Here is a bit of unsolicited advice from an Old Sports Dude to those of you who enjoy going to college and professional athletic events: Keep a list of all the games you’ve ever attended.
This is the same advice I’ve given my sons Ryan Satcher and Bradley Bishop, my sportswriting protege’ Cooper Sanders, and just about anyone else who will listen.
That list may not mean anything to you now, but one day it will.
I really didn’t begin putting my list together until my late 30s, and by that time I had almost two decades of games to catch up on. While I’m still working on the college side of things (having to research a lot of old newspaper files for sure), I’m in pretty good shape on the pro side of things. That’s mostly because I haven/t seen as many.
It’s also a good idea to keep any programs, scorecards, ticket stubs (even though those are becoming virtually non-existent) as well.
The way this helps you in the future is it gives you great talking points with your children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, neighbors, and friends as well.
And if you have the date and score of the game you watched, you can use the internet to help you search out details of the games you saw 50 years ago.
Trust me, I know this to be true. Major League Baseball is really fun to investigate. You can find the boxscore of any game that has been played since the 1900s. It’s incredible.
Okay, so maybe you’ve already attended 20, 50, or maybe even 100 or 200 games and you can’t remember them all.
If you look back at old schedules and do a little “google work” you’ll be amazed how many come up with. And you can always just start “today.”
It’s an activity that takes little or no time once you begin and it helps keep a few memories stored in the “old gray matter” as you age.
While I’ve attended more college games that I can count at this point in time (mostly as part of my job), I’ve pretty much got all but a handful of the MLB games I’ve attended recorded.
That may be a little tough for guys like my friend Bill Baldner, who spent the entire summers of his formative years watching his beloved Cleveland Indians. But with some research (the Baseball Reference website is a miracle worker when it comes to historical research), even Bill could come up with 80 percent of the games he attended if he had a mind too.
For a couple sports its been pretty easy for me. I’ve seen five “Major League” hockey games (either NHL or the old World Hockey Association before the merger) and five NBA games.
It is that NBA total that sparked me to write about the topic this week.
My wife and I were visiting our youngest son Bradley in Charlotte this past weekend and we went with him to the Charlotte Hornets-Los Angeles Clippers game on Sunday afternoon, before hopping in the car for the long ride back to Meridian.
This past Monday I woke up early and put in the date (Jan. 30, 2022) and score (Clippers 115, Hornets 90) of my latest game.
The cool thing is, I was able to look back at the previous four games and almost immediately remember important things about each of those games.
Don’t believe it? Well, let’s just see.
— My first NBA game was on Nov. 5, 1976. A group of my college buddies at the University of Southern Mississippi (my fellow sports fanatic Mike Brown being among them) and I drove down to the “Big Easy” to watch the New Orleans Jazz play the San Antonio Spurs in the Superdome.
We bought seats about 20 rows up at mid-court for $8 each. It was in bleachers across from the seating area where people sat in the built in seats fo the Superdome used for the Saints. There was a huge black curtain that hung behind us, blocking off the view of the rest of the dome.
The great “Pistol Pete” Maravich was playing for the Jazz. He scored 24 points in the game with 20 of those coming in one quarter. The Jazz won 127-119. George “The Ice Man” Gervin played for the Spurs.
— My second game was one I was actually covering. On Feb. 21, 1988 I travelled to Atlanta as part of my duties sports editor of The Meridian Star to cover a basketball game between the Hawks and the Seattle SuperSonics. Former Meridian High School and University of Alabama standout Derrick McKey was playing for the Sonics at the time.
My wife Barb and oldest son Ryan, who was 5 at the time, sat in the nosebleed section of the old Omni while I was perched on the floor on press row. I know, that doesn’t seem quite fair. I do know the Hawks won 129-113, McKey played well, and Spud Webb, all 5-foot-6 of him, slammed home a dunk for the Hawks. A research of the stats showed me that McKey, who was in his rookie at the time, went 6-for-6 from the floor, including a three-pointer, and 3-for-3 from the free throw line for a total fo 16 points.
– Game 3 came on March 3, 2007 when my youngest son Bradley and I travelled to Atlanta because my cousin had access to seats in a suite for a Hawks basketball game and a Thrashers hockey game on back-to-back nights. We saw the Knicks, led by Stephon Marbury, take a 104-100 win over the Hawks in overtime. Marbury scored 38 points and dished out nine assists in the game.
— Game 4 came on March 5, 2020 when Barb and I travelled to Charlotte to see Bradley and he took us to watch the Denver Nuggets and the Hornets. Denver won the game 114-112 on a last-second shot.
The important thing to remember about attending sporting events, especially when you go with someone else, is that they are more than just a game for that day. They are all about memories.
Start keeping up the with the games you attend today, you won’t regret it.
Austin Bishop, AKA The Old Sports Dude, has been covering high school, college, amateur, and professional sports since 1975. He is currently pastor of Great Commission Assembly of God in Philadelphia, Miss. He may be contacted by email at starsportsboss@yahoo.com.
