What's Your Favorite Sport

[Danneskjold]

Mine is baseball for sure. Baseball is pretty much my obsession. It's a complex game that uses a lot of different skills (running, throwing, eye hand coordination), and it takes a long time to learn. Plus, once you get to the higher levels, it's a game for complete hardasses, sliding into each other, collisions at the plate. It's great. America's past time'll do just fine for me.

[BAMF]

Used to love sports a lot when I was little. Played football everyday at recess and was a total B.A.

Now I don't play so much, but still enjoy watching from time to time.

I LOVE watching football (although I guess not enough to do it on a regular basis) and I still would like to throw the ball around if I had someone willing. I don't care to watch basketball very much, but like to shoot hoops. I also love extreme sports like snowboarding, skateboarding, BMX biking, etc. Looks so fun.

[Chris Grieb]

I'll start with sport I like least golf. Boring with capital B. I enjoy track & field, swimming and gymnastics. Great bodies on display with little clothes on.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

They told me that sports was a great way to keep your weight down, so I started playing chess a lot at one time in my life.

It didn't work...

Michael

[Chris Grieb]

Michael; I think they meant games that use the whole body. I think it is worth mentioning that before Bobby Fischer became a nut case he always looked pretty fit.

[Ross Barlow]

My lifetime favorite sport is climbing. This includes all the aspects of mountaineering, including scary north-face ascents, long difficult technical mountain climbs, hiking or backpacking to summits for the views, pure rock-climbing or pure ice-climbing.

Even at my age, I climb what I can when I can. It is the highest of highs. I love to carry my gear to a high and wild place to bivouac for the night under the Moon and stars. It is wonderful to wake up with the world at your feet.

-Ross Barlow.

[James Heaps-Nelson]

My favorite sport is tennis. I played on my high school tennis team and one of my favorite things is to go hit tennis balls with my brother. When I was young I used to like to play in the heat of the day in summer because you had the courts to yourselves and you could bring a gallon jug of ice water and empty the whole thing.

Jim

[blackhorse]

Beach volleyball.

[Danneskjold]

Thats one of the sports I most like watching.

[Judith]

Dressage. It's much like dancing, in that it integrates the mind, body, and spirit. At its best, it's one of the most ecstatic experiences possible.

I have a picture in my office of a dressage rider, along with a quote from the Apocryphal Acts of St. John as translated by Gustav Holst that says, "Those who dance not, know not what we are knowing."

Judith

[James Heaps-Nelson]

Michael,

I always lose weight at a chess tournament, but then my endgame was always better than my middle game or opening. Trying to eke out a pawn at the end, you always forget to eat :-).

Jim

[John Dailey]

~ Assuming we're talking ESPN 'athletic' type (which rules out board games like Monopoly or Chess), then, still, a distinction has to be clarified: 'watching' or 'doing'?

~ Doing-wise, I'm into the 1-on-1 or loner types. Skiing (have yet to try snowboarding) and hand-ball (the room, not the single back-wall) are it...so far. I'd add others I wish to try (hang-gliding, for one), but, expense and location hinders such. --- I really like billiards (and it's variations: snooker, bumper, oval-table), but, I'm not clear on calling it a 'sport'; athletic it's not.) Martial-Arts also I like doing, but, not in terms of 'sport' with the 'sport's move-limitations built-in, so...unclear there also.

~ Watching-wise, gymnastics is it. I envy those bar-swingers and horse-riders. Like tap-dancing, I could watch that all day; yes, even males.

~ Then there's nude-female volley-ball (pool or sand, no matter; plus, I'd settle for mere topless), but, haven't caught that on ESPN yet; maybe it'll be on MTV (pixelated, of course.)

LLAP

J:D

[Judith]

~ Assuming we're talking ESPN 'athletic' type (which rules out board games like Monopoly or Chess), then, still, a distinction has to be clarified: 'watching' or 'doing'?

Ah. A worthwhile distinction. I hate watching any kind of sport, for the most part. I'll watch it if it's something I do myself, for a short period of time, but for the most part, watching any kind of sport is about as interesting as watching paint dry as far as I'm concerned. If I'm not doing it, I'm not interested.

Judith

[Kat]

sex. Not as a spectator sport though.

