The last week in March and the first week in April combine for my favorite sports time of the year. Recently, the Bruins have been involved in the Final Four, the Lakers' regular season is getting ready to climax into the playoffs and the lovable Dodgers kick off their year, hopeful as always.

This mash up of sports programming usually leads to a general uselessness on my part, as I spend most of my days watching games, replays, highlights and reading up on the teams. So of course I'm on top of my sports at this point and not just as it pertains to my teams but the leagues as well.

One of the sadder storylines this year has been the snatch up of the Seattle Supersonics by a midwesterner, with plans of relocating them to the burgeoning metropolis that is Oklahoma City. It seems ridiculous because Seattle, despite having one of the worst teams in basketball has one of the best (albeit currently morose) fanbases of any team. Just check out this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EW19D4qXStI&feature=related

You can barely hear the announcers over the crowd and this is BEFORE the game. I know a lot of you have heard or seen this before but it bears repeating. I have attended many sporting events and never have I heard anything like this before the game starts.

It makes me sick to think a franchise that has this kind of history is leaving and I almost became bitter to the people in Oklahoma City until I realized one thing the other day. I'm a Dodgers fan. I can't be mad at these prospective Sonics fans because I am a fan of the worst sports divorce in history (close second is the Baltimore/Indianapolis Colts).

I didn't completely grasp this until I watched the Dodgers documentary on cable the other day. I always knew about the Brooklynites and their undying hatred of Walter O'Malley. I had heard the joke "You have a gun with two bullets and are in a room with Hitler, Stalin and O'Malley. Who do you shoot? O'Malley twice." But despite this I was one to side with O'Malley saying that the New York Construction Coordinator was the biggest asshole that was responsible for the Dodgers transition to the West Coast.

Well that was partly true.

But then I began to think about all of this in terms of today. So the Dodgers were the Red Sox before the Red Sox completely evolved. They were the loveable losers who would make a run every now and again (a lot in the Jackie Robinson years) but could never quite make the jump. So while the pre 2004 Red Sox fans had that indelible moment of Buckner, the Bucky Dent home run (whose name is legally Bucky Fucking Dent in the greater New England area) the Brooklyn Dodgers shared just as many of those moments as well as the common hated enemy that always defeated them, the New York Yankees. So when they finally overcome all of this in 1955 and win the World Series, the fans are just as jubilant as the 2004 Red Sox fans. The thing is, they shared some other characteristics as well.

Both were playing in VERY old stadiums. The difference comes here. While both Ebbots Field and Fenway park were/are venerated facilities, their owners took markedly different approaches to them. The owners of the Red Sox have found ways to keep Fenway park relevant, refusing for as long as possible to leave (although I will contend, no stadium has a worse section to watch a baseball game than the high field level section along the first baseline. It is impossible to see fly balls and if you are unlucky, like I was, second base.) while Walter O'Malley, cashing in on the team's recent successes, holds the fans and the city hostage in an attempt to get a new, more viable stadium.

So while the Red Sox Fans would have stomped all over that asshole Robert Moses and forced him to cave and keep the Sox, that doesn't mean that Robert Moses held the most responsibility for the Dodgers' departure. That responsibility is O'Malley's because he was the instigator of the entire debacle. And now I understand, to a minor degree, the pain that the Brooklyn Dodger fans continue to endure and have a good idea at what Seattle will be like once their team finishes everything and moves.

So now the Seattle Supersonics are facing a similar fate as the Brooklyn Dodgers. Like the Dodgers they are being asked for unrealistic stadium demands (although in reverse, the Dodgers wanted to be able to buy and own while the Sonics want to have the public pay for it) and the prospect of losing their team because of the public officials failure to comply.

All this mess will leave a trail of bitterness. And just as there still exist Brooklynites that are still angry at O'Malley and, to a lesser extent, the LA Dodger fans, there will be bitter Sonics fans that will be angry at ownership and the OKC fans. And while I understand the hatred for the owners and the city officials, I hope that people realize that the new fans don't shoulder any responsibility other than to care for the team as much as the previous fans. That's why I think that there should be a break given to the OKC fans because, if last year is any indication, they will be a rabid worthy fan base.