Mom is what makes baseball great

Ken Blaze-USA TODAY SportsFandom is a weird thing, where we become fiercely tribal about something we’re only tenuously related to. People find all different reasons to like a team, such as logo, uniform, big wins, random choice, or, probably more common, geography and family.

In that regard, I’m not different. I became an Indians fan as a kid, when the juggernaut offenses of the ‘90s were winning games more often than Mariah Carey churned out No. 1 hits. I got exposed to the team by my dad and his mom, whose northeast Ohio roots reached deep. All the way to central Illinois, where we lived.

And that is what made me different. Here, where the Cubs-Cards rivalry divides neighbors and even…