My team in action. via sarah.of.a.lesser.god
It’s now October, which is the month of Halloween, changing leaves (at least in my part of the country), and playoff baseball. I’ve already written about my obsessive love for the sport, and this is the time of year when it really kicks into high gear. As a Yankees fan, I recognize that tons of people hate my team. Case in point: when I was 15, I was threatened with rape if I didn’t remove my Yankees cap while watching a Yankees/Red Sox game in Boston. We’re occasionally called the Evil Empire, and I wonder if that means Derek Jeter is Darth Vader? Darth Jeter? Now that my team has reached the postseason, which will start next week, the real fun will begin, and I started wondering how many of our lovely readers have their own all-consuming love for a team or a sport.
Are you a Yankees or Red Sox fan? A Mets fan? A Cubs or Astros or Orioles fan? Or do you prefer football? Basketball? Tennis? Olympic gymnastics? Hockey? And in a similar vein, did any of you reach any athletic heights growing up? My own greatest achievement was probably the time that I attempted to fake an injury to get out of 7th grade gym class, and ended up dislocating my shoulder while doing my supposedly-harmless pratfall. In other words, I am not the stuff athletes are made of.
So I’d love to know what your fondest sports-related memory is — if you have one — either as a participant or a bystander. Mine is going to see the Yankees win Game 3 of the World Series against the Mets in 2000. Share your own memories and team affiliations in the comments. Oh, and let’s keep this a mudslinging-free zone.
Chicago Bulls winning the Championship and taking to the street with chalk to proclaim their awesomeness.
Circa ’90′s Bulls domination.
I’ve attended and watched a lot of great sporting events, but my fondest sports related memory is as a participant.
(Sorry about the length, but this needs backstory.)
In 6th grade I transferred to a tiny Catholic school and wanted to be on the volleyball team as a way to bond with the 11 other girls in my class. I was probably 4’6″, had never done any team sports before, and was not coordinated with the ball at all. I didn’t have the arm strength to do an overhand serve and mostly warmed the bench. Our coach was kind of psychotic and would scream and rail at us when we messed up. I was pretty miserable and had taken to scratching my knuckles to punish myself whenever I made a mistake. This led to perpetual scabs on all of my knuckles, but I didn’t want to quit the team for fear of the social consequences.
One day in practice the coach said we couldn’t leave the gym until we had all completed 50 serves over the net. I tried and tried but I couldn’t even get one over. All the other girls did their 50 serves overhand and were allowed to sit down. The coach made me keep trying. I was so frustrated and humiliated I began to cry.
Then I decided that the only way I would ever complete the 50 serves was by doing it underhand – a move so highly scorned and discouraged on our team that I didn’t dare try it earlier. So I channeled all my anger and hurt into a forceful underhand serve. To my surprise, the ball shot like a laser in a straight line just inches over the top of the net. It was a perfect serve. I tried it again with the same result. When I focused on the ball and put all my emotions into it, it was amazing how far, and fast, and straight that ball would fly. My teammates dubbed it “Jenny’s Evil Underhand” and from that point on I was actually allowed to serve in games. I just remember feeling so happy and vindicated that I could do something right and do it MY way. I’m still not much of a jock, but that was an important moment in my life and a treasured memory. (It also makes me wonder what the hell was wrong with that coach?!)
Bah to your American sports although I admit to a soft spot for the Mets who are as crap as my football (yes, football not damn it soccer) team Tottenham Hotspur and who are guarenteed like Spurs to screw up when all eyes are on them. This year I shall also mildly follow the fortunes of the Detroit Tigers as i like the story behind their ownership.
My favourite sporting memory however belongs to the greatest sport of all, the sport of kings, horse racing and in particular to racing’s temple the Cheltenham Festival in the UK. It was there that one wet March day my then boyfriend and i won four out of six races and a large amount of cash which enabled him to buy our engagement ring in addition to paying for a grand night out. Few memories can top the one of War Of Attrition coming over the hill in the lead at Cheltenham and the crowd seeming to melt away as we jumped up and down/kissed/cheered in our excitement.
I’m more of a hockey girl, but it would be grounds for disownment in my family to root for any baseball team but the Chicago Cubs. I don’t actually watch the games, because I find baseball on tv deeply boring, but every year a part of me hopes that this time, they won’t fuck it up.
Most of me knows it’s just a matter of time, though. The Cubs always eventually crash and burn.
@JennyK: That is a great story! I’m super-super-short, so I can relate to not feeling like a jock because of height. Volleyball was one of the only sports I enjoyed in gym class.
@ratinski: Well, the Red Sox always crashed and burned until a few years ago. There could yet be hope for the Cubbies!
@emilyanne: Your story takes the cake!
@Tracy: How many championships did they win in that decade? Four? They were invincible.
I think my favorite memory came a few years ago when my bf and I were living in a little apartment in Medford (outside Boston). I’m from NY but moved to Boston for college, he is born and raised Boston. Yankees baseball (and other sports) is a major bond for me and my dad, especially living so far apart from each other. It was Game 7 in post-season, Sox/Yankees, extra innings. The apartment is pitch black save for the tv screen in the bedroom, its about 1 or 2 a.m. I’ve got my Dad on the phone at home in NY. Boyfriend sitting on the bed next to me. Aaron (“effing”) Boone steps to the plate and hits a home run to clinch it for the Yankees. I’m jumping up and down on top of the bed, screaming into the phone with my father. My boyfriend is on the floor, head in his hands. I lived in Boston when the Yanks won a few of their World Series titles, but that particular game was just pure joy to me and such a great memory for my father and I.
