Granted, the margin for error here is worse than Jose Offerman’s .943 lifetime fielding percentage. But after nearly 40 years of anecdotal observation and about two hours of unscientific survey, I’ve come to a conclusion.

No Major League Baseball franchise can legitimately lay claim to the title of "Hawaii’s Team."

Sure, there are plenty of Giants fans in Hawaii. One is even a part-owner.

But sorry, you gotta do better than 10 percent. Only two of the 20 respondents to my question "Who is your favorite Major League Baseball team and why?" answered Giants. Admittedly, a tiny sample size and I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more fans for the Giants in Hawaii than for any other one team (key phrase: any ONE).

Someone else could pose the question again today and get a lot more Giants fans. Especially if you ask at an old folks home instead of on Facebook.

But it’s clear allegiances here have become too widespread for one to be "Hawaii’s Team," as the University of Hawaii team is for college football.

More picked the Braves (five) and Dodgers (three) than the Giants. Ten other teams got one vote each.

I know the Dodgers and Giants have had very large, loyal followings in the islands for a very long time. That was only strengthened when those teams moved from New York to California in 1958.

But other teams have been getting bigger pieces of the pie for many years now, largely due to TV, the Internet and other factors.

The Braves? They began to draw a following here (and across the country) because of cable.

"Best thing about being a Braves fan as a kid in the ’90s? Coming home from school and being able to watch every game on TBS," said Nephi Tanuvasa.

Rob DeMello started out as a Braves fan, but went on to the Indians, Yankees, Mets and A’s. Why? Because he followed his favorite player, David Justice. The advent of free agency and fluid player movement made for less loyalty to teams — especially for Hawaii-born-and-raised fans who have no reason to be a fan for geography’s sake.

The Padres tried to sell themselves as Hawaii’s Team when they played the Cardinals in a three-game regular-season series here in 1997. That might have worked out better if they hadn’t dumped their affiliation with the Islanders Triple-A team a decade earlier.

People become fans of teams for all kinds of reasons.

For many in Hawaii, it was who you could hear on the radio all the time. That was the Giants.

Then for a while it was which team you could regularly view. That was the Braves.

When a local player makes it big, kids here gravitate to that team. We saw that with Benny Agbayani and the Mets and now Shane Victorino and the Phillies.

Going by its ridiculous logic for blacking out games here, MLB shouldn’t show any at all, since in reality this is the "territory" of every team, not just those on the West Coast. Actually, better not give them ideas.

Ferd Lewis reminded me about a supposedly professional survey back in the late ’80s that somehow determined the Houston Astros were Hawaii’s favorite baseball team. We’re still baffled by that one today.

And that survey had more than 20 respondents.

Reach Dave Reardon at dreardon@staradvertiser.com or 529-4783.