jimsjournal
| The Sports Pages -- 10/10/03 |
jimsjournal | ||
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Friday Five 1. Do you watch sports? If so, which ones? Do you mean on television? Very rarely. My wife is a tennis fan so during Wimbledon or the U.S. Open she is likely to be watching and I might watch a few minutes with her. Some years my kids have been interesting in watching the Superbowl and I might watch part of that with them. Jeremy likes to watch automobile racing, especially World Rally events -- although usually he has a couple of friends watch with him and will also either be playing computer games or carrying on multiple IM chat sessions at the same time -- and once in a while on a weekend I will watch some of the rally events with him. I would enjoy watching Olympic track and field events but it seems that no matter which network is carrying them, the coverage is terrible, so annoyingly bad that I've essentially stopped watching them. Do you mean in person? Well, I used to watch lots of sports when my kids were in them... track and cross-country and swimming when Adam was in high school and the track and cross-country with Jill -- and Jill and Jeremy both played soccer at local rec league levels both back in New York State and here in Rhode Island -- and Jill was in a soccer travel league for a couple years and also played indoor soccer and also softball for a few years. So yeah, I've watched a lot of sports. Oh, you mean besides watching my kids? Well, Nancy played soccer in a coed IBM (Endicott, NY) employee league. In recent years? Not since the last time I watched Jill competing in the high jump in indoor track five or six years ago. I guess the time we didn't get to watch Jeremy compete in a wrestling tournament doesn't count. 2. What/who are your favorite sports teams and/or favorite athletes? I used to be a Binghamton Mets (AA) fan... other than that, I don't really care.. 3. Are there any sports you hate? Not really, although it's pretty obvious that I'm not exactly a big sports fan in the traditional sense of someone who cares intensely about the successes and failures of a collection of millionaire jocks and is happy wasting hours every week in front of a television watching such stuff.. 4. Have you ever been to a sports event? Besides watching my kids play and watching minor league baseball and ice hockey, I've gone to various high school and college games (football, basketball, etc.). Oh, you mean professional sports? Yes, indeed, used to go to Binghamton Mets games several times a season. I loved being in the stands on a pleasant summer evening watching a ball game. Since we moved to Rhode Island I keep saying I want to see the PawSox play (the Pawtucket Red Sox, AAA -- but I never seem to get there... Pawtucket is on the other side of Providence, right on the Massachusetts border and back in Binghamton I could have walked to a Mets game in less time that it would take me to drive to see the PawSox. I also have seen the various incarnations of professional ice hockey teams in Binghamton. [NAHL Broome Dusters, then AHL Binghamton Whalers and then AHL Binghamton Rangers] When I was a kid I saw several Yankees vs Red Sox games. Hmm, anything else? Oh, I also went to a Celtics' game in Boston about fifteen years ago. And Adam and I watched the New York Liberty (WNBA) play a few months ago. 5. Do/did you play any sports (in school or other)? How long did you play? I enjoy running and have run in various events, mostly 5k runs, although I have competed in everything from 400 meter to half-marathon (13 miles). I started running 21 years ago -- in 1982, shortly after Jill was born. Adam was running cross-country and talked me into entering a one mile fun run -- and I enjoyed that so much I decided to try a 5k -- and once I did that I was hooked. (The funny thing is, I used to love to run when I was a kid -- I could out run anyone in the neighborhood -- but never thought about scholastic sports until my brother went out for cross-country. I was amazed. It literally had never occurred to me that real people could go out for sports; had always just thought of that as something for the jock types who were buddies with the phys ed instructors, whereas I was a nearsighted non-jock type, the kind of kid coaches ignored unless they were pissed off and wanted to yell at somebody. Of course by the time Charlie set that example of going out for a sport, he was a freshman and I was a chain-smoking senior.) [So... is it my imagination, or was there a similar set of questions at some point, perhaps last year?] | |
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