After wearing a Ryan Arcidiacono jersey at a swim meet earlier this year, Olympic swimmer and Springfield resident Ryan Held appeared on the Bulls Talk podcast to talk about his fandom.
But he's not just a Bulls fan. He also cheers for the White Sox. His path to becoming a Sox fan was one based on trial and error.
"Being in Springfield, (Illinois, where Held resides) we're only an hour and a half away from St. Louis," Held said. "So growing up, we went to a lot of Cardinals games. It was probably only my senior year in high school, end of my high school career, that we went up to Chicago. We went to Cubs games and everything, and then this past summer of 2019, I was talking to my parents and I said 'Hey, why don't we ever go to a Sox game?' And they were like, 'Well, I don't know, we just never have,' and so we went up to a Sox game, went to this little restaurant called Turtle's Bar and Grill, right across the street, had an absolute blast.
"Went to the game, had an absolute blast, and it was like, 'Oh man, this is awesome.' Because everyone's a Cubs fan. People who aren't even from Chicago are Cubs fans. They're not true fans. But Sox fans are live, breathe and die Southside baseball. And I like that commitment to the team way more. And ever since then, I was like, 'I don't want to support the other team more. I don't want to support the other state and the Cardinals, I want to support my home state of Illinois and the White Sox.'"
Held is on board with the White Sox 2020 sloan, "Change the Game." He tweets about the Sox and Bulls regularly, and said he tries to watch every game he can, even while training for the Olympic Games.
He talked about what he was looking forward to seeing out of the Sox in the upcoming 2020 season.
"I wanted to see Tim Anderson just go crazy again. He was one of the players I remembered doing really well in the games I watched. And he's from Tuscaloosa, Alabama," he said. "I feel like I've had this unknowing Sox fandom over my shoulder. Because I went to school in Raleigh, North Carolina, where they have the Winston-Salem Dash, which is a Sox affiliate, and they have the Charlotte Knights, which is a Sox affiliate. And then I moved to Tuscaloosa, Alabama which is just outside of Birmingham, and the Barons are another Sox affiliate.
MLB
"So I feel like the universe was pointing me in this direction to become a Sox fan."
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