I’ve never been a big sports guy. I’ve enjoyed watching games on tv occasionally with friends who are big fans, but I’ve never been much of an athlete. I tried to get in to playing baseball as a kid because, growing up in the country, all of my friends played. I was so bad that my father actually started a team so that I would have a chance to play. I never made it past tryouts for any other team. ‘Our’ team didn’t last more than one summer, because it just wasn’t fun for me. I’d play 3 pitch at school and that was as much as I really needed. My dad played on a softball league where I grew up, and played with work after we moved closer to town. I could never watch though, I found it too dull. I wanted to be out in the woods or I would bring a book to read. I distinctly remember hiding in the car to read and listen to our 8-Track of Deep Purple’s Machine Head during one tournament. During grade school we made a couple of trips with the class to see baseball games in Toronto (pre-Dome era) and THAT was fun! In fact, any chance I got to go see the Blue Jays play live, I took it. Well…until the Sky Dome. I could only afford nose-bleeds and was mildly terrified of heights. I went a couple of times but it freaked me out too much. At one point, I had a girlfriend whose parents were HUGE Ottawa Senators fans and they encouraged us to spend weekends in Ottawa when we could and use their season tickets to see games. I LOVED it! This was actually the only time I ever enjoyed watching sports on television as well. For the most part, it really just didn’t do anything for me.
Years later I moved to Thunder Bay and had lost all of my ‘live sports’ experiences. Just got out of the habit over the years even though there is so much world class sports entertainment to see here. This year, I’m going to start taking my boys to the Border Cats games. I’m pretty sure it’s not going to spark any sort of athletic desire in any of them, it never really did in me, but being amongst the crowd, hearing the people get so excited, eating all of the ballpark snacks (honestly, it’s going to be all about the snacks) is going to be a lot of fun for them. It’s also going to be a lot of fun for me. I hope it’s something that the kids will love to do and we’ll go regularly, who knows? Maybe they’ll even be down for going to see hockey games in the future!
I’m sure I’m not alone in this, are there some sports you just don’t enjoy on television or playing that you LOVE to go see live? Let me know in the comments below!
