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Pal Eldredge has a New York Yankees logo on the front fender of his Harley-Davidson Softail motorcycle and has long since stopped being surprised by the acknowledgement he gets from fellow Yankees fans as he cruises Oahu roads.
"There are a lot of us these days," said Eldredge, a longtime commentator for University of Hawaii TV baseball broadcasts.
More, it seems, than even the 69-year-old Eldredge, a self-described "Yankee fan practically from birth," said he imagined.
Never mind that Honolulu is approximately 4,962 miles from Yankee Stadium in a sport where allegiances are usually strongly defined by geographic proximity. The percentage of social-media-savvy Yankees fans in 18 of 31 Oahu ZIP codes is greater than any other team’s following, according to a study published Wednesday by The New York Times using Facebook data. In six other ZIP codes the Yankees and Boston Red Sox are tied.
The geography of fan allegiances is based upon the number of Facebook users who "liked" a team in each ZIP code. Because of limits in the data, it wasn’t possible to aggregate totals to a single overall state list.
The Yankees, San Francisco Giants, Boston Red Sox and Los Angeles Dodgers are the prevailing favorites here, according to the study, all with niches.
A Yankees following has come with the club’s record 27 World Series titles, rich history of star players and vast ESPN exposure. Meanwhile, the presence of two-time All-Star Shane Victorino of Maui in the lineup for World Series champion Boston has boosted interest in the Red Sox.
But historically it has been the Giants who have usually been credited with the largest following. In a 2003 Harris Interactive poll conducted for Sports Illustrated and local newspaper pollings over the years, the Giants were designated the state’s unofficial favorite baseball team.
A San Francisco baseball following here dates from more than a decade before the Giants arrived in California from New York in 1958. In the late 1940s KPOA radio carried re-creations of games of the minor-league San Francisco Seals, who trained here for a time.
When the Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers moved to the West Coast, their games were featured here, and the Giants-Dodgers rivalry was transported as well.
"I think the Giants’ enduring popularity starts with the Giants being a generational thing because grandpa or dad listened to the Giants games on the radio, and their passion for the team carried on to their children and grandchildren," said Duane Kurisu, who grew up a Dodgers fan on Hawaii island listening to Vin Scully’s radio broadcasts but is now a part-owner of the Giants.
World Series titles in 2010 and ’12 further boosted the Giants’ following, though in recent years it has been harder for fans of the Giants to watch their team here because of national TV blackouts under baseball’s exclusivity provisions.
Yet it is still a mark of the interest in the Giants that KITV has sought to tap that market the past four seasons and this year offers a 17-game local package on its MeTV, D.2 channel.
Yankees, Giants and Red Sox team patterns have been most popular in the 16-year Reyn Spooner MLB-themed aloha shirt line that is now sold online, said Suzie Metivier, manager of Reyn’s Ala Moana Center store.
But the popularity of MLB teams has also ebbed and flowed as local players have emerged and as the TV industry has changed.
A following for the Atlanta Braves soared not long after the advent of WTBS as the first "superstation" in 1977 but faded with cable.
"Fans gravitate to the local boys, and when they do well and their teams do well, then all of a sudden you see a spike in the popularity of that team," said Mike Victorino, Shane’s father. "When Shane was a Phillie (2005-12) and they were up and running, you saw a lot of Philadelphia fans," he said.
Some areas on Victorino’s home island of Maui, including Kula, Hana and Wailuku, still report large Phillies followings, though most have surged to the Red Sox.
The New York Mets were popular between 1984 and ’93 when Kaiser High graduate Sid Fernandez was pitching, and got another bump when Saint Louis School’s Benny Agbayani was there (1998-2001).
Next to keep an eye on? Perhaps the St. Louis Cardinals, with rookie second baseman Kolten Wong of Hawaii island.
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