1. I was born overseas while my dad was in the military. I was very young when we returned, but I do remember one uncle going to Vietnam and one coming home in the summer of 1970. It was my earliest sports memory. The one who came back got emotional watching a Saturday afternoon baseball game on TV. "God this is great," he exclaimed! "What's so great," I said. "Baseball, and not getting shot," he said. "Watching a baseball game with your family and a beer in your hand, it doesn't get much better than that," he exclaimed.
2. Watching bits and pieces of a basketball game of our beloved Alma mater on a Toledo station in the early 1970s. I remember trying to understand the different conferences etc. It was quite a learning curve and exciting all at the same time.
3. World Cup Soccer 1978 (Closed Circuit TV Cleveland Public Hall. The last World Cup not shown on live TV in the US.) I grew up next door to a family from the Middle East. The youngest son and me were always playing any and every sport. Though I had seen the New York Cosmos and the old NASL, I had never seen international soccer on TV. Though I was pretty familiar with it due to European family ties. The trip to Cleveland was crazy enough as the neighbor kid's dad drove like we were back in the old country. Talk about a white knuckler. After a near riot between rival fans trying to grab each others flags and police threatening to shut the whole thing down, we then went to an Indians game where the first 15,000 got seat cushions. We didn't get to old Municipal until the third inning. However, the usher assured us that there were plenty of seat cushions available. We dodged them in the lower deck from the various kids and drunks tossing them down from the upper deck for the remainder of the game.
4. Summers mid-late 1970s. We couldn't afford a nice family vacation those years so we went to a Reds night game and stayed in a Cincinnati hotel which I though was so cool. It was the Big Red Machine heyday. The weird thing occurred a couple years later when I was a freshman in high school. I was in a study hall with a senior girl who was also a Reds fan and definitely a wild child. One Monday she came to school with as bunch of pictures of her and her older sister with the Reds in the Clubhouse and a hotel suite? I was bewildered and asked how did you get in there. She laughed and said, silly freshman. At that point, I think I still thought athletes were paragons of virtue.
5. Fast forward to this century and I am on a family vacation out west. We stopped in Las Vegas to visit some family members and they told us we should visit some sports shop in town because Pete Rose is always there on that particular day signing autographs. My wife and I along with our young kids went there and it was vintage Pete. He asked me were I was from, quizzed me on my baseball history and strategies of the game. He then went on a tirade of sorts (channeling Mick from Rocky--"Management kid-you need management.") He asked me why Sparky Anderson was the greatest manager of that era. I gave the best answer I could and he went off of sorts. He stood up and addressing the small assembled crowd inside and anyone within earshot inside the mall, went on a soliloquy of sorts explaining how great managers are motivators. Some guys need a pat on the back, but some need a kick in the %ss. He ranted about players not realizing their potential and a good %ss kicking manager knows how to get it out of them. He ranted about moneyball etc. While all of this is going on my kids are clinging to me not knowing what this crazy guy might do. Though they were very young, it is something they will probably never forget, I know my wife and I certainly won't, and I am guessing most of the people within earshot won't either.
Last Edited: 6/19/2019 1:05:20 AM by cbus cat fan