Kenosha isn’t Illinois, but it’s not out of the area, either . . . but I’ll answer anyway.

When my dad was a kid, the Cubs were the closest team. I wasn’t encouraged or discouraged from following them, but they were always on TV. And, I had a teacher in grade school that was also a Cubs fan—that must have been a big part of it, too, because of four children, I’m the only one that really follows them – and I have a brother that lives 2 miles west of Clark on Addison . . . .

My dad is from Chicago (and I have uncles and aunts in Villa Park and Wheaton)—but he moved to Southwestern VA before I was born. My dad grew up a dirty Sox fan. My older brother (prob. because of WGN and Sandberg) decided to be a Cubs fan, and all of us followed suit. My father went along for the ride, taking us to Wrigley whenever we visited Chicago, until he woke up one day and realized he was a Cubs fan himself.

My dad grew up in Chicago and went to Lane Tech, and raised me on stories of him skipping school in the afternoon to go sit in the bleachers (you could get in free back then after the 7th inning). However, my mom’s family was from Atlanta and they won me early on, but the summer after my Junior year of high school, my dad took me on a trip up to Wrigley and his old neighborhood, etc… and seeing Wrigley and hearing my dad talk about it won me over for good.

My brother now lives in the north ‘burbs so I have a good excuse to go see a game at least once a year or so.

WGN all the way. Cable became common in the early 80’s in the central Iowa area and 2:20 every Friday were the Cubs at Wrigley (home games of course). The ‘84 team hooked a lot of us and of course the announcer with the big glasses. I’ve posted this before but bears repeating, in the summer months at Wrigley I would bet 60% of the crowd is from outside the Chicago market and is there because of WGN and the early addiction we all had with the cubs. Marketing genius, a cash cow was born.

most of my mother’s extended family lived in Missouri. That’s where all the family reunions took place every other summer. This meant all my uncles were Cardinal fans…and they would all make a big trip to St. Louis for a Cardinal series during the reunion. I always wanted to go with them, but it was a “guys only” thing…and I hated them for it. Naturally, I wore them down by begging and begging and eventually they let me go for 1 game when i was 9. June 8, 1984…my first Cubs game….they lost 5-4….I decided to root for the Cubs because of how much my Uncles rooted against them. They thought it was funny, but that summer was the beginning of my love affair with Ryne Sandberg and the Chicago Cubs, and the first layer of scar tissue on my soul.

I became a Cubs fan because of 1, 3, and 4:

1. WGN of course…we didn’t have cable, living out in the sticks, but my Great-Grandparents did, and I would watch the games with my Great-Grandpa. Best memories ever.
3. I always loved baseball, and would watch the Cubs and Brewers with my Great-Grandpa and Grandpa. They taught me to appreciate the game and “even though the Cubs weren’t very good, they always had a chance…”.
4. The Brewers didn’t come into existence until 1970, so, there wasn’t a huge fan-following for them in Green Bay…the closest natural rival was the Twins or Tigers…neither of which are very close when you’re 8. So, we watched and listened to the Cubs.

Growing up in Southwestern Iowa, my first favorite sports team was the Bears. Not exactly sure how I chose them, especially considering my Dad is a Packers fan. At some point, I reached the logical conclusion that I should root for all Chicago teams. Yes, that even included the White Sox until I moved to Chicago and met some White Sox fans.

and my love for the Cubs centered around WGN and the fact that I could watch more Cubs games than any other team; even in small-town ND!

i live in northern manitoba canada. eight hours north of winnipeg for anyone who knows where that is. we were blessed with an awesome cable package for a small town. my earliest cubs memory is coming home from school in 1984 and watching the end of the cubs game with my dad. i was eight years old at the time and hooked ever since. then in 1985 my family visited wrigley field and the cubs continue to be my obsession.

When I was a little kid, we had a family friend that was a HUGE Cubs fan, and she “brainwashed” (as my mom would say) me into being a Cubs fan. I always said that I was a Cubs fan, but didn’t really begin watching games until Game 6 of the 2003 NLCS, interestingly enough. I fully planned to jump onto the bandwagon, but have become a full-time, 100% obsessed fan ever since.

I know we have fans here outside of North America (for this purpose, include the Caribbean, Mexico and Central America as part of North America).

If you live in Europe, Asia, Africa, South America, Australia or New Zealand, or somewhere else outside North America I didn’t mention, post your exact location here… for the BCB reader who lives farthest from Wrigley Field (I’ll Googlemap it to make sure), I’ll send you a couple of cool prizes.

I’m from Southeast Idaho and my grandparents would spend their winters in Mesa, Arizona. From when I was 6 or 7 until I was 18 I would go with my family during spring break to visit my grandparents in Mesa. We would always go to at least a couple of Cubs games. One year I even met Harry and have a picture of him autographing a baseball (which I still have).

After I went to college I would still kind of follow the Cubs we didn’t have WGN there so that made it tough. My big Cubs moment, as I call it, was in 2003 when my mom won a contest to meet Dusty Baker. We flew to a game in August and went on the field before the game started and met Dusty and he signed a few bats and a hat. We watched the game and I was hooked (Matt Clement pitched against the Mets, and I think we lost).

I don’t need to tell the rest of that year’s story, with once exception. The “Bartman” game was on my 21st birthday and I had a mid-term test the next day.

Two years later I found out about MLB.tv I’ve been watching and following the Cubs religiously since then.

in the summer of 94. Prior to that you could call me a Cardinals fan I guess, but a nine-year-old cheering on his dad’s team is hardly a fan. Played little league in 95, and lo and behold I was put on the Cubs team; the start of a lifelong obsession. In fact, the Cubs hat I proudly wear now and have sitting on my couch when I’m not is the same hat I was given by that little league team.

