Just how far does Cub Kingdom stretch?
I just stumbled onto the Common Census website, which attempts to track the local cultural spheres of influence within the United States.
As part of that project, Common Census has developed a Sports Map Project that tracks the popularity of sports teams by geography. Basically, it tries to color-code a map to show which sports team is most popular from place to place across all of America. They have maps for the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL and NCAA Football.
The MLB map has a few surprises in it. For instance, a small sliver of the east bay-area is colored brown for the Athletics, swimming in a larger sea of Red that covers northern California and Western Nevada and represents the Giants. But then, oddly, there is a brown splotch around Lake Tahoe and a big brown stripe running through north-central Nevada. What makes these regions hotbeds for A's fans?
Looking at the Cubs, you see just about what you'd expect. They're color-coded light green, and the northern half of Illinois, most of Indiana and most of Iowa are bathed in the color. Their dominion expands westward just to Omaha, where I was raised to be a Cub fan.
But like Oakland, the Cubs have islands of support dispersed across America. North-eastern Oklahoma and central Arkansas has its own little hotbed of Cubdom, and so does a little blotch in central Nebraska that I believe is Grand Island
It's quite interesting, and I encourage you to go to the site and participate. You have to take the regular survey in order to state your baseball affiliation. It's 12 clicks total, and they don't ask for a name or email address, just an address.
Let's see if we can claim a larger portion of this country as part of Cub Kingdom! I know we have many readers from beyond the continental U.S., and unfortunately Common Census does not include options to allow you to register your opinion. (Unless of course you want to say that you live in, say, St. Louis.... wouldn't it be fun to turn the St. Louis area of the map to the Cubs?)
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