Do you remember where you watched big sporting events?

Not the ones you saw in person. the ones you watched on TV.

Posting about where I was at the end of the 1993 World Series got me thinking about some of the places I watched/learned about the biggest sporting events of my youth. To me, the stories behind where I was make the games that much more memorable.

Anyway, here's a few of my memorable ones. Maybe this thread perishes or maybe you can add your memories!

Game Six, 1986 World Series: Turned down an invitation to go to my buddy's house. He's a Red Sox fan. Should have gone. I remember crying tears of anguish, and then tears of joy, in the basement.

Game One, 1988 World Series: At the house of the buddy who invited me to watch Game Six of the 1986 World Series. The A's were my favorite AL team (what can I say, I was 15 and I liked the Bash Brothers) so I was rooting for them and feeling pretty good about their chances when Kirk Gibson limped to the plate against the Eck. When Gibson hit the homer, my buddies and I started jumping up and down and hugging each other. There was a momentary "uhhh what the fuck are we doing, isn't BYH an A's fan, we should be making fun of him plus does this make us gay" pause, but we kept whooping it up anyway. It was just so freaking stunning. I loved how the moment brought out our most basic instinct as fans.

Super Bowl XXV: At my best friend's house. He was pretty into football, but we had two other guys there...one who had a very casual interest in it yet always tried to sound like the guy who knew what he was talking about ("Oh man I love Phil Simms I hope he wins his first Super Bowl this year!") and another who HATED sports. I honestly have no idea why he was there...he had a nerdy rep and I think I coaxed him out b/c I was tired of everyone making fun of him. Anyway, the game was so good that we were all captivated. When Norwood lined up for the field goal, my sports-hating buddy gripped his chair and started yelling for Norwood to miss it. Good times.

Game Six, 1991 World Series: I was hanging out at a cross country teammate's house. None of the other guys there were big baseball fans, but shortly before midnight, I said to our host "Hey can you put on the baseball game real quick?" He changed the channel, I kid you not, as Kirby Puckett swung. Awesome. Three seconds later and I would have missed "We'll see you tomorrow night!"

Add yours!

 

Watched the epic playoff game between the Chargers and Dolphins (January 82, I believe) in the front room of my sister's neighbors on this new-fangled thing called a big-screen TV. If I wasn't hooked on the NFL then, I was by the time that game ended.

Watched Super Bowl XX in my living room with my mom and dad, and when the Patriots scored first, I told my dad I wasn't going to school if the Bears lost. My dad's response was something like, "Shut up, you're goin' to school no matter what happens." Luckily, it wasn't an issue by the second quarter.

 

You should have said "I'm not going to school tomorrow if Steve Grogan finishes this game!"

 

The reason I was so worried about going to school is that I was the only kid in my eighth-grade class in Arkansas who was a Bears fan, and each week my relatives in Chicago would send me a new Bears shirt. I was the most hated man in junior high for about five months (that hatred reached its peak when the Bears beat the Cowboys 44-0). Loved every minute of it. If the Bears had lost, I might have had to transfer.

As for other TV memories, the first sporting event I ever remembered watching was a Clemson game in 1978 with my dad at the bar.

Last year's NFC championship game was pretty cool, too. Went up to Chicago to visit and watched the game with my dad, brother and nephew. We were easily the loudest house on the block.

 

Game 5 of the 1999 NLCS stands out because of the diversity of locations. I was assigned a project in a high school US History class to "visit an historic site related to the Revolutionary War and write about it." My parents and I went to a couple of the sights in Philadelphia, and the plan was to grab a cheesesteak across the bridge and come back before the game started. Thanks to my mom's "attention-surplus disorder," dinner was nixed, and I distinctly remember hearing Gary Cohen call Olerud's first inning homer while driving back over the Ben Franklin Bridge. The rest of the game, save for an emergency trip my dad and I took to Wendy's sometime while Hershiser was pitching, was viewed from the comfort of home.

