Where did you get your love for sports from?

[John B. Foster]

Not sure if this thread will ever take off, however, I figured I would give it a try.

Did you get it from your parents? A family relative? Just turning the TV on one day and started watching a game? There are so many possibilities, let's hear your stories.

For me, it was just channel surfing with my brother one day. Both my parents hated sports. We were just changing channels and we started watching an MLB game and we just fell in love with it. After that, we just started watching everything we could find on TV related to sports.

 

[Songbird]

I've watched, played, and loved sports since I can remember.

I think my first memory of sports was going to a Dodgers game at age 5 or 6.

 

[Scout]

Dad and uncles then continued with friends in school growing up.

 

[PaperDoll]

We didn't have cable growing up, so there wasn't a lot of TV sports available. But I cultivated a love of the Olympics through this huge, turquoise library book I took out almost constantly. I think I still have an audio tape of my dad snoring while I do play-by-play of Olympic bobsled off the TV.

I am still more knowledgeable about and more interested in Olympic sports than the traditional ones, so bring on the high school swimming and soccer and track (and field too!)

My career goal is to cover an Olympics, and I haven't fulfilled it yet. I guess that means I have to stay in this crazy business a little longer.

 

[micropolitan guy]

My parents, but especially my dad. He loved baseball so we three brothers grew up huge baseball fans, all played, and still follow the game.

Spent tons of time with my dad at:

Hockey games at the old Memorial Auditorium, watching the Buffalo Bisons of the pre-expansion American Hockey League.

International League baseball games at War Memorial Stadium, watching the Bisons. We'd go 4-5 times a year.

Doubleheader college basketball games at the Aud, back in the days of future NBA stars Bob Lanier, Calvin Murphy and future Buffalo major Tony Masiello, when when Villanova, Providence, St. John's, etc., made regular appearances playing their Catholic-school brothers at Canisius, Niagara and St. Bonaventure. My dad was so excited to see Ernie D when PC came to town, when he was a sophomore.

We went to one Bills game a year, and listened to all the others on our living-room radio back in an era when home games were not televised and even road games were hit-or-miss.

My dad was a teacher/administrator at my high school. So we went to almost every home football/basketball game together until I got old enough to go with my friends.

WBEN-TV/radio talent Van Miller was the play-by-play voice of the Bills, Niagara, Buffalo Braves and sometimes the Bisons. I never met him but he was like a member of the family.

Most of the teams we watched were minor league or lower, but the experience was definitely major league. Unforgettable.

 

[Vombatus]

1980 USA Olympic hockey followed shortly by Ralph Sampson.

That’s where I really amped up, but prior to that, ABC’s Wild World Of Sports, including that poor ski jumper, was a huge influence to enjoying a broad variety of sports.

Jim McKay. Still remember Munich. RIP.

 

[Baron Scicluna]

My Dad, who has always been a sports fan. There's pictures of us, with me as a baby, reading the sports section and watching baseball on TV.

Then, when I was around 6 or 7, I'd get the Sunday paper, bring it up to my parents' bed, and I'd read the sports section and comics while they'd read everything else.

 

[Starman]

My parents were big college football fans, and I got to go to games when I was literally a baby. Sometimes my mom would stay home and I'd go with Dad as a toddler and grade schooler.

Dad also played softball -- fastpitch (very big stuff at the time) until his late 30s and slowpitch until he was almost 50 -- and we watched plenty of baseball on the tube over the years.

My grandfather played college baseball and had known some Tigers players in the teens and twenties, so he had some old-time stories.

My opposite grandmother used to go to games as a girl in the 1900s with her father, so she had some stories, too.

Family legend had it that my GG-grandfather, a lumber baron millionaire in the 1880s, owned a small percentage of the NL Detroit Wolverines, who won the early Worlds Series in 1887.

True or not, the family lived in a mansion about 300 yards from the team's ballpark.

My mom had played basketball in junior college, so she got me going on basketball.

Dad had tried out for college hockey in the 1940s before it was even an established sport, so we watched that too sometimes.

