Pete Crow-Armstrong was 9 when his father Matt threw down the gauntlet.
Not about school. Not about sports. About the Chicago Cubs.
Matt, 51, grew up a Cubs fan in Naperville, Ill. Both he and his wife, Ashley Crow, were actors, raising Pete, their only child, in Southern California. Matt sensed the Cubs, after hiring Theo Epstein as president of baseball operations and Jed Hoyer as general manager, soon would be on the rise.
“I said to Pete, they’re bad now. But they’re going to be good eventually,” Matt recalled. “And if you’re not on board by then, you’re not on the bandwagon, dude. You have to suffer in order to join.”
Matt said Pete originally rooted for the Boston Red Sox, growing enamored with the team during its run to the 2004 World Series title. Just 2 1/2 at the time, Pete would pluralize Johnny Damon’s last name, calling him, “Johnny Damons.”
For a time, Pete was a fan of the Cubs’ biggest rival, the St. Louis Cardinals, and the Chicago Bears’ biggest NFL rival, the Green Bay Packers.
“I’m convinced there was some part of him that was — I won’t say sadistic, but he wanted to screw with me as much as possible,” Matt said. “He was trolling me, at a very young age.”
Little did either of them know how the story would turn…
