May 1, 1991: My Very First Sports Memory
I don’t think I even had pink eye. In fact, I am certain of
it. My pre-K teacher thought so though. It made for the first and only time I
can ever remember being sent home early from school because I was sick—or not
sick as the case may be.
I remember my mother coming to pick me up. That’s how I
ended up in front of the television in my room watching Rickey Henderson
stealing his 939th career base, breaking the Major League Baseball
record previously held by Lou Brock.
My mother is a diehard Yankees fan. She used to keep a small
television in her office at work. Whenever the Yankees played an afternoon game
that tv was most likely tuned into the game, often muted for phone calls and
meetings, but probably sometimes not.
So surely, she had been watching the Yankees play the
Oakland Athletics that afternoon before she received a call from my pre-K
teacher about my phantom pink eye. She might have known that Rickey Henderson
stood poised to break the stolen base record, but the historic game was on our
tv not because of the future Hall of Fame Oakland outfielder about to break the
MLB stolen base record, but for the team he has about to break it against.
So there I sat in my room sent home early from school with
non-pink- pink eye as Rickey Henderson wearing his dark sunglasses broke from
second base, slid headfirst into third ahead of the tag of Yankees third
baseman Randy Velarde, and popped up with the base raised above his head in
triumph.
As unlikely as it was that I was sent home early that day,
that the As happened to be playing the Yankees, that Henderson swiped his 939th
career stolen base at the moment that he did, it is perhaps equally unexpected
that this should have remained with me as my very first memory as a sports fan.
But so it has. Such is the beauty of sports I suppose.
What is your very first sports memory? Please feel free to share in the comments
