NaBloPoMo: Did you have a favorite sports player as a child?

I am participating in the NaBloPoMo challenge for May. It should be a fun one. It is titled: Play.

Today’s topic: Did you have a favorite sports player as a child?

Growing up I was a big football fan. I watched from my play pen. I loved Howard and Dandy Don. My mom even let me stay up late. I usually made it til at least halftime before retiring to my room.

I didn’t really have a favorite sports player. I loved watching them all. I especially liked watching the Steelers in the 1970s with Terry Bradshaw, Lynn Swann, Mean Joe Green and Franco Harris. The 49ers in the 80s with Joe Montana, Roger Craig and Jerry Rice. The Cowboys with Danny White then Troy Aikman, Randy White, Emmitt Smith, Ed Too Tall Jones in the 90s… Wait a sec. The 1990s? I was a full-grown adult by then.

But the team I really loved to watch was the Washington Redskins of the 1980s. We lived in the Washington-area suburbs back then and we headed to the old R.F.K. to catch a game a couple times a year. I loved The Hogs, John Riggins, Mark Mosely, Art Monk, Darrell Green and Joe Theismann. I will never forget that Monday Night game in 1985 when Lawrence Taylor took out Joe Theismann’s leg and his career. You could hear his leg snap on T.V.!

I still love football but it is a different game today. Too much talk about bounties, spy-gate, concussions, salary caps, player arrests and suicides.

It will be interesting to see where the game is in 20 years and I can not help but wonder if it will even be the game we recognize today.

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Robert Forto is mushin’ down a dream in the wilds of Alaska. He and is wife are raising two teenagers at Forto’s Fort.