Maybe it's a generational tendency. Or a natural human emotion. Maybe it just means I'm getting older. Whatever the reason, and there may not be one, I often find myself reminiscing about the good old days of being a sports fan. My brothers and buddies and I have made it a sport unto itself. "Remember Kelly Tripuka? Loved that guy."The practice isn't uncommon and certainly not limited to something as trivial as a grown men putting a leather ball into an iron hoop. (That's a Hoosiers reference, kids. You should re-watch Hoosiers.) My father speaks as fondly about cheeseburgers at Bunk's Drive In as a teenager in Bellingham Washington and Jack Kennedy as much as he waxes poetic about Muhammad Ali and Johnny Unitas.
The bear trap of the glory days continues to ensnare me, and she won't pry loose. I miss when sports were better. When they were magical.
I miss when steroids were a rare occurrence, limited to Lyle Alzado and the East German woman's swim team. Not the horrible plague that they are. I miss the innocence of the pre- Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa era in baseball when the numbers were sacred and real.
I miss when the layup-laden WNBA "highlights" did not get any airtime during Sportscenter. A finger-roll is not a highlight.
I miss when boxing was relevant. Not the beyond-broken mess that it is.
I miss when stadiums were revered cathedrals of sport, full of tradition and wonder. Not hideous monstrosities that cater to the rich and douchey who are only there for a social outing not the watch the game. (The new Yankee Stadium has a martini bar for crying in the night.)
I miss when we could watch sports on the telly without overbearing graphics that swooshed around the screen like crazed bats, were literally on fire and there was no dancing robots. I don't need dancing robots.
Speaking of dancing...
I miss when more stadiums had pipe organs than out-of-work-porn-star, sluttified "dance teams."
I miss when NBA players smoked opposing defenders, not the chronic.
I miss Converse Weapons, Walter Payton, Johnny Most and Chick Hearn, when families could go to the ballpark for less than the cost of a Volvo, "Marvelous" Marvin Hagler and Tommy "The Hitman" Hearns, Steve Largent, the "NBA on NBA" theme song, Tom Landry's hat, when no uniforms had the color teal in them, Bobby Hurley, Bo Jackson, The Boston Garden, Ozzie Smith, Ronnie Lott, ABC's "Wide World of Sports," Joe Dumars, Chris Mullin, Pat Summerall doing games with John Madden, when there wasn't much mention of the police blotter in the sports section and Steve Young. I miss when I cared so much that when the Seahawks would lose, I would cry.
I miss when college bowls not only mattered and weren't determined in part by computers, but had cool names like the Gator Bowl, Freedom Bowl and Holiday Bowl, not the Poulan Weed Eater Bowl.
I miss when an athlete knew when to hang up the cleats and ride off into the sunset with dignity not embarrass themselves when they were way past their prime. Yep, looking at you MJ. And good riddance Brett Favre, please go away now.
Speaking of Michael Jordan...
When he was in his prime, I miss the excitement and lethal competiveness of #23, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird. We'll never see the NBA as good as it was in the 80's and early 90's. Never.
I miss when winning mattered above all.
Do you remember that? When it was still a game?
Yeah, I miss that.
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okay, devil's advocate JW....two words...
Pete Rose
I think you are just getting old. There is still lots of excitement and magic in sports, its just not the stuff of yesteryear.
With the growth of basketball throughout the world, the NBA is better than ever, but when held up to the good old days people can't see that LeBron is just as captivating as Jordan and CP3 just as deft as Magic.
As a point in fact, I remember when as a kid Superbowls sucked. They were horrible and one sided with one team being demolished by the other. You have to admit that the Superbowls of the last several years are far more exciting than they used to be.
Oh and steroids goes back a lot longer than people think, the only difference we were all ignorant of them.
In a world where everybody has a sports blog, this is one too many.
JW, I'm so with you on that...
I miss when futebol* matches were pleasant to watch, when the players really put their guts on the tip of their feet and fought with all their heart to win a beautiful match. I don't even watch it anymore, it's becoming like a rugby match played with the feet instead of the hands. Uglier each day.
*I wrote futebol in Portuguese to avoid the references with handegg, wich Americans insist on calling football.
I'll always have nostalgia for the past, especially since most of the teams I follow were better back then. Besides I paid more attention to box scores than criticisms and I was way more optimistic & less critical about everything.
I think American coverage has gotten too statistic focused, to over-hyped and I fucking hate how the announcers must fill every second with talk. But I don't miss the uniforms (I think 80s basketball uni's are the reason I didn't follow the sport), the horrid team color schemes (teal? purple? puke yellow?), the bad haircuts (face & head), and the ridiculous music video crazy.
