When I was a kid, professional sports were everything.
I loved my Mets, my Knicks, and my Jets, and in the magic years of 1969 and 1970, they all won championships.
I came away from that awesome time with a sense that anything was possible and that heroes were people who wore numbers on their backs.
When I went to games, I kept score, and I kept my stubs and my scorecards.
I have them all to this day.
I was such a nerd; I even cut the standings out of the newspaper every day and pasted them into a notebook.
My friends were all the same way.
Everybody knew who the third baseman for the Chicago White Sox was.
You weren’t cool if you couldn’t name every position player in the major leagues.
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Today, things are different.
My kids would much rather watch YouTube than a game.
We don’t even have cable or Dish or whatever, because we couldn’t control how much time our kids were watching, or what they were watching.
And on the rare occasion when I got control of the remote and could actually watch a game, it was still no good.
The commercials had become full of sex and violence, which was everything I was trying to keep my kids from seeing.
Sigh.
My kids could not tell you if their lives depended on it how many games the Mets, or the Red Sox, or any other team, are ahead or behind in the standings.
They do not pore obsessively over the batting averages, which I studied religiously every Sunday in the sports section of the New York Times.
My kids don’t plan imaginary fantasy trips to distant cities, to watch their favorite team play.
In fact, fantasy has a different meaning today.
My kids can tell you everything about the top YouTubers—how many views they have, who sponsors them, even how much they make.
Different world.
To me, back then, athletes really were heroes.
It was a wonderfully naïve time.
What prompts these musings was a chance visit to ESPN.com this afternoon.
I couldn’t find a single story related to sports.
Oh, the participants were all athletes or coaches.
But there wasn’t a word about games.
There was a lot about how much they were earning.
There was a lot about their criminal activity off the field, and whether a certain quarterback should cut his Afro in order to get a job.
But nothing about a double steal, a pick and roll, or a slap shot.
I don’t know if my kids are richer or poorer for the replacement of pro sports with all the junk they watch on YouTube.
I guess they’re happy.
At some point, they will outgrow their interests in the online stuff, and move on to adult pursuits.
They like going to games, but they will never know what it’s like to live and die, day after day, based on whether your team won or lost and where they are in the standings.
I’d rather be younger than I am, but I’m awfully glad I grew up when I did.
There were heroes back then, and they wore numbers on their backs.
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