I agree with pookie. The World Series, in particular, is a once-a-year event, and it is even rarer that your team participates in it.
As impulses go, the impulse to root for your team is one of the better ones. If you discourage it, the interest will only grow stronger in the child.
I can remember in the 1960’s, we would sneak transistor radios with earplugs into public school and Hebrew school, and nothing would stop someone from doing that. We learned elaborate signaling to let each other know what was happening.
Baseball is a wonderful and wholesome release, and teaches you a lot about life, teamwork, and individualism, at the same time.
We are lucky to have many Jewish players who played the game admirably, and set a good example of sportsmanship for all. The first two names that come to mind, of course, are Hank Greenberg and Sandy Koufax who played the game better than almost everyone, who never denied their Jewish identities, and were never involved in a scandal.
Hank Greenberg, who played baseball in the 1930’s and 1940’s, and endured more abuse for his heritage than any player who played pro baseball until Jackie Robinson.
He came very close to breaking Babe Ruth’s home run record in 1938 (hitting 58 vs. Ruth’s longtime record of 60), and was arguably the best ballplayer around, at a time when Father Coughlin and Nazi propagandists were depicting Jews as physically substandard.
Greenberg’s comment to a friend, on the trolley, on the way home after the last game of the season, after just missing Ruth’s record: “58 home runs, that’s not such a bad year.”
He refused to play baseball on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, though the Detroit Tigers were involved in a pennant race; The fans said, “Rosh Hashanah comes once a year, but the Tigers haven’t won a pennant since 1909!” He faced taunts of the worst sort, included having players stare at him and having coarse racial epithets thrown at him. Examples of these imprecations were: “Hey Mo!” (referring to Moses) and “Throw a pork chop–he can’t hit that!”. Particularly abusive were the St. Louis Cardinals during the 1934 World Series.
After his pro career ended in the late 1940’s, he returned to baseball as a coach and an owner, mentoring many black ballplayers, who faced discrimination similar to that he faced.
Greenberg was idolized by millions of Jewish boys of that era, and helped them find their self-esteem at a time when serious anti-jewish messages were being broadcast throughout American society.
As Jackie Robinson himself said, “”Class tells. It sticks out all over Mr. Greenberg.”