Verge: Diehard East Coast Dodgers fan to cheer them on in WS for first time without dad
Diehard Los Angeles Dodgers fan Gail Johnson (Moncton, N.B.) made the trek from Canada’s East Coast to Dodger Stadium on the opening weekend of the 2019 season. Photo supplied.
October 25, 2024
By Melissa Verge
Canadian Baseball Network
Others in her city are long asleep, but Gail Johnson is only really just coming alive.
She makes an important outfit change, a glass of white wine freshly poured beside her.
Her blue Clayton Kershaw shirt is on.
She’s ready.
In Moncton, N.B., where she lives, it’s bedtime, but in LA — it’s game time.
Despite a 7:10 p.m start being after 11 p.m. on the East Coast, the baseball superfan doesn’t miss watching her Los Angeles Dodgers. She may have been born in the country of red and white, but her colours will always be red, white, and Dodgers blue.
From game 1 to game 162, to the World Series this year, - it’s a grind, but Johnson will happily be locked in for Game 1 tonight.
It’s a love for the game that was instilled in her by her father, Gord Johnson, 44 years ago, who was a huge Dodgers fan.
“It was definitely always our thing,” Johnson said.
That’s why, this is not a story about an outlier maritime LA superfan, but instead, about an East Coast father and a daughter, and their shared love for the Dodgers.
Her passion might not have started if it wasn’t for him, she said. Her first early memory of baseball is when he woke her up to watch the end of the World Series with him as an eight-year-old in 1980.
“I was small enough he could carry me out to the living room to watch the game, and we sat down and he said ‘I want you to watch the end of the World Series,’” Johnson said.
Gail Johnson started playing baseball at a young age. Here she is in her backyard when she was 12. Photo supplied.
Throughout the years, it was a way the father and daughter bonded, although at first, they were cheering for opposite teams. When the Montreal Expos faced the Dodgers in the 1981 National League Championship series, Johnson was an Expos fan.
When the Dodgers took them out 3-2, Johnson was heartbroken, while her dad was overjoyed, not realizing just how passionate his nine-year-old daughter had become about the sport.
“I started crying and I ran down the hallway in our house to my bedroom,” she said.
Gail Johnson has kept her father’s Dodgers hat and jacket, but the Montreal Expos were the first team she cheered for. Photo supplied.
Years later, when the Expos were no longer, and in part because former Expo Tim Wallach played for the Dodgers in 1996, she found a love for her dad’s team.
That same year, for her 25th Birthday, he gifted her a copy of “Season Ticket” and wrote these words inside “To Gail - a fellow fan and beloved daughter.”
This is the gift that Gail Johnson received from her father on her 25th birthday. Photo supplied.
She had become a huge fan. Just how huge a fan?
Back in 2014, the player she idolized as a teenager, Tim Wallach, wrote Johnson a letter thanking her for being a fan. She has been given tickets by Dodgers’ senior director of business administration (and fellow Canadian) Ellen Harrigan (Beeton, Ont.) whenever she has made the trip to LA. And since 2019, Harrigan has been sending Johnson packages filled with Dodgers swag in the mail.
When she attended that first ever Dodgers game in person in September 2016, a far trek from Moncton, her dad wasn’t there. But he was, through the phone, when Johnson dialed him from 5,300 km away to tell him their team had clinched the division.
And in 2020, their roles reversed, when after the Dodgers won the World Series, her phone rang. It was her dad calling her.
“He used to call me when the games were over to share in my joy,” she said.
He invited her over to rewatch the game with him, and over steaks, the two of them shared in their love of baseball and the biggest victory from their favourite team.
After moving in with her in April of this year when his health started declining, they once again had a chance to bond over baseball. He would peep his head in her room and ask, “What’s the score?” periodically, she said.
And they even had a chance to watch a full game together.
What Johnson didn’t know was that it would be their last one.
Coincidentally, it was the Dodgers facing the Yankees, a matchup her Dad was particularly passionate about, she said.
“He was starting to forget a lot of things — but one thing he didn't forget was that he strongly disliked the Yankees,” she said.
Her dad got out his baseball encyclopedia book, and they discussed current and former players while watching the game. It was a good one, with the Dodgers ending up victorious, Johnson said, and a special memory with him.
He passed away September 24 in Moncton, two days before the Dodgers secured the National League West title.
After his passing, the Dodgers community was there for her, she said. A group of about 20 fellow fans sent her a bouquet of flowers.
The bouquet of flowers Gail Johnson received from her Dodgers’ Twitter family after her father passed away in September. Photo supplied.
His celebration of life is being held on October 26, before Game 2 of the World Series, and his love for the team will be represented. They’ll have an old blue Dodgers hat he used to wear, and a jacket on display, she said.
This is the first postseason he won’t be there to call her, or for her to call him, and celebrate a Dodgers win together. He won’t get to see his beloved Dodgers take on his much disliked Yankees in the World Series.
But tonight when Johnson is locked in to Game 1, his spirit will still be there in her, cheering on their Dodgers, with a passion for the game that he helped instill in her.
Lifelong, they are father and daughter.
And lifelong — they were, and always will be — diehard for the Dodgers.