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Mustaches, Names, and How We Pick Our Favorites

I came of age and started my baseball fandom in the early 90's. Merely 7 years old when our family took a multi-family road trip from Iowa with some life long White Sox fans to witness the club in their last season at old Comiskey Park. It was on this visit, with CB radio correspondence between the three caravanning cars, possible mini plastic helmets filled with ice cream (I do not recall with certainty), and the experience of seeing two grown men I respect passionately root for a baseball team that I switched my very fresh allegiance from the Minnesota Twins to the White Sox.

I did not merely switch my allegiance of favorite team, but I completed the transition with selecting a new favorite player. Frank Viola (while no longer with the Twins) was cool and still fairly fresh off a 1988 Cy Young campaign, but he did not play for the Cursive C's from Chicago. There was however another man who had come on the scene around the same time as Frank, one that earned rookie of the year in his first year in the bigs, who was putting together a gold glove season at shortstop, a man who also had a 'cool' name from my 7 year old perspective. This man also had a mustache.

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At 7 years old, I had no foresight that he would manage the club to its first world series championship since 1917. Nor that he would show the most indifference humanly possible from that same rank within a few years after achieving such glory. At the time I was just impressed with his glove, his groomed 'stache, and his cool name (z's and v's were cool apparently)*.

For me, it was names, facial stylings, and manner of defensive play that swayed me and my decisions. For better or worse my other favorite players around this time were Barry Sanders and John Stockton. So there appears to be some thread with skill and humility as well. Guillen perhaps being the outlier on both the skill and humility front, at least later in life.

How did you select your favorites? How did you come to be a White Sox fan? How are you continuing your love for these things, as I imagine it is these jewels that buoy your spirits in seasons like that which we are currently enduring.

Here's a link to an article on mustaches in baseball as well: THE HISTORY OF MUSTACHES AND BASEBALL CARDS

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*Regarding my merits of 'cool' as a young child: I had a friend when I was a child who looked a little like the Karate Kid. He was older, and came in from some unknown town/city during the summers to live with his grandma. He also had glasses and braces. I thought, "man this kid is so cool! I hope I too can have glasses and braces some day!" Praise be! I got my wish, but I found the experience of such facial accoutrements with my silly humor, and lack of olive skin and lush dark hair created much more a "I'd like to marry you someday, I just don't want to date you" vibe in my early adolescent years.

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