cubs Fan and Cleveland (pick a team!) Fan; franchises and cities that haven't won a thing in thousands of years and still maintain a faithful fan base. I don't, however, want to see the Cleveland Indians win a damn thing. In 2010, how is it even possible that no one in Cleveland sees anything wrong with the red-faced, ear-to-ear grinning racist Native American image of Chief Wahoo, the Cleveland Indians logo and mascot? Imagine if Alabama had a pro baseball team called the Alabama Coons and their grinning mascot Sambo shucked, jived, shuffled and tap danced across the infield during the 7th inning stretch of games and any fan attending the game in black face would get half off the price of ticket admission?

A few years back when I was writing sports for a newspaper - shout out to Black Reign! - I had the opportunity to speak with Kenny Lofton. Kenny Lofton had the rare distinction of having played for both the Atlanta Braves with their fans doing an Indian war chant and tomahawk chop during games but when we met he was playing for the Cleveland Indians with a big Chief Wahoo stitched right on the front of his uniform jersey. The Indians had a crew in those days: Jim Thome, Juan Gonzalez, Omar Vizquel, Lofton, the Alomar brothers but I really wanted to speak with their left fielder at the time - Manny Ramirez. Manny was doing his whole media boycott thing at the time so I couldn't even get a couple of grunts out of him. I already had a story filed for the weekend - an interview with Bernie Williams - so anything else I got was gravy. Since I couldn't get Manny I went over to Kenny Lofton.

"You played for the Braves and now the Indians, two organizations that blatantly flaunt racist stereotypes of Native Americans. What are your thoughts?" He just looked at me like if we were the only people in the locker room he'd punch me about the temple region. When he finally answered he said something like "I never thought about that blah blah blah". It probably didn't help that the Yankees had just swept the weekend series but at the very least I hope it gave him something to think about if even for a split second though I seriously doubt he lost any sleep over it.

With all of that said, I'd be remiss not to mention the nice job the NFL and NBA players seem to be doing giving money and rallying aid for the earthquake victims in Haiti. Former NBA player Alonzo Mourning has raised about $800K himself and has been in Haiti this week and has solicited even more money from NBA players. He's doing a great job and wonderful service and deserves to be recognized for this.

But I hated him when he played for the Heat.