Clubhouse Chatter: What's the first major sporting event you attended?
What our Sports staff has to say while waiting for the games to resume.
My memory is a bit fuzzy, but I believe my first sporting event I attended came in August 1978 when the Cubs hosted Pete Rose and the Cincinnati Reds. When Rose was announced, I was stunned that the home crowd was cheering. "Dad, what's going on?" I remember asking. He proceeded to tell me that fans were showing appreciation for Rose's 44-game hitting streak, which had ended just two weeks prior.
- John Dietz
I was at Super Bowl XX as a fan, in the upper reaches and far from the field in the Superdome.
- Barry Rozner
I'm not sure which came first. It was either a Notre Dame at Northwestern football game or an Atlanta Braves at Cubs baseball game. Either way, I think I was about 5 years old when it happened in the mid-1970s.
- Kevin Schmit
They probably happened both around the same time. I attended a Cubs game right around 1970 with Mr. Phil, the salad chef from Chicago Golf Club. I also attended a Bears game at Soldier Field, and the only things I remember is we sat way up there, maybe last row, and Bobby Douglass was the quarterback.
- Dave Oberhelman
Our family lived in the Philly suburbs in 1974. Dad and Mom took us three kids to Veterans Stadium to see the Phillies and Cardinals. I was 4. Mike Schmidt hit a 3-run home run. Cotton candy was involved. Lots of it.
- Jerry Fitzpatrick
I guess you can consider Opening Day in baseball a major sporting event. So it would be the 1969 MLB game at Wrigley Field when the Cubs pulled out a 7-6 win over Philadelphia on Willie Smith's dramatic 2-run homer in the 11th inning.
- John Leusch
For several years when I was in grade school and middle school, our next-door neighbor in my small northern Indiana town was George Steinbrenner, owner of the New York Yankees. He bought the house so he would have somewhere to stay when he visited his kids at the boarding school in town (Culver Academies) that they attended. We got to know George, and every year he would give us tickets to Chicago White Sox games when they played the Yankees. We got to sit right behind the Yankees' dugout. Mr. Steinbrenner had an interesting public reputation, but to me and my family, he was always very kind and generous.
- Patricia Babcock McGraw