So why am I an A's fan? Because, from 1901 to 1954, they were the

In the scroll of memory, a man stands and speaks the plain creed of belonging: “Why am I an A’s fan? Because, from 1901 to 1954, they were the Philadelphia Athletics. Philadelphia is my home town. They were the team I loved as a kid, and no gap of space or time can fray that bond.” Beneath these simple words lies an ancient covenant—the oath between a child and the colors that first taught him to cheer. Cities change and franchises wander, but the first stadium you enter becomes a temple; the first pennant you trace with your eyes becomes a banner over your life.

To name the Philadelphia Athletics is to summon a lineage: wooden grandstands and iron turnstiles, afternoons that smelled of roasted peanuts and damp wool, box scores inked like catechisms. In those seasons the boy learned the calendar by homestands, the weather by fly balls, the pulse of a city by the roar that rose and fell with its team. That is what it means to call a place your home town—not merely to live there, but to be stitched into its rituals, to wear its triumphs and failures like a second skin.

When a club departs, the map may change, but the sacrament does not. The adult travels on, yet inside him the kid remains—cap slightly too big, program clutched like a psalm, heart barreling between hope and heartbreak in nine tidy acts. The franchise might cross rivers and deserts; managers and uniforms will turn to new pages. But space cannot dilute what was first poured; time cannot unmake the handshake made between a boy and the green diamond that received his first shout. This is why some loyalties look unreasonable to outsiders: they are not contracts; they are kinships.

Consider the sorrow and steel of the Brooklyn Dodgers faithful when their club left for the Pacific. Many stayed with the Dodger blue because their fathers had taught them those syllables the way others teach family names. Others adopted new allegiances but kept the old hat on a winter peg, like a relic that still warmed the hand. Different choices, same law: childhood devotion is a root that seeks water through layered soil; even when the trunk leans elsewhere, the root remembers the first rain.

Or think on Connie Mack, long steward of the Athletics, standing lean in his dark suit by the dugout like a solemn officiant. He presided over eras of glory and famine, yet what endured was not merely the record but the rite—the way a city gathered, the way fathers introduced sons and daughters to the geometry of hope. A pennant can fray; a ritual can travel. The bond named in the quote is not just to victories, but to the practice of believing together.

There is a deeper wisdom here for any pilgrim of the heart. In an age that trades symbols like fashions, to keep faith with an early love is to remember who taught you to love at all. Stay with the team that raised your cheers, and you may better stay with the friends who raised your laughter, the street that raised your stride, the craft that raised your hands. Fidelity in one arena instructs fidelity in others. The ballpark was training for promises.

So take the lesson and carry it like a ticket tucked safe inside your coat. Honor your home town in the ways you can—tell its stories, wear its colors, return when the schedule and your life allow. Teach a child the old names; let her hear how the stands once shook when the Philadelphia Athletics took the field. And when someone asks why your heart still leans toward the A’s, answer without apology: because first love is a covenant, and no space or time can unteach a kid the music of his first bond.