1980: The Year I Became the Newest Rams Fan

September 26, 1980. It was the beginning of football season, and my mother was giving birth to the next football fanatic...at three o'clock in the morning!

Though I was still a baby, it didn't take long for my mom to introduce me to the world of football. She tried to turn me into a Raiders Fan right from the start, but it didn't work for me. Instead, I got fixated on another team from California...

And a couple of weeks after I was born, I knew that I bled blue and yellow.

The first official game I saw as the newest member of Rams Country was when the Los Angeles (yes, Los Angeles) Rams played the St. Louis Cardinals (the football team, not the baseball team) on October 12, 1980.

Some guy named Vince Ferragamo and Jim Hart were leading this smashmouth team in the Gateway City, a city I became very familiar with a short time later.

My mom always reminds me of when I watched this game, I went start going crazy everytime the Rams did something good and something bad. From there, my mom knew that she would never get me in the Black and Silver.

So she accepted that when she went shopping for sports clothes, there would be a special bag just for me...with a ton of Rams stuff in it.

When I was two, my mom decided that it was time for a change, so she move us to St. Louis. Didn't like the place at first because she moved me away from my football team. And there was no way I would turn on them and start cheering for someone else.

But in the process of watching my Rams, I met the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team. And all of a sudden, I had something to keep me at bay with my Rams still playing on the other side of the country.

Around the same time that Ozzie Smith was becoming "The Wizard," I continued to find myself cheering for the Los Angeles Rams. And as I got older, I was given some huge changes in my life.

It started in the Summer of 1990 when my dad died. He's the real reason I became a Rams fan. He told me to simply be whoever I wanted to be. He took me to Rams games just to watch my mom fume. That was beyond a shadow of a doubt the hardest thing for me to cope with.

That is until 1994...

In 1994, the Sports Gods answered a huge prayer for me: Instead of bringing me back to the Rams, they brought the Rams to me. Thanks to the late-Georgia Frontierre, and despite the NFL's best efforts to prevent this, the Rams drove the bus right into the middle of St. Louis. And all was right with the world.

From the dangerous Youngblood Brothers to the Deacon. From the last game I shared with my dad to the first game I shared with the city of St. Louis, the city I called home could now feel what I felt since the day I was born.

To this day, I still walk into a sports bar every Sunday with my Torry Holt or my own personalized jersey. I support my Rams through wins and through losses.

In my eyes, a true fan is one that supports his team through all the changing times. From the All-Pro Quarterback being sent packing because of his overzealous wife to losing not one, not two but three Hall of Famers due to the Evolution of a team. A true fan feels it when the game is over, and their team comes up short of their goal.

And since the day that the world was introduced to Ronald Lee Johnson, it's been fun either in victory or defeat.