Major League Baseball: How to bandwagon if your team is out

The “John James Abert fan” (a.k.a. The “National Geographic Fan”)

A lot of sports fans base their fandom on geography. This is quite an understandable strategy. If you live in one certain area and have plenty of friends within that geographical area, it makes sense to keep everyone in your region happy.

Let’s say you grew up in the Delaware Valley as a Philadelphia Phillies fan, but moved later in life to Cleveland. If your business and livelihood depend on the success of the Indians, then it’s perfectly normal and acceptable to become an Indians fan this time of year.

This is perhaps the most basic type of postseason fandom. There’s relatively very little team research or history involved, because everything you need to know about your new team is usually pretty accessible via local papers, local sports radio or that guy in the next cubicle that’s been a local sports fan since nine months before his birth and could recite every score of every game ever played with full accuracy.

But not all Major League Baseball fans that have relocated own this luxury. Some fans moved to another city with no contender like Toronto, Cincinnati, San Francisco or Oakland. Well rest-assured, there are plenty of other strategies out there and I know we’ll find one that suits each of them.