Last week, Star sports staffers answered burning sports questions — from the best place to see a game to the one sporting event they can’t live without.
Star readers chimed in too, emailing their answers to sports@tucson.com. Here are excerpts of their responses. (Some have been edited for brevity, clarity and to match Star style).
Today’s question: What’s your earliest sports memory?
My dad taking me to Cleveland Stadium to watch the Indians play the Yankees in 1966. I was 8 years old. The old stadium was a cavernous mausoleum. Run-down, dirty, sitting on Lake Erie — which at the time was the most polluted body of water in the country. But I was mesmerized. New York was stacked, Mantle, Maris, Roy White, Bobby Richardson, Bobby Murcer, Mel Stottlemyre, Whitey Ford, Elston Howard, Joe Pepitone, Clete Boyer. Even with that lineup, they finished 10th in the AL.
Tim White
Lew Alcindor, right, and UCLA had their 47-game winning streak snapped in 1968 to Elvin Hayes, center, and Houston.
Jan. 20, 1968: Houston Cougars vs UCLA Bruins in college basketball. “The Game of the Century” didn’t disappoint! Houston with Elvin Hayes won against Lew Alcindor’s Bruins and snapped their 47-game winning streak. Final score 71-69. Great game with many great players.
Aaron Thomas
It was 1962, the L.A. Dodgers were playing their first season in Dodger Stadium. Maury Wills would set the modern day baseball record with 104 stolen bases for the season.
My stepdad and I went to a day game with seats up the left-field line. Maury Wills fouled off a pitch up our way and I caught it in my trusted first baseman’s glove. What a thrill!
Jerry Anderson
Easy, as a 7-year-old being at Yankee Stadium with my dad the night watching Roger Maris hit his 60th home run vs. the Baltimore Orioles and my dad telling me that “it will be a while before you see somebody do this again.”
Roger is still the season home run king. The stress the New York media put him under was horrible and basically bordered on mental abuse; plus, when he would go to out of town stadiums the abuse from the fans — resentment towards Roger.
Back then, the heir apparent to any Babe Ruth record was Mickey (Mantle), but unfortunately Mickey’s knee got real bad and he missed a good portion of the games late in the season.
Bill Leith
Going to elementary school here in Tucson in the ’70s, I remember there being small vending machines, like bubble gum dispensers, that would sell NFL team logo pencils. I think they were a dime each, and you’d keep buying them until you got the one you needed to help complete the set.
At that time, the Steelers pencils were like gold. You could trade one for a bunch of other ones. Honestly, I don’t remember watching actual NFL games back then, just collecting the pencils.
My earliest U of A sports memories were watching the football games on tape delay on KZAZ Channel 11 starting at 10:30 at night. David Adams, Al Jenkins, and Vance Johnson were among my earliest Wildcat heroes when I was a teen.
On the hardwood, I was lucky enough to get to go to some games during Lute (Olson’s) first season, but honestly don’t remember the players or games themselves.
I do remember my mom and I once had lunch at the legendary Mexican restaurant in the old Student Union and a young Steve Kerr was at the next table over, getting absolutely no attention from anyone. How times have changed.
Doug Tepper
I’ll have to go along with Greg Hansen. Living in the New York area, I grew up a Yankees fan. I had just walked home from first grade to see that fateful home run in the 1960 World Series. I couldn’t understand them losing. They always won.
Carl Hansen
In spring 1959, my father was transferred from Palm Beach, Florida, to Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma City. I was 7 years old and was in second grade in Midwest City, Oklahoma, for the 1959-60 school year. My parents both liked football and were able to obtain tickets for us to attend that fall’s game between OSU and Denver in Stillwater.
While I don’t remember much about the game, I do remember that prior to the game, we went somewhere for hot dogs. To this day, I’ve always wondered if we went to the business which eventually became Eskimo Joe’s.
Philip Miller
Gene (Big Daddy) Lipscomb helped the Baltimore Colts beat the New York Giants 23-17 in the 1958 NFL Championship.
Only a sadistic sports editor would choose to publish the most infamous photo of Bill Mazeroski’s walk-off home run to beat my beloved New York Yankees in the seventh game of the 1960 World Series, above the line on Page 1, no less. You have managed to trigger PTSD symptoms not only in me, but probably thousands of other 70-somethings who view that event with horror. A class-action lawsuit against the Star for negligent infliction of emotional distress? Be afraid, be very afraid.
But seriously, the 1958 NFL Championship game at Yankee Stadium between the Baltimore Colts and New York Giants is and may always be the most memorable game I’ve ever watched. I’m know I’m not alone in thinking this is the greatest football game ever played. My Colts, with Johnny Unitas, Lenny Moore, Raymond Berry, Gino Marchetti, Alan Ameche, Art Donavan and 6-foot-6-inch, 300-pound “Big Daddy” Lipscomb, came back to defeat the equally star-studded Giants in sudden death overtime, 23-17.
Johnny U. engineered the iconic 80-yard drive culminating in a one-yard dive into the end zone by Alan Ameche. “Big Daddy” Lipscomb, a bigger than life defensive lineman, who, along with Johhny U. were my favorite players, once was asked to describe his defensive line technique. He said, “I just wrap my arms around the whole backfield and peel ’em one by one until I get to the ball carrier. Him, I keep.”
Charles S. Sabalos
My earliest sports memory was a baseball game at Wrigley Field. Dodgers vs. Cubs in 1963, when Ernie Banks hit three home runs. Being only 6 at the time, every time Ernie hit a home run, everybody stood up to cheer and I couldn’t see a thing. Happened all three times and I didn’t see any of them, but to this day, I still remember being at Wrigley Field when Banks hit three home runs.
Howard Pastko
The Braves moved to Milwaukee in 1953 when I was 6. From then on their games replaced the Cubs games on our household radio. In 1955, the Saturday before the All-Star game that would be in Milwaukee my dad, mom, and uncle took me to my first MLB game. My uncle was a resident at a local hospital and had delivered a Braves players wife’s baby and was rewarded with tickets.
Walking into County Stadium was like walking into a cathedral. The place was enormous. The grass was so green. The smell of the concession stands remains embedded in me to this day. The first fly ball that was hit I thought was a home run was only a pop up to short right. Seeing my heroes that I’d only heard about on the radio (Matthews, Bruton, Logan. Adcock, Pafko Spahn, and a young player by the name of Aaron who btw wore No. 5 and played second base that day) will always be with me.
That was when I first made a life goal to see a game in every MLB park. I have six left. My dad wanted see Ted Kluszewski from the Reds. I think he went to the restroom when Klu got his only hit.
Dave van Lieshout
I was 7 in 1960 and we had just got a television that summer. The 1960 NFL football season was my first to experience and I remember watching the NFL championship game between the Eagles and Packers. Later in 1962, we moved to eastern Kansas and were in the Kansas City television area and I started my life-long fanship with the Kansas City Chiefs. I waited 50 years between Super Bowl IV and Super Bowl 54 through many playoff failures for Patrick Mahomes to pull out the victory in dramatic fashion!
Mark Witten
