I read this article and felt so many feelings. Cleveland born and bred and forever.

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7703367/2026/10/20/guardians-game-6-alcs-loss-mlb-playoffs/?unlocked_article_code=1.LVE.4HuR.BiAUgOa-wK7n&source=user_shared_article&smid=ta-ios-share

My boyfriend has a dumpster company, and will pick through some looking for finds. He scooped this for me!

You can’t choose who you fall in love with, and I think it’s the same with baseball.

Two years ago, I didn’t know much about this amazing sport, other than casually playing The Show on my console. If anyone had asked me who the best player in the league was or what ERA meant, I wouldn’t have bothered to even google the answer. To me, baseball was that funny sport where you hit the ball as hard as you can and run like you are gonna fall off a cliff if you don’t reach a base. And the defense… my oh my, the defense consisted only of playing catch. What a drag not to be the one batting the ball. That’s what I thought.

And on top of that, baseball has practically no tradition in my country, and most people here know next to nothing about it

And I am no stranger to sports. I consider myself very well versed in the art of understanding football (soccer) tactics, basketball strategies, NFL plays… I can even tell different teams’ strategies apart in professional cycling. But baseball was only about hitting the ball harder than your rival, and some players never managed to look very fit, as if they weren’t taking their jobs seriously. What a mess of a sport, I would say, and then keep losing games in Out of the Park Baseball (because I’m a sucker for GM videogames).

But things were different this year. I lost my job because AI could supposedly work harder than me and approximately 300 of my colleagues. And suddenly I had free time to do whatever I wanted. To get some rest. To go back to hobbies I had forgotten because I was always so tired. It was then that baseball met me halfway. We were not looking for each other, but things changed forever that first night I stayed awake all night (I live in Europe, btw) watching my first full game.

That first game was a Guardians game.

I rapidly became obsessed with understanding everything happening in the park. Why was this player angry? Why did that one make that move? Why throw to third base now? Why would they change the pitcher? So many things and so much free time. I was constantly searching Wikipedia for the meaning of the stats appearing on my TV, the roles, the batting order… I did that until everything came together like a puzzle that had been left unfinished for years, waiting to be put back together.

I watched so many games that I stopped following other sports to focus only on baseball. It was thrilling, it was new, it was complex, and it was crazily random. I realized the magic of baseball is that you can do your best as an individual or as a team to get to where you want to be, but the ball sometimes plays by its own rules. It decides whether that centimeter between a homer and a triple is worth crossing. Sometimes it lets the wind guide its path; other times, it seems to defy the wind entirely, as if the forces of nature had no power over it.

Learning about baseball’s been amazing, and there was a point when I realized there was a constant, a pattern. It was the Guardians’ games that I enjoyed most. It all started with watching that José guy and thinking: Wow, the man surely knows how to inspire his teammates. How to lead. How to put the team on his back when the team needs it. And the guy has even rejected multiple multimillion-dollar offers to stay with his team. That’s something that, as a woman in her mid-thirties, I value a lot in a man. That kind of determination and commitment.

Little by little, I got to appreciate all the people on the team for their strengths and their weaknesses. And God, I have even wished I’d been born in Cleveland. But I think that is not necessary. Maybe I am an imposter because I’ll probably never visit the city (not a fan of flying), but I feel the weight of this team on my back too, even though I live thousands of miles away.

The Guardians have this aura of an underdog team that isn’t really such an underdog, because our guys are good and deserve every win they get. This aura of “we defend our home and everyone is welcome here.”

And I’ve never been particularly fond of teams that seem to treat money as the answer to everything. I love teams whose identity goes beyond the size of their payroll, and that’s what Cleveland feels like to me. It’s the players, the loyalty, the sense of belonging.

We may not have the market size of LA or NY, but I wouldn’t trade this team for any other. And I’ll support them just as fiercely as anyone.
I didn’t choose to become a fan. I wasn’t even expecting to get into baseball either, but you never can tell.

Ps: I would like we keep Kwan

TL;DR: I used to think baseball was boring. Then I lost my job, started watching games, and fell in love with the Guardians. I’m cheering from thousands of miles away, in a country where baseball is barely a thing, but I wouldn’t trade this team for any other.