As I write this, my beloved England national football team has just been defeated in the final of the 2020 UEFA European Football Championship, also known as EURO 2020 (despite taking place in 2021). In typically heartbreaking fashion, England was beaten by Italy in a penalty shootout after the 120-minute match ended 1-1. My home country’s 55-year wait for a major international soccer trophy continues, but heartbreak and supporting the English national team go hand-in-hand. My earliest memory of soccer is watching England lose on penalties to Germany in the semi-final of the 1990 World Cup. It was a sign of things to come. But as they say, it’s the hope that kills you. 

I love soccer. Outside of my homeland’s national team, I also support Crystal Palace Football Club, my local soccer team which plays (usually quite badly) in the English Premier League. I’ve been a passionate Crystal Palace fan for most of my life, which combined with the England fandom, is a recipe for near-constant disappointment. At the time of writing, I am in a state of soccer-induced depression and no amount of attempted rationalizing can cure me. I know it’s just a game. I know there’s always next time. I know we did well to get as far as we did. Etc, etc. I hate the way I feel right now, and I envy those who do not care about soccer.

It may not seem like it, but this piece isn’t actually about soccer. It’s about baseball. 

I love baseball. I love baseball because it’s never crushed my soul. I didn’t start rooting for a specific baseball team until I was already a full-grown man. The team I started rooting for tasted success for the first time in decades almost immediately after I started rooting for them. When that happened, I finally knew how it felt to root for a team that could win stuff. But my baseball fandom is fresh, so even if the results don’t go the way I want them to, it doesn’t affect me in the same way that England or Crystal Palace losing major tournament finals affects me. 

I inherited my fandom from a dearly departed loved one, so the emotional attachment is there. But it’s perfectly balanced alongside an ability to rationally process the outcomes and narratives of the game — something I will never be able to do with soccer. I didn’t grow up watching baseball and I wasn’t born with a preordained bond of geography-based loyalty to a particular team. Baseball isn’t deeply ingrained in my DNA. I love the team I root for, but no baseball team’s colors run through my veins, which allows me to rejoice in the victories while the defeats — as disappointing as they may be — float away like a Barry Bonds ball in The Bay.

I’ve called the US home for almost 10 years, but before I moved here I’d always had a snobby attitude toward American sports. Soccer was my first sporting love and is the game that I will always love above all others. I grew to appreciate and thoroughly enjoy more and more sports as I got older. It got to a point where I would pretty much watch any sport if it was on TV and I had nothing better to do. Tennis, golf, cricket, even snooker, and darts. If they were on, I’d watch them and have a great time. But when I was growing up in England, “American sports” just weren’t very accessible. The first basketball game I ever watched was the one at the end of Space Jam. The Mighty Ducks was my only taste of ice hockey until I crossed the pond. I knew about American football from TV shows, and I knew that the Super Bowl was kind of like the FA Cup Final, but that’s about it. 

Weirdly, kids in England actually play a version of softball (called rounders) fairly regularly in PE class (that was certainly the case at my school, at least) so even though baseball isn’t on the radar of your average British person, most of them have at least a cursory understanding of the game’s rules. Also, Field Of Dreams was definitely a very popular movie in the UK. I think A League Of Their Own did pretty well over there too. Anyway, Brits know what baseball is and roughly understand how it’s played, but the vast majority of them are uninterested in the game itself. If you asked some random British people to name a baseball team you would probably hear a few Yankees and some Red Sox but that’s about it. Most Brits probably couldn’t name a baseball player other than Babe Ruth and maybe a few of the players who appeared in that one Simpsons episode.

There was some coverage of American sports on UK TV, but it was usually relegated to late at night or the very early morning hours. They were probably easier to watch if you had a fancy cable package or something. None of this is to say that there was absolutely no audience for these sports in the UK, because there was then, and there most certainly is now, but American sports just weren’t really on a lot of peoples’ radars outside of movies and TV shows.

