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Your Earliest Sports Memory

Discussion in 'Anything goes' started by 21, Jan 25, 2007.

  1. pallister

    pallister Guest

    Personally: Going to the park with my dad when I was 5 or 6 to practice catching fly balls for the first time and watching an older kid (probably 8 or 9) catching fly balls with his dad while my dad explained to me what he was doing right and how I would be that good someday.

    Viewing category: The day my mom threw a party for my 7th birthday was the day of SB XIII. I forced my mom to take me home early from McDonald's and leave many of the partygoers there so I could go home and watch the game. I've been hooked on the NFL ever since.
     
  2. Armchair_QB

    Armchair_QB Well-Known Member

    Aaron's 715 is the first event I can truly recall watching. I would have been seven at the time.

    When I was younger, and we still lived in the same town as my grandmother, we would always go over to her house on Sunday after church. I vaguely remember watching bits and pieces of NFL games there with my dad after we ate. The Cardinals stick out as a team that was shown a lot in our area.

    When I was eight we moved to a city that actually had a major league baseball team. And they were always on TV when I got home from school. That's how I became a Cubs fan.

    EDIT: I can't count. It was 715, not 714.
     
  3. D-Backs Hack

    D-Backs Hack Guest

    It's not my earliest memory, but one I love to tell, because my young interest in sports and journalism converged, so to speak:

    My parents got divorced when I was pretty young, so for many years it was me, my mother and sister in a two-bedroom house in Mishawaka, Indiana. I was so blessed because my mom knew how much I loved sports and would let me watch them on our only TV, even though I know there were times she'd rather have watched something else.

    I grew up on Notre Dame football and basketball, WGN Cubs telecasts, White Sox games with Harry Caray and Jimmy Piersall on now-defunct WSNS Channel 44 in Chicago and everything else that was on the tube.

    On March 24, 1980, when I was 9 years old, my mom let me stay up to watch the first half of the NCAA basketball championship game between Louisville and UCLA. I probably was too young to even realize it was on, but she knew I'd want to see it. As the game started, I grabbed a piece of paper and started writing down some of the phrases the announcers were saying.

    The only ones I remembered through the years were Dick Enberg saying how a Louisville player was "tough on the boards tonight" and called a last-second shot at the end of the half "a long rainbow." A couple years ago, the NCAA licensed a DVD release of the game broadcast, so I bought one. To hear Enberg say those words, a quarter-century later ... I just about got chills.

    Great memories of a youth that was carefree. Now, excuse me, I've got to go call Mom ...
     
  4. Huggy

    Huggy Well-Known Member

    I remember my parents throwing a huge party for the opening game of the Canada-Russia series in 1972. Mood turned pretty bleak as more beer was consumed and the Russkies hammered the Canadians.

    I remember watching the Dolphins win the Super Bowl in those days too which turned me into a long-suffering fan o' the Fish.

    Always made a point of trying to catch some of the weekly Expos game that CTV showed (always seemed to be against the Mets too) and even though I switched allegiances to the Jays in 1977 I followed the 'Spos until the end.

    Remember the house being packed for the network replays of some of Ali's big fights - specifically Frazier I and Foreman - as well as anytime Roberto Duran (the old man's fave) fought on TV.

    Took a stick under the left eye in practice as an eight-year-old, ending my hockey career after one year in the Dixie Minor Hockey Association. No visors or cages in those days, it was not long after that a guy with the Toronto Marlboros juniors lost his eye to a stick and the campaign for visors and cages began.
     
  5. markvid

    markvid Guest

    I hate you.

    Sarcasm font NOT on.
     
  6. Jack_Kerouac

    Jack_Kerouac Member

    Great topic. Saw the Milwaukee Bucks beat the New Orleans Jazz 158-102 on March 14, 1979 at the MECCA Arena. My lucky father, I spent the whole game asking "What's the score now, Dad?" Of course it had to be a high-scoring game, unlike today's brutal 80-79 contests.
     
  7. Songbird

    Songbird Well-Known Member

    Going with the dad, grandpa and older brother to Dodger Stadium in 1977, when I was 6. Most beautiful stadium, even today. Dodgers played Atlanta, and Don Sutton pitched against Phil Niekro.
     
  8. SF_Express

    SF_Express Active Member

    As a spectator, I'm pretty sure I went to a Milwaukee Braves game with the Cub Scouts. Joe Torre was on the team, I'm sure. Seems to me it was a pitchers duel, which was not what kids my age wanted to see.

    Otherwise, I played a version of Little League when I was like in the third grade. Our team was really good; I was pretty bad, afraid of the ball when batting, and not much of a fielder. So in a game, a ball was hit to me in center field -- yep, that's where they put bad players in my league -- and I dove for the ball and it went for a home run. We won anyway.

    So my mother (yes, Mom) took me out to a field and hit fungos to me and taught me that if I couldn't get to the ball, I should stop, let it bounce in front of me, and get it on the hop and hold the runner to a single base.

    So we're playing the biggest game of the year against the other great team, and it's like 2-1, us, and a fly ball is hit right to me in center field. It's coming straight down to me -- and I take two steps back, let it bounce in front of me, as taught, and the tying run scores.

    We lost when a grounder down the first-base line took a wicked hop and went down the front of Billy Hughes' shirt. Ump said that wasn't possession.

    Those are my earliest memories -- and why I ended up running cross country instead of playing any kind of skill sport.
     
  9. Inky_Wretch

    Inky_Wretch Well-Known Member

    That's mine too. I was watching it with my dad, who had just finished putting together a crib for my soon-to-be born brother. He told me to remember watching that homer because it was history in the making.
     
  10. Cadet

    Cadet Guest

    Good topic, 21.

    My dad was a high school teacher, so there are photos of me dressed in school colors as a baby and being a cheerleader as a young child. I went to my first HS football game when I was six months old. Funny how I haven't stopped going.

    The first game I remember going to I was about 3 or 4, my dad took me into the dugout at a HS baseball game to meet the star, known as "Mick the Stick".

    My first playing memory is when I was about 7, going to soccer practice at the Catholic school playground.

    My first viewing memory is of Game One in the 1988 World Series, Kirk Gibson hitting that home run. I can point to that as the moment I became a baseball fan.
     
  11. micropolitan guy

    micropolitan guy Well-Known Member

    First thing that I remember today is coming home from first grade and learning the Yankees had lost the 1960 World Series.

    First live thing I remember, an International League baseball game. My parents wanted to make sure I saw Luke Easter play because he was one of their long-time favorites. He was with Rochester at the time, probably about 43 or 44 years old. I think Ted Keegan, a former MLB player, pitched.
     
  12. dreunc1542

    dreunc1542 Active Member

    How do you think I felt? I was 5 and my hometown team was so close to the World Series. Instead, that play is the reason I have and will forever hate Barry Bonds.
     
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