A few surprises in the 'favorite baseball teams' poll

A few weeks ago, Harris Interactive released the results of its annual poll on America's favorite baseball teams. It's almost a month old now, but anything that illuminates who roots for what team (even unscientifically, like Nike's United Countries of Baseball map) is still fascinating to me. A few things from the poll that struck me:

--I hadn't really pegged the Indians as a fanbase full of bandwagon jumpers, but they haven't shown themselves well this year. The team dropped from a nearly perennial top-half team in terms of numbers of fans all the way down to 25th, tied with the Florida Marlins(!). You'd think that if a franchise had gone a half-century without a World Series title, one awful year wouldn't be enough to cause fans to leave in droves, but that's apparently what happened to the Tribe.

--The Angels are even lower, at 27th. And they've always had no fans, never finishing higher than 16th. I guess I had always thought of them as a pretty strong fan base. It's tough to end up with the fourth-fewest U.S. fans in baseball while playing in the second-largest market, but the Angels' brass must have done something seriously wrong. And don't tell me it's the Dodgers' fault.

--I'm amazed the A's have hung tough, solidly occupying the 19-23 spots for nearly all of the past six years. That's certainly not great, but I always thought of the A's fans as sort of a ghetto of "Moneyball" enthusiasts or the unwanted stepchildren of Giants fans.

--The Tigers were much higher than I expected. I didn't think they had much appeal outside the state of Michigan--or even all that much within it, until they started winning again a couple of years ago. Turns out they apparently have more fans than the Mariners, who own the Pacific Northwest, or the Mets, who partly own the national media.

--I thought Braves fandom had dropped off since that dominant run during the 1990s, especially since TBS doesn't broadcast all their games anymore. But they're almost as strong as ever, even remaining in front of the Cubs. As Nike's map shows, if you're in the South and you like baseball, chances are you're a Braves fan.

Anything that struck you?