Well, everyone else has shared their stories, so I guess I'll share mine.
I was originally more of a baseball and hockey kid. Grew up on the baseball Cardinals and the Blues of hockey (my mom carried me eight months pregnant to a Blues game and nine months pregnant to a Cardinals game, so I can actually say that I've been a fan of both since before I was born), listening to the latter on the radio in the basement as a four-year-old child, watching the Cardinals on the TV (even though our first TV was a piece of crap compared to the ones we have now).
Then...the Rams came to town, and I didn't know what was going on behind the scenes; I was not originally a football fan. The closest I came to knowing football fandom was my friend and then-next-door neighbor, Alex, who grew up a Packers fan (which he has remained, and I respect him for it), and the Rams coming in barely registered. I have autism (it was especially bad in childhood) and rarely went to the games as a kid because of the noise and overstimulation.
But then...1999. My first game was the Rams playing the Saints. It was loud, yeah, but I enjoyed watching the game, was actually into it, even though I didn't know shit about the game. But I learned. I watched every game I could on our awful TV. The playoffs came. I cheered when Ricky Proehl made that incredible touchdown grab. And I saw everything in the Super Bowl, the touchdown to Holt, the defense making stand after stand, the long bomb to Bruce, Mike Jones making The Tackle to win it for us, and I heard my parents screaming with joy, and I was screaming with joy as well, despite being a precocious seven-year-old (birthday is on May 22nd).
2001 broke my fucking heart more than 2000 did, even. Even as a nine-year-old, I knew that something was rotten, with me screaming that, "They have to be cheating!", and my folks didn't believe me because kids react like that, you know? (BUT I WAS FUCKING RIGHT!)
But I couldn't get enough. It was like a drug, the best kind of drug I could ever have, football. I wanted to know all about things, and my neurodivergent self was huge into sports stats, so I began looking at college players in 2006.
I ended up going to the team's draft party in 2006, and it was there that I met Pisa Tinoisamoa, Jimmy Kennedy, and Kevin Curtis, who were signing autographs. I was a starstruck teenager. I didn't even care about an autograph; I was just excited to meet football players. Of course, I was just rattling off draft status and stats in a nervous way, and they were...well I don't know impressed, but Pisa's like, "Hey, that kid knows about you," to Kennedy, and all three were smiling.
And then it got ruined by us taking Tye Hill instead of staying and drafting Haloti Ngata like I wanted them to. 2007 wasn't much better; I wanted Revis, and they took Carriker, and I swore like a sailor (and my dad was swearing with me) when they took Brian Leonard.
Let's be honest, though: Steven Jackson was the only real reason to watch in the dark times, and even with as negative as I felt about the team's direction and the idiots running it (I would've been banned from here, had the site existed, I was that negative.), I still watched every game. Chris Long, James Laurinaitis, Pisa, all of them were good, but they weren't the reason I watched. Hell, I don't even know why I watched blowout after blowout, everyone making a mockery of us.
I eventually had an online presence, joined RamStalk in 2007 or 2008. It was a fucking miserable place, and any bit of positivity was quickly stamped out (like I found out when I made a post about the 2010 Draft actually being good - slowly growing more confident with Bradford as the QB and us having Spagnuolo as the HC; different times in 2010 - and got completely shit on. I had enough of the Post Dispatch and wanted something more.
Then I saw the link on X's profile, and I clicked on it in June of 2010, and I was, like, "This is the site for me."
And I've been here ever since. I've seen you all as brothers and sisters, come out as a transwoman, gone to the Thordaddy game where I met you amazing people,, I've watched Spags and Fisher flounder before McVay, I've watched two more Super Bowls with us in them and celebrated the one we won, made many mock drafts, had many highs and lows, but through all of that, my fandom hasn't changed and never will.
Love y'all!
Jemma.
I’m thinking of starting an agency to respond to young Ram fans bullied by their fathers into abandoning the Horns. We will call it the Rams Protection Agency.
