I am, and always have been, a baseball-football fan first. I love the outdoors and fresh air, whether in the spring for a baseball game or fall for a football game.
I love the smells of hamburgers and hot dogs cooking on a grill and anticipation of enjoying stadium food for both sports.
I associate football with time my dad and I shared watching the New Orleans Saints or our beloved Tennessee Volunteers.
I only played two years of high school football, but it stuck with me like a special love of youth. No matter how strong the other loves you have in your life might be, that young love is forever a part of your being.
I love baseball for it, too, was a special love in my youth and there are memories shared with Dad. Baseball also was my bond with my Grandaddy Dickson. He only had room in his heart to love one sport: baseball was that game.
Baseball was the love of my early childhood that can never be replaced. In my mid-50s, I’m still drawn to the sound of bat on ball and the chatter of a lively team taking infield.
I also feel a special bond with basketball.
Basketball was a game my dad and I could play one-on-one. On the old asphalt courts of Gulf Breeze High School and Gulf Breeze Middle School, we tested each other in battles of mind and body.
Basketball also was my first organized sport when I was in the second grade. I played for Highland Heights Baptist Church in a church league in Memphis, Tenn., some 49 years ago.
I don’t remember much about my first basketball team. I do remember we won our first game, 66-6. I also remember getting into that game and making my first interception or steal of an opponent’s pass.
That’s when I learned what traveling was as I tucked the ball under my arm and ran toward the goal deteremined to make a basket.
I was never the heroic athlete, but I did have one or two moments. In youth league baseball, I broke up a no-hitter and made a game-winning catch.
My name never filled the headlines or storylines of the local paper, but I played for love of the game.
I’ve heard the roar of the crowd — definitely more for my teammates than for myself, but that’s OK because I’ve known the joy of being a part of a team and receiving a legacy from my dad and granddad that I’ll carry with me as long as I live.
Email News Bulletin Sports Editor Randy Dickson, follow him on Twitter or call 850-682-6524.
This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: SIDELINE OBSERVATIONS: A legacy of sports