By Stephen Witt
For some, loyalty dies hard. For others, it shifts like the sand.
And then there’s me. I grew up in Chicago, a White Sox fan, ended up a journalist in New York City who became a “New Yawker,” and Yankee fan, and who recently moved to Los Angeles. Today, as all Angelenos do, I celebrate my new favorite team, the Dodgers, and their World Series victory.
How did this conversion come about? Both slowly and quickly.
It started at the Safari Room, a steakhouse and bar on Devonshire Street just off Sepulveda Blvd in Mission Hills. When I moved here in early August, I stopped in now and again for a few drinks to take the edge off of moving in and living with my headstrong daughter and granddaughter, who live in the neighborhood.
The bar portion of the eatery is my type of watering hole. Full of working-class patrons telling Spanglesh off-color jokes, the Dodger game blaring on four large TVs over the back of the bar.
Here, I quickly saw and heard how vital the Dodgers are to the City of Angels. These patrons hung on every pitch, their fan favorite not a high-priced player but Kike Hernandez, a working-class journeyman player from Puerto Rico. Every time the guy came up to the plate or touched the ball, the bar erupted in shouts of “Kike!” It was heartwarming and contagious.
Still, I remained skeptical. As they swept through the baseball playoffs, I thought they were good—the best team that money could buy. But as a Yankee fan, I also knew this was like the pot calling the kettle black.
Then came the playoff championship series game of a once-in-a-lifetime player, Shohei Ohtani – hitting three dingers – one out of Dodger Stadium – while striking out 10 and pitching a shutout. This shifted my loyalty forward, but did not take me over the edge.
It made me realize that Los Angeles is a Pacific Rim city, and its diversity is grounded in Mexican/Latino culture and Asian influence from across the Pacific. Besides Otani, you have a half-Japanese, half-black manager, Dave Roberts, and several other key Japanese players, including eventual World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto. That for all of New York’s bragging about diversity, Angelenos are, in many ways, much more worldly.
But what won me over was the World Series. It was hard-fought against a good team, and the Dodgers played baseball in a way that any fan of the game has to appreciate. It included great managerial strategies, solid defense, clutch power hitting, and Yamamoto’s gutty pitching, topped off with a Game Seven extra-inning performance for the ages.
So I get it now. I’ve been sworn in as a naturalized citizen of Metropolitan Los Angeles.
I’m now an Angeleno. I, too, bleed Dodger Blue.