:devil:

[Ross Barlow]

Jim mentions playing tennis in the heat of the day, accompanied by a big jug of ice water, having the courts to himself. This brings back fond memories of my younger days.

Here in Thailand they have a sport they play in any weather, including the hottest. It is a cross between volleyball, hacky-sack and soccer. Called Takraw (or Sepak Takraw), 3-man teams kick a woven rattan ball, which is a bit bigger than a softball, over a volleyball-like net. No hands are used, but you can use head, feet, etc. I have seen teams out playing in the Hot Season (April), when heat and humidity are murderous, in the noon-day sun at temperature well over 100 degrees F.

I only watch this one!

-Ross Barlow.

[BAMF]

I'll start with sport I like least golf. Boring with capital B. I enjoy track & field, swimming and gymnastics. Great bodies on display with little clothes on.

I very much like golf, however, I don't have the patience to play it well (and it tears the skin off my hand!). Same as with tennis, I always want to hit the ball as hard as I can. If there's a sport where you beat the crap out of somebody with a paddle/bat, then that's the one for me.

sex. Not as a spectator sport though.

:devil:

I prefer being a spectator (sextator? *lame*). :turned:

Edited February 13, 2007 by Kori

[Brant Gaede]

Shooting defenseless little animals! :devil:

Seriously, I only watch top-rank college basketball, a little NBA basketball--although too often the players seem not to care all that much--and the Superbowl. I lost interest in baseball many years ago--too slow, the designated hitter, player strike, the Mets traded Lenny Dykstra to Philadelphia, the season is too long. I watched the Maris(61) and Mantle(54) home run competition in 1961 on black and white TV and Ted Williams live in Boston in the 50s.

I like the teamwork in college basketball and how the players and teams develop and persevere.

Shooting defenseless little animals! :devil: :devil: :devil:

--Brant

Edited February 13, 2007 by Brant Gaede

[John Dailey]

Kori:

~ For a while, 'paddle-ball' was de riguer in mid-mgmt office-politics in the '80's-'90's. Same 6-surface enclosed white-room with the little entrance door as my fave 'hand-ball' court, but, you used decorative gloves with a short-handled (like ping-pong, but, larger 'pad') paddle instead of functionally-padded gloves. When I left the service I found that the rooms were available in varied 'fitness' centers, but 'paddle-ball' was the only thing played. Haven't checked since, but, this may be what you're looking for.

~ Myself, I prefer to be cathartically 'hands-on' with that little bouncing sucker (blue for handball; black for paddleball.)

LLAP

J:D

[Ross Barlow]

Jeff, thanks for starting this thread. It is fascinating to hear about what sports different people here like. Also, it has got me to thinking about my attitudes toward various sports over my lifetime, and it is dredging up some fine memories from many decades. I had forgotten how many rich experiences I had and how much fun they were.

I wrote above about my love of climbing, but other sports took the center stage for me at various earlier times. My father forced me to play Little League baseball in about 5th grade, and it turned me off because it was not my choice. But it is an elegant game, though, with grace and perfection. In junior high school, I did the pole vault, gymnastics, and a bit of football.

But it was Boxing that really grabbed me at 15. I wanted to be a professional boxer, I loved it so much. My father was the best defensive boxer I ever saw, and he taught me well. Moreover, he gave me books on the history of boxing with which I studied classic fights and developed strategy from the experiences of the great fighters. It was with my 3rd set of boxing gloves that I really let the leather fly. I never tried to hit that hard and hurt people, but I dwelt on the science of the sport. Most of my friends could not hit me, as I had a solid defense worked out.

But my cousin knocked me on my ass, and I could not figure out how he did it. After he had left, my father calmly told me that it was because my cousin was left-handed and had a left Sunday-punch instead of the more common right. I did not see it coming, as his style was unlike anything I’d seen.

My cousin was an insufferable braggart who loved to put people down and, loudly eager to beat me up again, he couldn’t wait to re-match. But I had done my homework. I watched for his haymaker to wind up, and every time he threw it I simply blocked it and tagged him in the face. Then, as I gained confidence and learned his style, I would beat him to the punch with a hard right-cross each time. Totally bewildered and humiliated, he soon gave up on it. I usually try not to even inwardly gloat or brag, but it still gives me great pleasure 40 years later when I meet him at family reunions and he tells me what a great boxer I am and how I trounced him. I remain silent and do not tell him my secret: I simply thought it out according to the sweet principles of the sport. If he would only have *read* and *thought*, he would have killed me with his superior fitness at the time.

