Not the last of the firsts

The post I wrote the other day got me thinking about holding onto the memories before they disappear. And that caused me to remember the "firsts" posts that I've written.

I haven't done one of those in almost three years so it's about time I added to the series. If you've forgotten what those are about (join the club), it's where I go through random "firsts" in my life, usually stuff that happened in my first 20 years because that's when most of the firsts occur.

 

Here we go:

 

 

First All-Star Game that I watched

 

The first All-Star Game I watched was in 1977, which was played at Yankee Stadium, newly renovated at the time. The National League won that game 7-5. They scored four runs in the top of the first inning.

 

So that follows that the first All-Star Game home run I saw was by Joe Morgan since he hit one in the first at-bat of the game against Jim Palmer. In a sign of the preference for starters at the time, Palmer stayed in the game through the four runs he gave up and was still there in the third when he surrendered a home run to Steve Garvey. That's when he was taken out.

 

 

First stickers I kept (i.e. did not stick)

I don't remember having stickers as a kid, that's not saying I didn't, it just seemed like they got a lot more prevalent during the 1980s. I associated stickers with the ones your teacher put on your paper if she liked it -- but that's who stickers were for ... teachers.

But then Topps issued a sticker set in 1981, and I was much too old for stickers by that time (and I wasn't a teacher). But I had to collect them. I don't know what I did with those '81 stickers, I know I didn't stick them. Now all I have left are the Dodgers from that set.

First poster on my wall

This is the Ron Cey poster on my card room wall now, but it's not the Cey poster I had on the wall as a kid. I just went searching for that particular poster but I couldn't find it. It was a pretty straightforward picture, it just showed Cey in midswing at the plate. 

The poster hung on the wall across from my bed, almost over the desk that my brother and I shared. He wasn't a Dodger fan, but these are the things you have to do when you share a room.

First pin-up poster on my wall

The first girlie poster on my wall was this one of Janet Jones (soon to be Janet Gretzky) from the "American Anthem" movie. I had moved out of the house and was going to college at the time. This poster hung over my CD player. You could not find a more 1980s space.

First football card I ever saw

I've mentioned some of these firsts several times in the past. The first football card I saw was this 1975 Topps Alan Page card, which I now own. Unlike the 1975 baseball set, which is peak childhood for me and I still find new ways to collect it, the '75 football set means little to me except for this card.

First thing I bought with my first allowance money

I don't actually remember what that was but given the time I was first receiving allowance money I was all about Matchbox cars. It couldn't possibly have been used to purchase anything else. This was before I had discovered baseball cards.

First hobby

Hoarding Matchbox cars was actually my first hobby, but I didn't think like that at the time. The first time I thought "this is a hobby and I do hobby things" was when I was given a stamp book by my grandmother or grandfather and started sticking stamps in them. This lasted maybe a year or two before a slightly less nerdy hobby like baseball cards took over.

First sports article I wrote for a newspaper

This is it. I covered a men's basketball game for the Buffalo State Record, which was the twice-a-week newspaper at my college. This was probably around February 1987. I obviously didn't know what I was doing, I was still taking journalism courses at the time. But it reads fairly well and almost everything is in proper order.

First -- well, second -- article I wrote as a professional writer

The first article I wrote as a paid sportwriter was on a professional hydroplane racing weekend in June of 1988. I couldn't find that article, I may have put it in a separate spot as the copies I made of my early articles are kind of falling apart.

Above is the second article I wrote, on a summer high school football All-Star game. I still remember being in the press box, but have no memory of interviewing anyone.

 

 

 First pro football player I interviewed

The first NFL game I covered was the Green Bay Packers at the Buffalo Bills on Halloween 1988. The Bills won. The article I wrote contained quotes from Shane Conlan, Ray Bentley, Darryl Talley and Mark Kelso. I think Conlan was the first guy I talked to. Other guys I talked to around that time include Kent Hull, Fred Smerlas, Art Still and Leonard Smith.

First pro hockey player I interviewed

It was either Doug Bodger or Clint Malarchuk. I didn't go to more than two Sabres games when I worked at the Niagara Gazette. I was actually happy about that because NHL games are played in the winter and the Buffalo downtown arena is a pretty long way from Niagara Falls.

The Sabres were playing an exhibition game against a Soviet Union team in the first game I covered. The story that I still have features quotes from both Bodger and Malarachuk. Don't know who came first, just that the locker room staaank.

 

 First pro basketball player I interviewed

 

The first-and-only NBA player I have interviewed remains David Robinson. I wrote a "Brush With Greatness" post on this interview, but the short version is I interviewed Robinson in a Hills Department Store in the toy section. This would have been in 1990. He was very pleasant.

So those are a few more firsts. I think I'll be able to come up with more firsts for future posts so this isn't the last one. I need to keep that brain thinking before these posts really start paying off for senile night owl.