@s.o.a.l.g: At this point it’s at least getting later and later in the season, so I’m hoping eventually that someone will slip on a banana peel after they take the Series. (Preferably against the White Sox, but the Yankees’ll do in a pinch.
)
I grew up in a baseball family. We had season tickets and I have very fond memories of bringing picnics to doubleheaders and tuning in and out of the game, alternating with whatever book I’d brought. As I got older, my dad (of blessed memory) and I would go together. There is nothing sweeter than a baseball game on a warm summer night.
Now I don’t attend professional sports at all because I don’t want to subsidize rapists, wife-beaters and thugs. But I do watch them on tv, which makes me both a downer and a hypocrite, I guess.
As a Pittsburgher, of course I support the Pirates.
…….
AHAHAHA, I kid. I couldn’t care less about the Pirates. My favorite sports memory is watching the Spurs win the championship over the Pistons at the end of my senior year of high school, with my dad and brother — Manu Ginobili was amazing in that series. Also when the Steelers won the Super Bowl the 5th time (not this past time, which was the 6th) — the city went crazy. Finally got that one for the thumb.
I watch the Yankis with my mom. She loves to speculate on where each Latino player is from. She hates A-Rod, and loves Derek Jeter.
baraquiel — You’re a Burgher too? Sweeet!
I do like going to Pirates games, but it’s kind of like indulging a t-ball team or something, you know?
Diehard hockey fan here – GO PENS! And of course the Steelers too. That parade for the 5th Super Bowl win: simply amazing.
As to playing sports, I love volleyball and kind of liked soccer when we did it in gym class.
I am a huge NBA fan. My interest in basketball began when my bf and I were living in a small town in the middle of the country where there wasn’t a whole lot to do. He enjoys basketball (in his home country he played pretty seriously until the state system made him choose between academics and basketball – he chose academics) so we started going regularly to a sports bar to watch the games and eat a lot of deep fried salt masquerading as buffalo wings. I knew I was hooked when the words coming out of Charles Barkley’s mouth (he does commentary for TBS) actually started making sense! I was born in Cleveland, so my favorite team is the Cavaliers, and I adore LeBron James. I anticipate that my favorite sports memory will be when we go see the Cavaliers play the Nuggets this coming January. I’m so excited for the new season to start it’s ridiculous!
bluebears, I know you’re out there.
Sunday 1:00 PM EST, on FOX. It’s on…friend.
Living in Wilmington, I am a Philadelphia professional sports fan, Eagles, Phillies, Sixers, not-so-much Flyers. As an alumnus, I was a Penn State fan until last week when I thought I saw thousands of students at the game on TV wearing crosses on their shirts (Is that really what I saw?). If I can confirm that that is the case, then that was the last Penn State football game I will ever watch.
I don’t go to many games, because it’s expensive and too much of a hassle. My best sports memory (other than Penn State robbing Nebraska in a game in 1982, right in front of us in the student section) was when I took my then-4th grader son to see a Sixers game around Valentine’s Day 2000. I had somehow scored two tickets to my company’s luxury suite (best thing–private bathroom!). At halftime, Bob Eubanks came on and “married” or “re-married” 76 couples. As he ended the “ceremony,” he said, to the unbridled glee of the crowd, that “people would be making whoopee tonight!” My son, after applauding and cheering along with everyone else, asked me, “Daddy, what’s whoopee?”
@emilyanne – I hear you, as a fellow football fan! (it is not soccer, it is FOOTBALL!)
however, my favourite team is Arsenal (emilyanne I realise that whatever acquaintance we might have had is now shot /joke/)..
though in other european football leagues, I also like watching Barcelona, and so far the most memorable game I’ve watched this season is the Champions League match between Barca and Inter Milan..
in the wide red/brown land of Oz, I don’t mind watching North Qld (with Robbie Fowler, a former EPL Liverpool player, and my favourite A League player Robbie Middleby).. when it’s on tv, I also love watching football played by women’s teams.. the W League starts up today so I’m looking forward to watching some games.. and the best womens game I’ve seen was a friendly between Australia and Italy..
though I don’t think my sporting moment will even be on the same level as emilyanne’s and JennyK’s..
.. it was the first game of the finals round robin (the top 4 teams play each other then the top 2 teams, after the round robin, play each other in the grand final).. we were down 1-0 with about 2 minutes left, I received the most amazing long pass from one of the backs.. I ran onto the ball and it was the goalkeeper and I one on one, somehow the ball curled around the goalkeeper and we scored..
my favourite sporting moment is the very first year I played football.. the team was working incredibly well together and we played what I would like to think was beautiful football (I think we were in the bottom grade of the competition, so it may have been beautiful to us only
Mackey – i’ll make an exception for you, actually my brother in law is a huge Arsenal fan which has led to some interesting family discussions….