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Why am I a Marlins Fan?

It was the fall of 1992, I want to say early October. I was 12 at the time, and in Jr. High in northwest Ohio. I had grown up a Cincinnati Reds fan, and enjoyed the memorable wire to wire season of 1990, but was a typical pre-teen who liked baseball in the summer, but quickly jumped to football once the leaves changed colors. My cousin was always a baseball first person, and was a die hard Reds fan. He had recently purchased a new computer game, Earl Weaver Baseball and found a feature that allowed you to put all the players into a draft pool and reorganize the teams however you saw fit. This was before fantasy baseball was popular, so I consider this my introduction to fantasy baseball!

My cousin was always intrigued with how major league front offices worked, and LOVED the idea of running a franchise. This game provided the perfect opportunity to do just that. So he got the support of me and my younger (9 year old at the time) brother to take over a team as well. This wasn't going to be a short lived game, we envisioned this lasting several years. A small drawback was we lived 45 minutes apart, so our league updates and transactions were done over snail mail. So the plan was to play a weeks worth of fake games and then use snail mail and the phone to make our updates. We actually got pretty sophisticated for 12 year olds! The toughest part was deciding on who would run what teams. My brother, for whatever reason, was a Chicago White Sox fan and thus we gave him that team to run in the game. The real problem was that both my cousin and I were Reds fans, and we both couldn't be the Reds in the game.

The great thing about the game was that it included the new expansion teams. Part of the allure of the new game was that it included them. So we agreed that would be the best way to keep the peace. I'll be honest, i'm not sure how we decided that my cousin would take the Rockies and I would get the Marlins, but we came to that conclusion. This is where it all started for me.

Shortly after we had our manual draft, I was at Wal Mart with my family shopping and they had t-shirts and hats of each of the expansion teams. I purchased a hat and t-shirt of the Marlins to show my commitment to our newly formed computer league! A few weeks later was the real expansion draft, and i remember watching it and just being so intrigued by this new team that I really wanted to follow how this went. Trading for one of my favorite players, Walt Weiss, helped as well. So my intrigue from the expansion draft quickly escalated into full blown fandom. I also consider this the point that I really became a full blown baseball lover.

I see myself always being a Marlins fan. I had a moment of weakness in 2013 and thought of leaving, but I couldn't do it. I figure i'm young enough that Loria won't be around forever! I now live in Cincinnati, but I make sure to go to Great American Ballpark whenever the Fish are in town. I've also traveled to Chicago and Detroit to catch them. I'm excited to see what this offseason will bring.

Thanks for reading!

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