Pat Burrell (9) of the San Francisco Giants walks back to the dugout after striking out in the seventh inning as Philadelphia Phillies fans hold up signs in Game Two of the NLCS during the 2010 MLB Playoffs at Citizens Bank Park on October 17, 2010 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Getty Images/Doug Pensinger
So says a study by Facebook's data team, which crunched the numbers on a wide range of social networking behavior such as clicking the "like" button for a team or posting comments about a game, according to the San Jose Mercury News.
According to the survey, which looked at millions of Facebook members around the world, Phillies' fans were the least likely to root for any other other team. Also, roughly 60 percent of Philadelphia fans had Facebook friends that are also fans of the team.
Some other noteworthy conclusions from the Facebook study:
Oakland A's and Washington Nationals fans are the most social: Oakland fans topped all other teams with an average of over 500 Facebook friends while D.C. fans averaged 450 friends.
The Minnesota Twins and St. Louis Cardinals are loved by women: Nearly half of their Facebook fans are female.
Texas Rangers fans are the most conservative and San Francisco Giants fans are the most liberal: Fans of last year's World Series teams are a contrast in red and blue, according to Facebook data.
The Yankees and Red Sox are the most loved -far and wide: The Bronx Bombers have 3 million Facebook fans, while the Bosox have over 2 million. The teams' appeal is not limited to the Big Apple and Beantown - according to the Mercury News, the teams' fans live farther away on average from Yankee Stadium or Fenway Park than any other teams' fans.
Stephen Smith is a managing editor based in New York. A D.C. native who was previously an editorial producer for the Washington Post, he's also worked in Los Angeles, Boston and Tokyo.
