Where did you get your love for sports from?

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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...

 

Speaking of legendary Buffalo radio/TV voice Van Miller:

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