When I have kids

We're a long long way away from that, but I thoroughly enjoyed The Consequences of Caring from Bill Simmons today.  If you don't know the stories of the teams that I like, here they are:


Dodgers:  My dad.
Celtics:  My dad.
Jets:  My favorite color was green when I was little (a fact that I've lamented as I've watched the Giants win two of the last five Super Bowls).
Rangers:  My friends got into hockey in 1994, a good year to like the Rangers.
Notre Dame:  I went to college there.


I've always wondered what happened with my brothers, especially with basketball.  They're both Knicks fans.  From the 1983-1984 season to the 1986-1987 season (when my brothers were 5-9 years old, the Knicks won a total of 124 games (with 53 of those wins coming in the 1983-1984 season, including the playoffs).  During those same seasons, the Celtics made the Finals every year and won the championship twice.  So this has never made sense to me, but Bill Simmons addresses this:  "You can't necessarily make [your kids] follow your team, but you can steer them away from your least favorite teams."  Well, I guess my brothers didn't end up rooting for the Lakers, so that's pretty good.


I've thought about what's going to happen when I have kids.  I believe there's at least a 99.5% chance that God is giving me all girls because God has a sense of humor.  Having girls would be great (you know, until they turn 12 or so), but I want at least one boy to make into mini-Jim.  I would love to train Jim Jr. to root for all the same teams that I root for.  I don't know if that will happen, but I'll do everything I can to prevent him from rooting for the Lakers, baseball Giants, Patriots, USC, and Michigan.  I can live with him not rooting for all the same teams that I root for.  If I marry a sports fan, it's impossible that I'll marry another Dodgers-Celtics-Notre Dame fan since my dad, my cousin, my uncle, and I are the only four in the world.  So I could live with my son rooting for the Knicks and the Mets.  If my son liked the football Giants, I might just say to him, "Yeah, you made the right call on that one."  But I was once asked this question:  What if I met the girl of my dreams and she liked the Lakers or went to USC?  The question made no sense to me because obviously, any girl who likes the Lakers or went to USC is not the girl of my dreams.  Either of those is three strikes right away.  The one team that I would do everything I could to get my son to like is Notre Dame's football team.  If things don't turn around, that might be an uphill battle, but I'll do everything I can.  Baby clothes, training him to sing the fight song at age 2, football jerseys, taking him out to Notre Dame for a football game as soon as he's old enough to have any idea what's going on.  And college sports aren't that big around here, so I'm fairly confident I'll be successful with that one.


Simmons made me think of some of my early sports memories.  There were some tears shed. I guess that's part of becoming a huge sports fan.  When I have kids, of course I wouldn't want them to cry about sports, but if they like sports as much as I did at a young age, it's going to happen.  Hopefully they'll have a team like the 2008 Celtics to make it all worth it.


Let's go Celtics!  Beat the Heat!