Cool side note: while other little league teams were billed simply as the Marlins, or the Mets, we were the Chicago Cubs due to our location. Always wore that like a badge of honor.

Long line of Cubs blood.

4. Other.

When I started little league baseball a loooooooooong time ago, I told my Mom that I needed a baseball cap. So she dug up the only cap I had, which was a red, white, and blue Disney hat, with Mickey Mouse prominently featured in the logo area. I told her that I was not going to wear that to practice. What did she think I was, a little kid or something? I must have been at least eight or nine! ;o) So, being the good mother that she was, she carefully removed ol’ Mickey, leaving me with a red, white, and blue hat with an odd “logo” on the front. As soon as I got to my first practice, one of the kids asked me if that was an Expos hat.

YES! It sure is an Expos hat, thanks for playing. Whew! Subterfuge accomplished! I then went home and watched a couple of Cubs/Expos games, and became a huge Andre Dawson fan. Once he came to the Cubs, my allegiance became permanently aligned with the Cubs, where it should have been from the very beginning.

Great thread. :D

Dave

Entire family but me and my brother are from Chicago/Northern Illinois. Having not lived there is somewhat deceptive though; we’ve visited so many times when I was growing up, and even had season tickets in ‘89 when we lived in Milwaukee. Technically I’m not from Chicago, but even after 16 years in Atlanta and 13 years of various other locales I don’t consider myself as having a hometown. Chicago has always been the constant so-to-speak, and WGN did play a major part in that it was always there.

In Madison, WI. First son was a kid in the early 80’s, and Harry, Steve, Ryno and Andre got him. Then a road trip to Wrigley when he was about 7 turned into an annual, then more frequent father-son ritual. Been along for the Cubs ride ever since. I’m an old Brooklyn Dodger fan from the 1950’s, then a Mets fan in the 60’s and indifferent in the 70’s.

a huge Cub fan. He passed his love of the Cubs on to his children and grandchildren. It’s the gift that keeps on giving.

My Dad emigrated from England to Batavia, Illinois in 69, and I came over as a teenager to visit him for a vacation the next summer. Baseball was completely new to both of us (My first sport was and I guess still is cricket), but we both got the Cubs bug via WGN (tv and radio).

First visit to Wrigley was a wild 16-14 loss to the Pirates, complete with Billy Williams grand slam (I think Roberto Clemente hit one for the other team too, but I’d have to look it up). I was hooked.

Next year I came over to live and we got to a few games at Wrigley and followed avidly on WGN. By late 72 I decided to head back to England and my dad ended up in Princeton, New Jersey. I visited him there plenty of times but never got back to Chicago. We both carried on caring about the Cubs though.

In the seventies there was next to no information available to me. Dad would send me press cuttings with his letters, which took about a week via airmail. I discovered AFN (Forces Radio) and tuned in to a desperately weak signal hoping they would be broadcasting a Cubs game. Many a Saturday night I sat perpetually fine-tuning the radio tying to hold onto an elusive ballgame commentary and score updates through the static.

With the internet things got so much better. Now I could not only get all the scores, but read what people were thinking about the Cubs too. Channel 5 in England started broadcasting an MLB game once a week. I was starting to become connected again.

Then mlb.com introduced their audio and tv services. I know it’s (rightly) maligned for some of its idiocies, but to be able to listen to Pat and Ron from my sofa in London, or watch a Cubs game on WGN via my computer screen is something I still find rather astonishing. Not to rub it in or anything, but being so far away I don’t get any games blacked out either. And of course there is BleedCubbieBlue which IS the Cub fans community as far as some of us distant fans are concerned.

That’s not quite the end of the story though. I’ve decided now’s the time to make a sentimental visit back to Chicago. It’s a shame my dad is no longer around to share a Wrigley beer with, but I’ll raise a glass to him all the same. I’ve booked the trip, I’ll be in town for the late May early June home stand with the Dodgers and Rockies. I’ve got tickets to a couple of the games already. Bleachers are sold out though. I’d love to be able to get hold of a bleachers ticket for one game so I can visit with Al and thank him personally for this site and the part its played in helping this Cubs fan to keep the faith.

...and your broom on Thurs!

How many native Chicagoans root for some other MLB team, not the Cubs nor Sox, and why?

grew up on a farm in Wisconsin and I think to annoy her brother, who was a Milwaukee Braves fan, she decided to root for the Cubs. She passed it on to my sister and me, and the three of us are all still CRAZY Cubs fans (in Cedar Rapids, Iowa). It never really took on my dad or my brothers!

If you saw Cubs Forever, Iván De Jesús said how his family could watch him play for the Cubs when cable in San Juan started broadcasting WGN in the 70’s. There were a lot of NY fans back then because of the huge Puerto Rican community in that city. There were also a lot of Pirates fan in the island thanks to Clemente. But after he died and cable brought other team’s games, fans diversified. Many of us were hooked on the Cubs through WGN, like De Jesús’s family was.

Orioles were the closest team but they were rarely on tv, and they were awful, so it was either WGN or TBS, and for some reason i couldn’t stand the Braves, in the 90’s, probably because they were so good. So i think it was the fact that i could watch the games on WGN, the fact that Harry Caray was amazing, and the fact that they were always the underdogs. Gracie, Ryno, and the Hawk didn’t hurt either.

By birth (Evanston) and genetics (Mom), I’m a citizen of Cubs’ nation. By later moves, I’m a citizen of both the Braves’ and Rockies’ nations. Truthfully, I root for all three.

My Mom was born and raised in Chicago (Albany Park) and attended Roosevelt HS. She always liked to brag that she had attended a Cubs WS game (in 1938), and she loved to tell stories about Jack Brickhouse’s broadcasts. And yes, when we got cable, the TV was on WGN every day by the time I got home from school. She was the ultimate die-hard,