Later I boxed a little in the Marines, but left the sport soon after. When they stripped Muhammad Ali of his title for politically correct reasons, I never really followed it again.

I will write more later about my life with sports, if it doesn’t bore you too much. You have allowed some great memories to come to mind, Jeff, and it is fun to remember them.

-Ross Barlow.

[Ross Barlow]

In earlier days, I loved ice skating. It was my favorite winter sport while in high school. I remember getting a new pair of figure skates for Xmas, and I took them down to the wooded swamp lands on a New Years Day that was minus 10*F. I skated the streams that wound through the swamp and went up over two levels of beaver dam ponds, using the teeth on the skates to front-point up the frozen wooden dam-faces. You could not venture into the swamp that far at other times of the year, but, when frozen, I could reach this sanctuary. It was a sort of expeditionary solo backcountry skating.

Many years later, I would go to a nearby city rink at off-peak times when few people were there. One very old gray-haired lady was always there, dressed in clothing at least three decades behind the times but skating with incredible grace and precision. She moved slowly but deliberately, and she obviously had been a dynamite figure skater in years past. I tried not to let her see, but I would watch her moves closely and then try to imitate them when she wasn’t looking. I learned so much from watching her, especially a new attitude of really *enjoying* the sport as she did. I stopped trying to burn up the ice, hockey style, and learned to glide, to float, and to soar.

Here in infernally hot and humid greater Bangkok, the rumor is that there is an ice skating rink in town with skate rentals. I just might look it up. But, as rusty as I am, I probably should bring a helmet.

-Ross Barlow.

[Jonathan]

Basketball.

It's almost constant action. It can be both very structured and very free-style, often at the same time. Both offensively and defensively there are opportunities for dramatic individual achievement as well as for becoming a part of a sum which is greater than the parts. Despite the common view that it's not a contact sport, there's actually a lot of very physical interaction. It requires great strength, stamina, focus and coordination, and it's one of few sports in which incredible physical grace is often displayed despite the fact that the beauty of the moves is not the primary purpose (as in, say, figure skating).

J

[Charles R. Anderson]

The two sports I have most enjoyed playing are football (tackle, of course, flag is worthless) and handball. I loved the hitting in football. Handball was the best as whole-body exercise and involves a great deal of player strategy. Unlike racket games, it makes you use both hands (arms and shoulders) as well. Since there are few handball players, racquetball is a tolerable substitute and still good exercise and full of strategy.

Basketball is a good game, including one-on-one. Biking, hiking, canoeing, and sailing are all fun.

If one does consider sex a sport, then I would make that my favorite. But, it is hard to think of sex as merely a sport. No sport ever seemed to be a necessity of life.

Football and the Olympics are about the only sports I ever watch. Again, excepting sex! :devil:

[Danneskjold]

Football is up there for me, I'm a defensive lineman so I'm really right in the middle of the action. The great thing about football for me is that due to my leg strength that I acquired from baseball (catching) I can move faster than the offensive linemen (even though they are not some dumb brutes) off the ball, so I beat them in spite of my small (relative to average defensive linemen) size (I'm 5'10-11 195 lbs.). One of the best parts of football for me is probably when the offensive linemen are noticeably concerned about me in spite of my small stature. This manifests itself in several ways, amongst which are fumbled snaps (I line up over the center) and false starts. Hitting guys bigger than me and winning the battle is always fun too. I ran into a 6'2 220 lb. fullback behind the line of scrimmage in the semi-final game and drove him backwards on my tackle.

Leisure sports for me include racketball, handball, basketball (I suck at shooting, great at defense and rebounding), and rock climbing. Then of course there's training for football and baseball which includes running, weight lifting, and practice.

Sex isn't a sport, sports have to be competitive.

[BAMF]

Sex isn't a sport, sports have to be competitive.

Who can cum first (or last)?

[Danneskjold]

Not usually the purpose is it?