A FICKLE SPORTS OBSERVER
By Dan Miller
November 26, 2007
I don't know exactly when it happened, but my sports preferences have definitely shifted.
All during my youth, baseball was my sport of choice... to watch, to play, to understand, to talk and fantasize about.
It was the sport dreams were made of.
As recently as last summer, if someone asked me my favorite sport....
it required no thought.... "baseball" was my automatic answer.
As for football -- until I was a grown man -- my only real involvement in the game had been to attend high school games, and play touch football in the backyard.
Baseball, on the other hand, could consume my time.
There were countless sandlot games to play....
There were solo fantasy games played in the backyard, bouncing a tennis ball off the back of the house (and breaking a few windows)....
There were summer days spent tossing a ball back and forth with my pal Michael Danish.
There were untold hours spent at Jennings Stadium watching Class "A" Sally League teams taking on our hometown Augusta Tigers (or Rams).
I knew the name of every player on the team.
There was the year I went out for our high school baseball team, but was (mercifully) cut from the roster because of shoulder pain (and, perhaps, questionable ability).
For years, I could recite 'who batted in what order' in the Atlanta Braves lineup...
I listened to, at least part of, most every Braves game on the radio.
There was even a fantasy baseball game I played with my neighbor Butch Kabala, when I lived and worked in Columbia, South Carolina.
We used dice and some long forgotten formula to score the games.
The years I spent in Los Angeles were made more enjoyable because I could watch the Braves on TBS cable most nights, and attend Dodgers games.
I suspect the gradual changeover to a "football preference" actually began while I lived in South Carolina 40 years ago and, for the first time, attended college football games.
The atmosphere in that University of South Carolina stadium was -- for me -- magical.
I even got to know (then) Gamecocks coach Paul Dietzel a bit.
It was also during those years that I started watching the upstart AFL games on NBC.
That was the era when Joe Namath led the New York Jets to a victory over the highly favored Baltimore Colts of the NFL in Super Bowl III.
No Super Bowl game has ever touched that one for sheer excitement.
When I moved to Nashville, I still followed the USC Gamecocks, though I immediately got hooked on, and loyal to, the Vanderbilt Commodores, and remain so to this day.
This past weekend, I was thrilled to watch former Vandy quarterback Jay Cutler (and the Denver Broncos) taking on former Vandy defensive star Hunter Hillenmeyer (and the Chicago Bears).
Since I wasn't at home to watch it live, I recorded it and then carefully avoided hearing the score until I got to the house to play it back.
When the Titans came to Tennessee a few years ago, football clearly began to occupy my thought process more than baseball.... I just hadn't realized it.
I'm not sure there was ever an official "break" between me and baseball.
Maybe I felt jilted when the strike happened a few years back, and they cancelled the World Series.
Maybe the steroid scandals diminished the sanctity of those cherished baseball records.
Maybe it had something to do with the designated hitter.... or inter-league play.... or the retirement of Hank Aaron and others like him.
I still love the game of baseball.
A good contest, with well-executed plays, is fun to watch.
These days though, if I'm going to attend a baseball game, I prefer the family-oriented minor league Nashville Sounds to the hoopla of the big leagues.
With the exception of an occasional round of golf, or a little backyard basketball, I'm only a sports observer nowadays.....
And -- if you ask me my favorite sport to observe -- my apologies to baseball, but I truthfully gotta say.... football.
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