Sports hasn't been free of scandal in any decade either. In fact, the behavior of the 86 Mets after they won, helped make me become a Yankees fan. I still can't believe what Pete Rose did to the game. And doping and 'roids, has tarnished American Olympic goals way before Marion Jones.
Leonardo, with all due respect, I am not watching anything that involves people having guts on the tips of their feet. That just sounds nasty.
I have to say as an older sports fan... There's still plenty out there, and in some ways it may even be more exciting. In an era when athletes make so much, there's even more respect for those who play for the love of the game.
What about Shaq? Love or hate the Big Aristotle, he's been a joy to watch. Perhaps the biggest crime of his career was never really having a rival... Tim Duncan? Nah...
Football has only gotten better as the Salary Cap has increased parity around the league.
Baseball sucks... As it should. They haven't done anything to protect the sport, the total lack of a spending cap allows teams like the Yankees to have a 50% chance to win the pennant just by spending power.
Boxing has been replaced by any great number of MMA events. From the ultra-doofy and oft gory UFC, to the more traditional K1.
I will bemoan what has become of F1 and Rally car driving though. Who can forget team Lotus and Jackie Stewart?
and let's be fair...
the Black Sox?
Part of the problem is the Internet. While it brings beautiful things (YBNBY and free porn), it also contributes to the 24 hour news cycle. You can keep tabs on any game that is not carried by local tv or radio instead of waiting to hear the score on an AM sports radio station/reading it in the paper the next morning (great for those far away from the teams close to our hearts), but you can also be so inundated with news, blogs, websites, etc that it's much harder to sweep scandal under the rug like they used to.
Imagine Dr J's conquests all tallied on 'notchonmybedpost.com'...or someone breaking the news about Magic's HIV before he got to have a press conference...
it's just a different world. And most of us here saw it through kid's eyes back in the 80s...
LIDJ, I got you, but I meant courage, willpower, daring when I said guts... but that's OK... the joke's on me... hehehe...
And talking about F1... I was a huge fan in the Senna, Prost, Arnoux and Mansel (and others) era. That was racing. These days almost all the takeovers happen when one racer is doing the pitstop, or something like this...
These days one friend has sent me a video where Arnoux and Villeneuve make a real thrilling match in the last three laps. That made me think about the times when F1 was really worth watching.
Steriods, 100 ticket prices, Donaghy, the Taco Bell Fiesta bowl, the BCS, etc.
I catch a Rockies game maybe once a year. I was glad when they made it to the World Series even though it never occurred to me to shell out 300 bucks or whatever to go see one of the games. I thought the last SuperBowl was pretty good and it's cool the Phillies won the World Series recently.
All in all I'd say it's a mixed bag. There's some good stuff out there but when I watch, it'll be at home.
I was going to a post about this the other day but never got it up...so I'll do it here...
Here's what I can't shake about all the steroid allegations in baseball.
Can we honestly know for sure that any player that played in last the 20 years was completely 100% steroid free? Or on something performance enhancing.
Is it possible that Cal Ripkin, Tony Gywnn, Ricky Henderson, Kurt Gibson and countless others were juiced at some point?
There's no definitive way to tell. We have to take their word for it. I'm inclined to believe they weren't but we'll never know for sure.
And why should the 'roids be limited to baseball? It clearly seemed to help performance of many stars, so what about football? Emmitt Smith, Troy Aikman, Jerry Rice. Were they clean?
How about Scottie Pippen, Karl Malone, Patrick Ewing and dare I say it, Michael Jordan?
Did illegal substances contribute to Wayne Gretzky's dominance and longevity or cause Mario Lemieux's back problems? Did it strengthen Patrick Roy for all those memorable playoff runs?
How about Tiger Woods? Did it help him maintain his edge?
We will never ever know. And that really bothers me.
Hey JW - The world seems like a better place with you writing again. Welcome back, officially.
Cheers my brother from another mother.
JW
I remember it well. Magic's running hook shot in game 4 of the '87 finals at Boston Garden. I was 10 and stunned. They threw daggers like that often. They threw each other to the floor. They threw right hooks at each others heads. Magic, Bird, MJ, the fear Bill Laimbeer put into the eyes of his opponents. It did seem that back then winning was the most important thing. Not money, not endorsements, but winning. I miss it too. I don't watch the NBA anymore expect in rare cases when the games hint at a rivalry---Lakers v. Celtics once again means something, but it could never get close to Magic v. Bird, or that hook shot in 1987.