Baseball Fan Interviews: Ted Walker

For my story, "Cheering Out of a Suitcase," featured in the May edition of Norman Einstein's, I emailed a few people who have moved around the country to discuss their relationships with their hometown teams. Since I wasn't able to use their complete interviews in the story, I thought I'd share their full insights here. Today's post spotlights Ted Walker.


Ted Walker is a Seattle-based writer. He writes for Norman Einstein's, Pitchers & Poets, and Every Day Ichiro.

Where are you from? Where are you living now?
I am originally from Houston, Texas, where I was born and grew up and then went back to after college, so I've spent a lot of my life there. I left because I went to grad school and wanted to live in other cities, like Chicago and like Seattle, where I live now. I've always been on my way out of Houston, for whatever reason.  I moved to Seattle about 9 months ago, and I've never lived on the West Coast before, so it's all quite new to me.  

What team do you follow?
I'm first and foremost an Astros fan. It's my childhood team, though I didn't really track them carefully until my high school years. I moved to New England from ages 9-12, which is a crucial time to tap into a team, so I sort of missed out on that in Houston. But later on I really got into the team big time. 

What made you a fan?
They were the hometown team, first off, so there is the sense of history and connectedness and just the fact that they are the hometown team. But the other factor for my resurgence of fandom during high school that I mentioned above was that my best friend was (and is) a huge Astros fan, so we spent a lot of time talking about them and going to the Astrodome for 4 dollar seats and having a good time shooting the shit about the Astros. Some of the best times, in fact, in those days, were Astros-related with my friend.  




How do you follow your team now?
I check in occasionally on one or two Astros blogs and at the Houston Chronicle website, to get a general sense of how they're doing, and I absorb them in national media coverage. But I don't do a lot to follow them on a day-to-day basis.

Has moving away altered your perception of your team and/or city in any way?
It hasn't altered my perception of them, no. The Astros to me are a lot like Houston: it will always be there, even while I'm gone; they aren't going anywhere. If I want to go back, I'm always welcome because it's my hometown and because I have been there for lean times and for the really great times (if not physically). I sat in a bar for six hours as they battled and finally beat the Braves in 19 innings when Chris Burke hit his big home run in the playoffs. I saw Biggio's 3000th hit, I watched Randy Johnson pitch for us in the Dome. So in a sense, even as I'm distant from the team, the team can't ever shake me if I choose to come back. I'm in too deep. 

Have you adopted the team of your new city? Why/why not?
That's another part of it. I've completely and unabashedly embraced the team of my new city: the Mariners. I have made the decision to dive in whole hog, with no hesitation. I'm in, I'm on board, I'm a Mariners fan, that's it. I have followed the Astros from afar for a long time, which is not an easy thing to do (easier now with MLBTV, but I never really liked watching baseball on my laptop so that wasn't necessarily a solution for me) and now that the team is truly crappy as a result of bad management it makes it that much easier to keep them on the backburner. So anyway, I haven't really dwelled on my choice. I'm in a new city in a new league, and I'm diving headfirst into the new-ness of it. Obviously the situation would be a lot different if I were in St. Louis or Milwaukee. I would not make the same kind of all-in decision about the Brewers or the Cardinals, that's for sure. But the AL is like a foreign country to me, so in a way this is how I'm choosing to learn about this strange land, with this weird extra hitter guy.

My decision to dive headfirst into the Mariners fan pool led me to start Every Day Ichiro, as a way to chronicle the experience, and to really immerse myself in the online community.

Other thoughts:
- Watching Randy Johnson pitch was incredible, when we traded away Freddy Garcia and Carlos Guillen (and the future Hall of Famer John Halama) for the Big Unit. It was the first time I can remember that the Astros were on the national map. There's very much the feeling that nobody cares about the Astros, that we had to really earn the respect of the national media, and I think it's true. Maybe that's why we love our icons like Biggio and Bagwell and Nolan Ryan and Lance Berkman so much, because nobody else will, whereas everyone loves Ichiro and Griffey and Pujols and guys like that. Watching Randy Johnson strike out loads of dudes from the top of the Astrodome was some of the most outright exciting baseball I've ever seen.

- (On the differences between Seattle and Houston's fan population). It's hard for me to say at this point. In Seattle there seems to be more of an analytical approach, and maybe that's because of the high tech environment and the overall more Apple-y population. Like, here everyone's saying "why is Junior still in the lineup, he sucks" whereas when Biggio was playing in Houston at the end there was more a sense that we were glad to see him still at it, while mostly ignoring the fact that he sucked. This may be for the most part online, which is where I've spent the most time in Mariner-ville by far. In the stadium, there is garlic on the fries, which is the biggest difference.