I've been watching some of the old sports games on TV during this hiatus in ongoing competition caused by the COVID-19 pandemic...Monday night ESPN was showing a 2015 regular season contest between Pittsburgh and San Diego. I like watching the old NBA and Major League Baseball games from years gone by as well, especially those classic decisive World Series games that were so tense in the late innings...that Game Six of the 1986 World Series between the New York Mets and Boston Red Sox was something I totally missed (as well as the rest of that series) the first time around back then. In the process I have been brushing up on the year-by-year champions in the different leagues...it seems in retrospect that the last ten years have flown by too rapidly. I also reflected on when I began to follow various sports during my childhood...
The earliest spectator sport I began to follow was baseball during the World Series of 1965 between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Minnesota Twins, one of the great classics...I was just turning nine at the time. The next year, though, is a blank with me as far as baseball was concerned although in 1967 I resumed my interest as the Red Sox fought with the St. Louis Cardinals in another tight series. But I didn't start following the sport's regular season until 1969, the year the New York Mets had their "miracle" season. In football I started watching NFL games late in 1967 and college games the following year..."my" teams were the Baltimore Colts, Miami Dolphins, Florida State Seminoles, Miami Hurricanes and Florida Gators. In professional basketball, the fledgling American Basketball Association began its second year of existence in 1968 when its Minnesota Muskies franchise moved to Miami to be renamed the Floridians. They didn't broadcast any of their games on TV but I avidly followed the play-by-play all year long on a weak Miami AM radio station, WOCN/1450. I didn't follow the NBA that season until the playoffs, when I rooted in vain against the Boston Celtics, eventual champions once again. As for college basketball, when towering Artis Gilmore played for Jacksonville University and their seemingly unstoppable fast break dominated that sport in 1969-70 (until they played against UCLA for the national championship, that is), this is what first drew my attention to college hoops...
It's fun to follow the great old sports leagues...and since 2014 I have also been following some of the pro soccer leagues as well. I've tried to cultivate an interest in the National Hockey League but it's only worked for me during the Stanley Cup Playoffs. I will be very happy when sports resume in whatever form they take...until then I guess I'll keep watching the old classics...
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