It never comes as a surprise to me to see sports fans in Florida lukewarm on the home team but fired up for the visitors.
That's because I fit the stereotype of the non-native resident who tucked team loyalties under her arm when she left the frozen North and put them on the mantle in Florida with the rest of the family treasures.
Public Policy Polling's survey released Thursday, showing the Atlanta Braves are the favorite team of 17 percent of Floridians, came as no surprise to me. I think I understand the phenomenon perfectly. I'm a Braves fan myself and have been since the mid-1980s, before Florida had a Major League Baseball team.
But I didn't swear my allegiance to the Braves overnight. I had to wean myself off the Dodgers first. That took roughly 20 years.
I grew up in Connecticut, grew up a Brooklyn Dodger fan probably because that was my dad's team. Several times each season my dad would pack us in the car, drive usthe two hours it took to get to Brooklyn, park in a little lot on Flatbush Avenue and we would walk half a mile or so to Ebbets Field. What an electric atmosphere for a tomboy kid like me. I was actually at Ebbets Field the night Sandy Koufax pitched his first game. I remember the smell of popcorn and beer. I remember the click of cleats on the wooden dugout floor. Every seat at Ebbets was a good seat. And there was no place I would rather be.
But after the 1957 season my beloved Brooklyn Bums moved to Los Angeles and broke my heart.
It wasn't so easy holding onto fan love in those days. There was no cable TV to hook us up to an MLB package. Every night I waited for the evening paper to read a two-paragraph game description from the night before. Through high school and college, that's how I followed my team. In spite of the hardship, I couldn't let them go, even for Ted Williams and the Boston Red Sox. I was a National League girl.
It took 10 years after college, living in England where there was no baseball, to fall out of love with the team that spurned my affection. After a brief fling with the Red Sox when we lived in New Hampshire, I began following the Braves once we got settled in Florida in 1977. The Braves were pretty awful then, with or without Hank Aaron. But nearly every game was available on TBS.
The point I'm making here is, I've lived around. But in the whole of my life, I've only supported two MLB teams. And I only gave up the Dodgers because by the time I returned to the States, the players all had changed, I didn't know who they were and Brooklyn was just too long ago. Besides, I wasn't that crazy about Los Angeles.
Much of Florida -- at least South Florida and the Gulf Coast where the Marlins and Rays play -- is populated with tourists-turned-residents like me. Florida has the second-lowest rate of population made up by native-born residents in the entire nation. Just 36 percent of our residents were born in Florida as of 2012.Only Nevada has fewer with 25 percent.
Look at the other far-away teams getting Floridians' support in the PPP survey: the Yankees, Red Sox, even the Cubs who train in Arizona. These are legacy franchises residents have been supporting for a lifetime. They know the team owners and the moves they're likely to make in the draft. All three franchises' games are on cable, just like the local teams. No wonder it takes born-again Floridians such a long time to give up the colors they wear on their heart.
It shouldn't be a shock that Tampa Bay and Miami have consistently found themselves at the bottom of the attendance heap.
Sure, we can blame unpopular ownership, challenging demographics, poor management decisions and so forth. They are all legit reasons. But the bottom line is -- even though it has spring training -- Florida, with its population from everywhere else, is a tough sell for baseball.
I believe in time, kids we bring to the ballpark today will remember their trip to the Marlins and Rays games, just as I remember mine to long-ago Ebbets Field.
But there's something else I need to mention. Something related.
Loyalty to the people and places that went before has a more unfortunate consequence for Florida than just a shortage of support for in-state professional teams.
I saw it often during my 28 years in Martin County, where some of the richest and poorest people in America live less than 20 miles from each other. In Jupiter Island, residents would bequeath vast sums -- often their whole fortune, hundreds of millions of dollars sometimes -- to build a park or a school or equip a hospital back in the New York or Massachusetts or Pennsylvania town they'd come from. Meanwhile, in rural Indiantown to the west, site of one of the state's largest and neediest migrant camps, residents were having bake sales to buy playground equipment.
The loyalty we bring with us is a powerful thing. A deeply emotional thing. It takes time, I think, for us to open our eyes, look at the world around us as it is and realize Florida is our home now. It's hard to square that with things deeply ingrained.
Reach Nancy Smith at nsmith@sunshinestatenews.com or at 228-282-2423. Twitter: @NancyLBSmith