Before I moved to the US, my attitude towards basically any sport that wasn’t popular in my homeland was typically British. To me, American sports were crude, gauche, and over-commercialized. It seemed like their rules had been drafted with commercials in mind. Like whoever wrote the rulebooks was like, “Let’s make sure play stops all the time so we can show as many ads as possible.” The athleticism was unquestionably impressive but I found it hard to appreciate the nuanced intricacies of the tactics. The narratives were hard to follow and all the history was overwhelming. Also, teams can just move anywhere? WTF is up with that?

In 2009, I was still living in my hometown of London, England when I met an American girl from Reno, Nevada. Her name was Brenna and we fell in love. I wasn’t her first love, however. She also loved baseball. A lot!

Brenna was a huge San Francisco Giants fan and spent many hours of her childhood traveling from Reno to the Bay Area and back again to watch Barry Bonds smash baseballs into oblivion with his definitely natural brute strength. After graduating from high school, Brenna moved to London to attend university. Watching Major League Baseball games in England was no easy feat in the 2010s, but she did what she could.  Brenna’s enthusiasm for the things she enjoyed was infectious. And it didn’t take long for her Giants fandom to rub off on me. (In return, I burdened her with a love of Crystal Palace Football Club, but that’s a different story).

Shortly after we started dating, Brenna was diagnosed with Ewing’s Sarcoma, a very rare type of bone cancer. Brenna’s tumor was in her leg joint, and it caused her intense pain. As a result, she moved back to the US to be with her family and undergo treatment. I remained in London initially, but a few weeks after she had returned home, Brenna asked if I’d like to come and stay with her and her family for a few months. I didn’t even need to think about it. Early in 2010 I packed my bags and headed westward for the first time in my life.

For someone who had cancer in her leg, Brenna remained incredibly active. In between rounds of chemo, she and I did a lot of stuff together. I had never been to the US before, and Brenna was eager to show me around. We traveled to a bunch of states and did loads of touristy stuff. I crossed a bunch of bucket list items in a matter of weeks thanks to her, including going to a ballgame (okay, that had only been on my bucket list for a few months, but still). Brenna’s mother and stepdad lived in St. Louis so despite planting my baseball fan flag firmly in San Francisco, my first ballgame was actually a Cardinals game. 

For a first-timer, a baseball stadium on gameday is an almost overwhelming assault on the senses. The overpowering smell of meat, beer, and cheese. The strangely familiar sound of the crowd and the organ. The aesthetically pleasing sight of the turf and sand. It was certainly a very different experience from attending a soccer match and I loved everything about it. 

We ended up going to multiple baseball games over the course of my stay and my appreciation of the sport increased with each experience. The game itself suddenly came into focus when I was able to watch it with my own eyes. Without having announcers explaining every single thing that was happening, I was forced to figure stuff out for myself, which added to my enjoyment. I started watching more baseball on TV and paying attention to the narratives. I read baseball blogs, I watched Money Ball, and I played MLB 10: The Show. Baseball had its hooks in me. 

2010 was a very good year for the San Francisco Giants. Not only was it the year that I first saw the team play live, but they also won the World Series for the first time in their history. Yes, I am aware that the New York Giants won the World Series a few times, but franchises should have to reset their history when they move to a new city (seriously what’s up with that?). The 2010 Giants World Series win was absolutely thrilling. I hadn’t been following baseball for very long but I was invested because it was my first World Series as a newly formed baseball fan, and I really wanted one of the teams to win over the other one. The endorphin rush when the team I wanted to win won was strange, unfamiliar, and so very welcome.

By 2012 when the San Francisco Giants won their second World Series I had moved to the US on a permanent basis to take care of Brenna, who was still battling cancer. She and I celebrated that second title with beer and ribs and I will treasure that memory for the rest of my life. In 2014, the Giants won their third World Series in five seasons, but Brenna wasn’t around to see that victory. She passed away in July of that year, and so I celebrated that third Giants championship with beer and ribs by myself. I was sad that she wasn’t there to witness the moment, but I was happy that she was able to see her beloved Giants win the biggest prize in baseball twice in her brief but beautiful life. 

On top of many memories that I will treasure forever, Brenna taught me how to love America’s pastime. She gave me the gift of baseball fandom, and for that, I will always be grateful.

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