Sportswriter Bucket List ...

So did he.

I've been lucky enough to have covered all four major sports, just to say I've been there.

Now my list simple. Get out with my dignity and self-worth intact. Something that is highly unlikely given the way the industry is today.

 

Believe me, you didn't miss much.

 

I just meant they actually made the Finals once when he was around, but I couldn't attend in person! Now they're so hopelessly outclassed talentwise it's a freaking joke. Until they get some new management, it ain't changing.

 

The only sports events which I wanted to cover but didn't, and now never shall, but still could wind up attending with a few breaks.

1. Wimbledon
2. The Open Championship
3. College World Series
4. Formula One at Monte Carlo (do they still have that?). Childhood dream.

 

Make sure you go the CWS before they quit playing at Rosenblatt. The new stadium will have NCAA corporate written all over it, with the suites reserved for major advertisers and sponsors, way overpriced concessions, etc. It won't have anything like the neighborhhood feel of the current CWS.

I'd like to go to Fenway Park once. Been to old Yankee and Tiger stadiums, and to Wrigley Field; Fenway would complete the holy quadrangular.

 

There's nothing wrong with a sports-free bucket list. If I ranked the things I wanted to do in this life, my top one (probably the Olympics or Super Bowl) wouldn't crack the top 20. Would an accountant be ashamed of leaving money-related goals off his or her list? I think not.

Good luck with yours, Dan.

 

Sirs, Madames,

I've done a few of the things on these lists/posts. And, yeah, I was there for Lindros's cameo in the final. Outplayed by linemate Zubrus, age 18. Hockey game in Canada is nothing on a hockey game in Russia. Went to a couple of football games in London (Arsenal, QPR). Bet against a Triple Crown winner on my lone trip to Churchill Downs.

Not a single thing on my list would be sports.

Go to Patagonia.
Finish Ulysses.
Galapagos.
Easter Island.
Pyramids. (Though I've done a Mexican one.)
Bolshoi. (It was closed for the holidays when I was there.)
See The Kinks. (the one band left on my list of possibles/livings)
Stand on the equator.
Go above the treeline. (I was close)
Sark.

I think I have a chance at everything but Ulysses.

If anything would count for sports, I might throw in the Grand National and Isle of Man motorcycle race. (Did do the Czech Grand Prix motorcycle race.)

o-<

 

Sadly, they were pretty outclassed then, too. All I remember is a bunch of flying octopi.   :-\

 

The only thing of this type I actually thought about during my writing career was I had three places I wanted to be SENT to cover something: Hawaii, Vegas and New Orleans. I just figured being sent there was much cooler than just going on your own.
Went to Hawaii on a school-related trip when I was a sophomore in high school, but got sent there in 1981 for the baseball winter meetings and got sent there again in 1987 for the Aloha Bowl.
Went to Vegas a bunch of times, but only once was I sent there, an LMU-UNLV preseason NIT game in 1989.
Never been to New Orleans and probably won't ever make it.

 

But at least they got to the Finals, even if they were beseiged by flying octopi.

 

I believe they still do. I was there two years ago a few weeks before it was to be run but they had already started setting some stuff up for it. Pretty cool.

And FoTF, of my two football games in England, QPR was one of mine as well. Fulham was the other.

 

My sports items are largely participatory.

Boston Marathon, Kona Ironman, play in the U.S. Open, etc., etc.

I guess it'd be fun to take in a Superbowl or World Series, but I go to the Indianapolis 500 every year already and I can't see that any other spectacle would live up to it for me.