Then, a couple of months ago, I accidentally stumbled upon a blog written by a buddy of mine. I was Googling a topic we had discussed involving March Madness and a certain series of fucking retarded Applebee's commercials involving a retired high school basketball coach and his thankless hag of a wife, when I happened upon his blog with which he had addressed the topic of our conversation. I started reading it on a regular basis and discovered that I, too, wanted to have an outlet that would enable me to craft my writing and express my thoughts and opinions of the world around me.
First and foremost, this blog will be top-heavy with sports, music, entertainment, and pop culture writings and references because...well...that's what I like and that's what I know. Sure, some news and politics will fill in the gaps, and stories of my work, family, and friends will probably make guest appearances every once in awhile.
A few things you should know, in particular, about my sporting interests:
If it's even remotely considered a sport (i.e. cricket, billiards, horse racing, dwarf tossing, Battle of the Network Stars, etc.), there's about a 99% chance I'll tune in and watch it.
Nothing is more thrilling, in my opinion, than the drama of sports. I'm talking about Game 7, Sunday at the Masters, the Final Four, and the Super Bowl. I'm talking about walk-off home runs, double-overtime goals, buzzer beaters, and photo finishes. I'm talking about Kirk Gibson (1988 World Series), 4th and 1 against Purdue (Ohio State, 2002), Tiger on the 16th at the 2005 Masters, and guys named Bryce Drew from Valpo. Give me any of those on any given day. I love it and I live for it.
Speaking of living, I was born in New York (Upstate...not that other part of the state that everyone always thinks of), moved to Atlanta, New York again, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Atlanta again, Virginia, Atlanta again, and finally, Ohio (I'm staying here for good...I'm fucking tired of moving), so my sports teams are all over the map. Seriously, here are my teams:
- Atlanta Braves
- New England Patriots
- Columbus Bluejackets
- Cleveland Cavaliers
- Manchester United
- Syracuse University basketball
- Ohio State University football
Over the course of this blog, I'll visit how I came to discover these teams, and how they became an integral part of my life. For the moment, I'd like to focus on the Braves, the first professional sports franchise I invested my life in (I was born into Syracuse basketball, bleeding Orange, a half mile from where the Carrier Dome stands...more on that later).
Atlanta Braves
Baseball is my first love. Period. Some of my earliest memories involve Little League, baseball cards, keeping score, trips to Cooperstown, and TBS. When I was 8 years old, living outside Syracuse, New York, I got hooked on the Braves. We had just moved from Atlanta, where I was mildly aware of the team, but Gobots, Return of the Jedi, and Michael Jackson's Thriller took up the bulk of my adolescent interests.
Most of my friends in NY were either Mets or Yankees fans, and I knew, even at that young age, that I hated both of those teams. Lucky for me, Ted Turner owned TBS and the Atlanta Braves, and they were on television every night (this was years before Fox Sports South, Turner South, and all the other satellite channels split the Braves TV schedule into a million pieces so a kid in New York could only watch a third of the games). This was THE Superstation in all its glory...when 162 games a year were televised...a decade and a half before the scheduling geniuses at the network decided that replaying Turner and Hooch 26 times in the month of July was better than a handful of series against the Mets, Phillies, Cubs, Cards, and Expos (yeah, I went down that road).
The Braves were still part of the NL West, so many of their games didn't even start until 10:00 PM EST. Luckily, I had a little UHF television set in my bedroom and I used to turn the games on when I was supposed to be sound asleep. Shhhh...don't tell my folks.
It was the era of 90 losses a year, Dale Murphy, Bob Horner, Glen Hubbard, Bruce Benedict, Rafael Ramirez, Bruce Sutter, Ozzie Virgil, Zane Smith, Fulton-County Stadium, and Skip Carey in all his fat, drunken, Bob-Uecker-in-Major League glory. It was awesome. I was there through it all, and got to experience pure-adrenaline elation when the Braves beat out the Dodgers on the last day of the season in 1991 to win the NL West and total sports euphoria when they finally got that beautiful World Series trophy in 1995.
I've been there through Tommy, Mad Dog, Smoltzy, Kid Avery, the Blause, the Lemmer, Otis, Justice, Francisco Cabrera, Sid, Klesko, Wo-daddy, Schmidty, Marquis, Javy, Rocker (meh), Turner Field, Chipper, Andruw, T-Hud, Frenchy, and McCann, just to name a few. It's been fun, and it looks like it may be fun for a while longer.
God bless America's Team.
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