Re: A man needs a good map

I liked Mike's comments, his surprises about the baseball loyalties map. I too am curious about how they collected the data.

Are there really no team loyalties in the so-called Unincorporated Areas?

I wonder if this has to do with how they decided to display the data. You could interview thousands of people and end up with a map that was a smear of thousands of colored dots. Or you can generalize, showing the predominant team loyalty bounded by neat lines; much more pleasant to look at. I guess it's just too sparse in the Dakotas and inter-mountain areas farther west for the loyalties to end up looking like much.

Does interest in the Team That Shall Not Be Named really cover more area in Iowa than in Illinois?

I'm suspicious of the line across the Missouri - Iowa border. For instance, I know there are Royals fans in Iowa that come to K.C. for games. At least, in years the local team does well.

The two teams in California's Bay Area share several bridges and a body of water, BUT the Giants fans break neatly for the coast, while the A's fans are only in central California?

I thought that looked odd too.

How can that many people be interested in the Nationals after so little time?

Now that makes me wonder if they used radio and television broadcast coverage maps as part of the process. The Nationals probably don't have that much of a fan base yet, but the games already have the airplay across that area.

There are no Blue Jays fans outside of Ontario? (I think that's mostly Ontario)

Yeah, that appears to be entirely within Ontario, and that is curious.

I would have loved to see a map like this 50 years ago, before any teams moved west and before there was any expansion.

Hmmm...that could be done. Survey enough people older than say, 65, and ask them which team they were first fans of. Ask where they lived at the time, then plot the results. That would be interesting.

At that point, the Cardinals would have been the most southern and most western of any team. So imagine the Cardinal area, with the powerful help of KMOX, covering everything west of the Mississippi (except Iowa, apparently) and most of the south. It would have been them or the Yankees. Tampa would have been Yankee country, for example.

I think you'd have to go back at least 60 years, at least for the Cardinals to be the westernmost team (we did have the Athletics here in KC in the 1950's). You're probably right about the south being divided between Cardinal and Yankee loyalty - and isn't the latter ironic, considering the other meaning of the word Yankee? Anyway, I will defer to your baseball knowledge on that.

P.S. The title of this post is a movie quote - any guesses?

That's kinda sorta trying to ring a bell, but I'm resisting the urge to google it. I might know it if I were given a hint.