I spent my early childhood in Berea, Ohio, a bedroom community on the outskirts of Cleveland. My memories of that period are dominated by my obsession with the Indians, Cleveland’s professional baseball team. My Dad and I used to watch the games together on a small black and white RCA television in the family den. The Indians were a fairly ordinary team, but you would not know that by my loyalty and admiration for their players, especially Rocky Colavito, their slugger ace, who was, in my mind, not only an incomparable hitter but a moral icon.
On June 10, 1966, when I was eight, Dad took me to my first live game at the venerable Cleveland Municipal Stadium. I well remember the acute apprehension I felt walking along the vertiginous catwalks coursing through the upper reaches of the aging structure, then the rush of adrenalin when we entered the stadium and were greeted by the lush green fields laid out in dazzling splendor. The black and white images of our RCA were no match for this seemingly accidental collage of brilliant color. I had landed in Oz.
The game was fairly uneventful except for one notable achievement. Sonny Siebert, the Indians pitcher, tossed a no-hitter. I was not fully aware of the significance of that feat, but I sensed the growing tension in the stadium as the game wore on. I have rarely seen my dad as excited as he was in the final inning when Siebert retired the final three opposing batters. The ride home was pure bliss as I basked in the glow of my team’s great victory. It was as if I had pitched the no-hitter myself.
I couldn’t be prouder of my team. These were my people, my family, my tribe. Yes, my tribe. Oddly enough, one of the anachronistic nicknames for the Indians was “the Tribe.” I knew them all intimately – their stories, their stats, their strengths. They were heroes to me, and for that they had my admiration, love, and undying loyalty. We were bonded for life.
Then we moved.
From The Ailing Nation, Chapter Eight: Acceptance
Have you ever wondered why people get so attached to sports teams in their city? We become intimately involved with the individual players as if we know them personally and experience their wins and losses as if they are our own. Few things in life bring on such emotional intensity as a championship run by that random collection of strangers who happen to be playing a sport in a city near our home. But the tendency to identify with a team does not come by accident. It is inborn. It is human nature to identify on a team based on seemingly trivial or coincidental factors, and then to develop intense loyalty to that team, even to the point of despising its rivals. And not only sports teams. In virtually every manner possible – race, religion, region, gender, occupation – we find ways to belong to a team, the in-group, and then to view members of the out-group with mistrust, suspicion, and even loathing. Since the tendency for individuals to fall into the trap of class affinity, team loyalty, and group alliance, is so inbred, so powerful, and so irresistible, it takes very little effort to tether it to almost any perverse aim. Some of the worst despots in history did exactly that.