THREAD: I’m the son of an Iranian immigrant father, who according to family lore once asked “what’s that little hill in the middle of the field?”

I first became aware of the @Dodgers when I watched Kirk Gibson hit that HR in 1988. I was 6. That was the last time Dem Bums won it.

Somehow over the next few years, I began listening to game after game, night after night on the radio. Vin Scully became my teacher.

I became an obsessed kid fan. One Christmas, my parents got me a team-style satin jacket with FARIVAR printed across the back.

I put up a cork board with newspaper cutouts, mini posters, articles, and baseball cards in my room.

I had little pieces of graph paper Velcro’d to a board where I kept track of the lineup.

If somehow I was still awake, in bed, at the 7th inning, I would get out of bed to make the change to the lineup in my childhood bedroom.

I always wanted more baseball. I listened to pre and post game shows.

I traded cards, and played little league. (I was never very good!)

Once, I went to a game with my family and cousins and aunt. The game went extra innings, my dream! (I couldn’t get enough!)

After the 10th, everyone went to the car, but my dad stayed with me until the game ended in the 15th.

Even in high school, I used to sneak a radio into school to listen to SPRING TRAINING GAMES. (I was deathly afraid of being caught!)

I hid a small set of speakers in my backpack and laid down on our campus grass, with my head against my backpack to listen to forgettable games.

I learned baseball, year and year after year, from Vinny, and from my (now-late) Berkeley-born grandfather, who grew up with the Oakland Oaks and later became an SF Giants fan. (We teased each other for years!)

When I turned 13 (1995), it was Grandpa who got me the coffee table book that accompanied the Ken Burns’ series.

We’d go to games together, mostly in Oakland, and sometimes in SF.

We played catch in the street, and ribbed each other over our teams.

As I learned more about baseball history, I learned what it means to be a Dodgers fan. Sure, everyone knows Jackie Robinson.

But the Dodgers have had legendary teams over the many decades. But when I was a kid, the 90s were tough. (Remember when we had Daryl Strawberry?)

Most of all, I came to admire the catchers. Mike Scioscia, and then Mike Piazza.

When I played little league, I was a catcher (still have the glove). I looked up to them.

For me, #31 will always be Piazza, and not Joc Pederson, as much as love him, too.

I’ve spent nearly all of my adult life in the East Bay: Berkeley and Oakland.

Over the last 20 years, the A’s have become my adopted team. I’ve been to far more games at the Coliseum than I have to Chavez Ravine.

But the @Dodgers will always be my first love.

In recent years, I have to say, it hasn’t been easy to live in a place where the rival Giants won multiple WS titles in the 2010s.

In the most recent years, the Dodgers of course lost two out of the previous three WS. It’s been tough.

These recent teams have only gotten better and better.

@mookiebetts is astonishingly good, and I’m grateful that he will be with the club for a long time.

“They may be bums, but they’re my bums.”

Onward to 2021!

#worldseries