 

[Batman]

My Dad, definitely. He was a huge Phillies fan and I was the only boy out of three kids (as well as the last) so I guess it just transferred on to me. It was family lore that I was born the day the Phillies clinched their first division title, and that I was able to read box scores in the newspaper when I was 4. Went to my first baseball game at 5 or 6 (Phillies-Giants at the Vet; Gary Matthews hit a home run and Bob Dernier stole second, slid headfirst and left a skidmark in the dirt).

After that, it was just what I and my friends did growing up. We played wiffle ball in the summer and street football in the fall and spring, and basketball whenever we could find somebody with a hoop on their garage.
I was never much of an athlete. I was in shape from playing and running so much, but was way too small to do any of the big sports in high school. Wish I'd known now what I know then and had either gotten into sports writing a little bit earlier or taken an alternate route to be an equipment manager.

 

[KJIM]

My mom. There's a valid reason I sent her to Yankee fantasy camp for her 50th wedding anniversary. And an equally valid reason why I got my father a $50 Whataburger gift card for the same occasion.

 

[WriteThinking]

I had brothers who liked and played sports while we were growing up, and I was always being taken along to watch one of their games, but really, it was an interest I developed pretty much on my own. One of my first big sports memories was of attending a game at Yankee Stadium with one of my brothers, a couple of cousins and my uncle, and I think I enjoyed it more than they did. Still, growing up, I loved basketball the best. I was pretty good at it, was always welcome to play in games that involved mostly boys, and I was a rabid Lakers fan during the mid-70s and throughout the 80s and 90s (as in, I even followed, regularly, the radio broadcasts, and would sit in my room with the door closed, listening to them. In fact, I never missed them, and often listened to radio broadcasts even while watching games on TV, the better to have Chick for the sound bites instead of whomever was on the TV station).

During those same years in the '70s and '80s, I also discovered the newspaper, being the first in the family to get up every morning (as in 4 or 5 a.m.), to read it, for the sports section, specifically. I'm sure my journalism/sports writing career had its genesis there. And when my first paid, full-time newspaper job was a half-news/half-sports position, and I found that I generally liked the sports part better (even though I had a good appreciation for news and developed good news instincts), my direction was set.

 

[CD Boogie]

I did not get it from my father, who did not root for any team other than his alma mater, Georgetown. And I didn't get it from my brothers, because I didn't have any. I think my love of sports came initially from being really good at sports (for a pre-teen). Also my dad took me to Cooperstown when I was 9 years old in 1982 and I was awestruck. I read the Hall of Fame yearbook from 1982 -- Hank Aaron, Frank Robinson and Travis Jackson were on the cover -- and I wore the cover off that thing. Matter of fact, I might just buy that thing on Amazon right now. Thanks for the reminder. Oh, and Happy Chandler. Forgot about him. Sorry, Happy.

 

[Captain_Kirk]

My dad, for sure.

A few stories from when I was 5 or 6 that I can still remember and picture in my mind to this day, some 50 years later.

I had him write down the name of every team from each of the big four sports for me. That was apparently my earliest study guide. I remember thinking what a weird looking name 76ers was.

I grew up in the Midwest in St.Louis, but had a fascination for everything NY in sports: Jets, Mets, Knicks. Christmas of '69 delivered the Joe Namath Jets uniform: jersey, shoulder pads, helmet.

Earlier that summer, at a family gathering one Sunday, my dad tells me to let everyone know who I think is going to win the World Series. I confidently tell them the Mets will. Gets a bunch of laughs and chuckles from the assorted family elders from the city that had the past two NL pennant winners. Well, summer turned to fall, and despite watching Don Buford homer to get the Orioles started in game 1 on my grandpa's color TV, the Amazings came back and won the whole thing. Got a congratulatory telegraph from one of my aunts who was at the table that summer when I made my preposterous suggestion.

Sadly, I would say that's pretty much the high point of my sports prognostication abilities. In the five decades since then, my sporting predictions have delivered much more checkered results, at best.