The Giants-Vikings NFC championship game in Jan. 2001 I watched at a hotel room in Washington, D.C. as my brother was down there to receiver some Americorps award. The peripherals from the game that I remember best are driving down listening to the WFAN pregame coverage while reading the New York Times preview of the game, my brother's girlfriend saying she thought "the little running back" and "the gap-toothed player" seemed nice, and getting salad dressing on my shirt that night at dinner.

 

a) Super Bowl XXI. Watched at my friend Josh Miner's house up the road. I was 10. Biggest thrill of my life up to that point, in terms of watching sports on TV.

b) 2003 ALCS Game 7. It was on a big screen on the top floor at Jillian's, behind Fenway. Walking out of there was like a funeral march.

c) 2004 World Series, Game 4. At my buddy Ryan and Beth's condo. Utter joy.

d) Pedro's 17K game, 2001 Raiders-Pats snow game, 2004 ALCS Game 7, Boise State last year, Clay Buchholz's no-hitter: At work.

e) UConn over Duke, 1999 Nat'l championship. In my friend Kyle's dorm room at UConn (I had just graduated from there the year before). Oh, what a glorious night that was.

 

Watched the three-OT Celtics-Suns playoff classic in 1976 – one of the 10 great games of the 20th century, I read on a list someplace – at the frat house with my SAE brothers. We had a blast.

Watched Georgetown win the 1984 NCAAs at a bar in Georgetown. Perfect.

Saw Dale Earnhardt's crash on the little TV in my mom's kitchen.

Most other stuff, seems to me I was watching at work or – as with Buster Douglas beating Tyson and Duke beating Kentucky in the Laettner game – at home.

 

1984 world series, last game. We'd moved to Minnesota a couple of months earlier and knew no one, I had just got out of college and had no social circle. Sitting in my parents basement watching the Tigers beat up on the Paders. Couldn't take it, so got in the car, found a hill and picked up WJR to listen to two innings of Ernie Harwell.

1990 NBA finals, was in a bar in Grosse Pointe Park two blocks from the Detroit border. When the Pistons won, the street started swarming with Detroit Police cars. turns out they hid while the residents celebrated with gunfire.

 

Steelers-Cowboys, SB XXX, it was the first where I can remember what I did during the game, not just that I watched it. I remember being really excited because it was the first time I would be allowed to stay up and watch the whole Super Bowl. My family sat around the TV watching it, but my brother and I went downstairs when to listen to it on the radio when things weren't going very well. Every time we were downstairs the Steelers played well, they scored at the end of the half to make it 13-7 and the second time we went down they scored a TD to make it 20-17. We came up to watch the rest of the game after that. We should have stayed downstairs.

 

I started to do this, BYH, but, honestly, nine out of ten of my answers would be:

On my parents couch with my old man.

And that's fucking great, if you ask me.

 

Super Bowl XXII: Watched it at a family friend's house in Maryland. Everyone there was rooting for Elway to get his first ring after the SB disappointment of the year before, and the drama of that great AFC championship game. Not me. I was 5, and a huge front-running Redskins fan. (Even had a No. 10 Jay Schroeder jersey.) The adults tried to give me shit during the first quarter, and my stubborn ass kept telling them, "Just wait, just wait ..." Vindicated, bitches.

 

1. 1989 Stanley Cup final, Calgary becomes only NHL team to ever claim the Stanley Cup on the Montreal Forum ice. Sitting in living-room of my parents' house and listening to my dad cursing expansion and my beloved Flames.

2. 1996 World Juniors, Canada wins fourth gold in a row (a part of the five-in-a-row streak). Sitting in living-room and listening to my dad cursing the damn Europeans. They were the last hockey games I ever watched with him. He died two weeks later.

3. Salt Lake City Olympics, Canada wins double gold in hockey. For the men's final, I was sitting in the Ice Box Arena in Kamloops, awaiting my own gold-medal final in the first hockey tournament I ever played. My team and I sat in the bar, watching every minute of that damn game. We lost our own game and settled for silver.

Thanks for reminding me of those precious times, BYH. There are others, I'm sure, but those are the biggies.