[ryancholden]

These are all very interesting to read! I grew up in Iowa (Davenport), so we had many Cardinals and Cubs fans in our area. When I was 10 years old, I liked to follow Ryne "Ryno" Sandberg (my 4th grade math teacher nickname me Ryno) and the Cubbies. However, my grandfather on my mother's side has a long heritage of rooting for the White Sox, and since I played 3rd base, he suggested that I follow Robin Ventura and the White Sox. So from 1992 - 1995 or so, my favorite players were Ventura and Thomas, and I loved the White Sox. Once I hit my teens, I played a ton of baseball, but never really followed a team, though I was always annoyed by the Cubs fans in the area. A couple years ago I started getting back into the game, and have been trying to find a team to root for...I think it would be fun to follow a team day-in and day-out through a season, but I really haven't found untill recently. As it turns out, my entire family on my mother's side (The White Sox fans) were a complete bunch of a-holes. I now live in northern Iowa where we have a lot of Twins fans.

Long story short (sorry), my wife's family has Cubs roots back to the early 1900s. Her great grandmother watched WGN on TV until her dying day (lived into her 90s). So my son has really taken a love of the Cubbies, and this Christmas he had a lot of Cubs "stuff" for his bedroom. So there it is. 29 years of being a wandering baseball fan...a purist, and lover of this unique game's intrecacies, and brought to my rooting interest through my 7 year old son's love for his beloved "Cubbies".