Any of you who have known me for any length of time prior to last fall know that I have never been an athlete. Nor have I ever been particularly interested in sports. The possible exception being the season that I spent as a manager for girls basketball in middle school for what was arguably the best team in the tri-state region. I also enjoyed attending the occasional high school basketball game while I was still in high school. Then I spent a brief period of time trying really hard to enjoy baseball when I first fell in love with Margo (she was a Seattle Mariners fan before we ever moved to Seattle).
Whether you knew this about me or not, you may have noticed that I have a couple of sports-related goals on my list of goals. One of my goals is to attend a Seattle Storm game at least once a season, and the other is to attend a Seattle Seahawks game.
Fortunately, I remembered that I needed to attend a Storm game this year about a week and a half before the end of the regular season. Margo and I went to a game on 9/9/11, where the Storm played the Phoenix Mercury in the last game of the regular season. I had been to a game once before, back when I was in grad school, but Margo had never been to a game. I knew what a treat we were in for, but Margo had no idea. The game was really, really awesome. The Storm are the defending WNBA champions and the Phoenix Mercury is a really excellent team as well. And Storm fans are extremely enthusiastic and quite loud. One of the game-unrelated sources of entertainment for me was watching the little baby dykes cruising each other in the cheap seats. It reminded me of the purely social-sexual function of attending high school football games as an adolescent.
One of the funny things about the Storm game is that Margo didn't really want to go in the first place. Before the game started, she turned to me and said something to the effect of, "I don't really even like basketball." She had a wonderful time in spite of herself (as did I). In fact, she had such a good time that we are discussing the possibility of buying season tickets for next year (or going in on them with another couple we are friends with). Not to mention the fact that she has asked me to buy her a Katie Smith jersey approximately 78 times since we went to the game.
I am also, as much as I am loathe to admit it, a recent football fan. I blame my younger brother (Hi Matt!). He invited Margo and I to join his Fantasy Football league last year, which we did. I did quite well in the beginning, in spite of having a strange draft strategy. I figured that I didn't know enough about football to try to have a football-related strategy, so I drafted only players from places I had been that didn't have objectionable criminal records. I wound up with a pretty solid team and watched a lot of football in the process. I was actually sad when the football season ended.
I'm in the same league again this year, and used a similar draft strategy. It's the second week of the season, and so far so good. Now, I'm trying to actually learn more about the game. I've been reading more game analysis and Margo just bought me a book about football. And, believe it or not, I just asked for Madden for the Wii for my birthday. So it follows that I should attend at least one NFL game, and since we live in Seattle, it will be a Seahawks game. In spite of the fact that they were brutally slaughtered by the Steelers today. Anyway, we have tickets for 10/30/11, and I'm looking forward to going.