 

[Sam Mills 51]

Had to be my mother. She taught me how to properly throw a football and other such sports techniques. She didn't spare me much when chucking a football or softball ... once jammed a finger and burst a blood vessel in it, causing it to turn purple. My poor teacher must have wondered if I was being abused ...

She and I also worked in an officials' organization before I was old enough to drive. When I was old enough to drive, we would usually get to same assignments in different vehicles. Since we neither sound nor look alike, the players would say whatever was on their minds. If I had a dime for every time I heard my mother called a b_tch, I never would have had to work again.

Shared those stories away from the fields and courts. Laughter always ensued.

 

[MTM]

I'm not real sure, but I'd say my oldest brother and friends at school. My father -- who had four sons -- did not like sports. We would bet 25 cents when USC would play Ohio State, his alma mater, in the Rose Bowl in the late 60s-early 70s, but he didn't watch the game. We would talk him into taking us to a Dodger game each summer and he would bring a book and even tried napping at a game once.

My mother, now 90, still watches as many Dodger games as she can but the love of sports didn't get passed down. My son doesn't care about sports and doesn't even attend games at his Pac 12 college for the social aspect.

 

[BTExpress]

I'm struggling now trying to figure out where I got my indifference to sports from.

Just snuck up on me sometime in my late 40s. Was it getting married? The sports seasons starting to blur after so many years? The same arguments every year? Too much expansion and not being able to keep up with things the way I used to? The rampant commercialization? Too many games ending after midnight? Something just happened to turn off my passion, and I'm not sure exactly what it was.

I have a 70-year-old friend that is every bit as enthralled with sports as a person can be. I don't know how he does it.

 

[Wenders]

All of my family, really.

I searched and longed for a connection with my family but from a young age, I was different. I was not athletic like the rest of my family (both of my parents played sports, my grandfather was a Senior Olympian at age 80, my uncle was a two-sport star at a D-1 school in the 1950s. I never grew taller than 5'0 so the only sport I ever excelled at was when I was a coxswain on the rowing team). I didn't have the same interests as anyone else. Growing up, my nose was in a book or I was spending hours sitting on a piano bench, practicing scales, while everyone else in my family wanted to push me to go outside "into the fresh air."

I finally watched a football game with them so I might be able to have SOMETHING in common with me. And the bug bit. This was fun and exciting and INFURIATING and excellent and HEARTBREAKING all in the span of about 3 hours.

Then, of course, once I had something "worthy" of discussion with my family and I just started to connect with them, then it was inauthentic to love football and basketball like I did.

You can't win for losing. But after getting two degrees around sports, now working in a close relationship with two collegiate teams and being the designated "sports person" in the office, I'll own that burden.

 

[WriteThinking]

All of my family, really.

I searched and longed for a connection with my family but from a young age, I was different. I was not athletic like the rest of my family (both of my parents played sports, my grandfather was a Senior Olympian at age 80, my uncle was a two-sport star at a D-1 school in the 1950s. I never grew taller than 5'0 so the only sport I ever excelled at was when I was a coxswain on the rowing team). I didn't have the same interests as anyone else. Growing up, my nose was in a book or I was spending hours sitting on a piano bench, practicing scales, while everyone else in my family wanted to push me to go outside "into the fresh air."

I finally watched a football game with them so I might be able to have SOMETHING in common with me. And the bug bit. This was fun and exciting and INFURIATING and excellent and HEARTBREAKING all in the span of about 3 hours.

Then, of course, once I had something "worthy" of discussion with my family and I just started to connect with them, then it was inauthentic to love football and basketball like I did.

You can't win for losing. But after getting two degrees around sports, now working in a close relationship with two collegiate teams and being the designated "sports person" in the office, I'll own that burden.

Eh, you're good at what I'd consider the best competition ever: The Amazing Race...

 

[micropolitan guy]

Speaking of legendary Buffalo radio/TV voice Van Miller:

It's Van-demonium: Sportscaster's mementos to be auctioned off