Your Earliest Sports Memory

[21]

Interesting discussion on the Journ board indirectly raised the question of writing about events before our time....lots of good memories there.

So: what's your first memory of sports?

I fell in love with the NFL watching Terry Bradshaw in SB XIII...it was the first time I really understood how people could lose their minds over a game (coming from a family that was completely void of sports interest). I watched with a girlfriend whose parents were out of town, we drank all her dad's beer and threw up for two days.

Not exactly an early childhood moment, I got a late start. No doubt you can do better.

 

[Ace]

Hitting a home run my second time up in organized youth baseball.

I don't think I got a hit the rest of the year.

My dad taking me to Cleveland Municipal Stadium for a Browns game. I sat behind a pole. I always sat behind a pole.

 

[outofplace]

I have a vague memory of watching Kent Tekulve close out one of the Pirates' victories in the 1979 World Series. I was seven and didn't really understand what was going on. I think he's the only one I remember because he was the one finishing games and he was funny looking.

The following January was the only one I actually remember watching of the four Super Bowls that the Steelers won in the '70s, XIV against the Rams. I mostly remember everybody being in shock that the Steelers were behind and hadn't blown the Rams off the field from the opening gun.

 

[cougargirl]

Watching Patrick Ewing play for Georgetown at the Capital Centre in Landover, Md. Likewise, when the Colts packed up the moving vans and left Baltimore. Also, watching the Steelers at my grandmother's house in the South Hills of Pittsburgh.

 

[dreunc1542]

Sid Bream scoring to beat the Pirates in the '92 NLCS.

 

[Trey Beamon]

Steve Young's crazy TD run against the Vikings.

At the time, I wondered why Joe Montana was wearing No. 8. ::)

 

[Idaho]

Little league baseball. I played (poorly) for the Modern Drug & Pharmacy team. But I was a pitcher that could throw hard and straight (for an 8-year-old kid, anyway).

I remember we had a a game rained out after a few innings and the score was tied. We had play that same team -- I think if was The Ranch Hand Truck Stop -- a week later and we just finished the previous game before playing the next game.

I was asked to pitch in the makeup game and we got the win as I struck out all three batters I faced. I went back to the outfield where I was mostly harmless to my team to start the second game. But four innings later, I was asked to pitch again and hold our 13-10 lead. I came in, struck out three batters again and got a win and a save on the same day.

Like Uncle Rico, I was amazing back in the day.

I've sucked at baseball/softball ever since.

As a fan? I remember my parents splurging for Christmas one year and taking the whole gang to watch the Utah Jazz vs. the L.A. Lakers in the old Salt Palace in SLC. I can't remember anything about the game itself, but I remember it being a big sacrifice for my family to go to something like this since my dad was a school teacher in Idaho and his salary was hardly a big one. My dad's seat was directly behind a stupid column and he couldn't see much of the court. But he sat there so us kids could watch the game.

 

[zeke12]

The year I fell in love with baseball: 1986.

Sorry Red Sox fans. It was a great year, though.

 

[Football_Bat]

Realizing why the Dallas Cowboys played every week on TV but the Oklahoma Sooners only played on New Years' Day.

 

[Cosmo]

Super Bowl XVI -- Redskins vs. Dolphins. Riggins dragging the Dolphins down the field on that run. David Woodley sucking.

I suppose I should be happy as a fan with three Super Bowl titles when I was a kid. But damn, it seems like that team will ever get its act back together and be SB level again.

 

[Pencil Dick]

I vaguely recall going to a birthday party on the day of Super Bowl III when we were living in Columbia, Mo., and my father, who was leaving for his first tour in Vietnam in a couple of weeks, complaining about having to take me while the game was on.

I remember watching it with him and the other dads who were also stuck at the party with a bunch of 5- and 6-year-olds.

Also recall going to Mizzou football and basketball games about that same time. I distinctly remember seeing Jo Jo White play for Kansas and having my father tell me what a great running back OU's Steve Owens was.

 

[bigpern23]

Dave Righetti's no-hitter against the Red Sox on the Fourth of July in 1983. I was four and at a family reunion playing outside with my cousins. Our dads called us into the house around the eighth inning and made us watch the end of it. I don't remember much of the game, but I remember our dads' reactions and whatnot.

My earliest memory overall is seeing 'Return of the Jedi' in the theater with my parents when I was three. The scene with Vader and Luke battling in the dark was the coolest thing and that part still sticks out vividly in my mind. It's my favorite movie to this day.

 

[pallister]

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.

 

[Armchair_QB]

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.

 

[D-Backs Hack]

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 **** 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 ...

 

[Huggy]

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.

 

[markvid]

Sid Bream scoring to beat the Pirates in the '92 NLCS.

I hate you.

Sarcasm font NOT on.

 

[Jack_Kerouac]

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.

 

[Songbird]

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.

 

[SF_Express]

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.