Fleder - The sports bucket list: 101 sights every fan has to see before the clock runs out

THE SPORTS BUCKET LIST

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THE SPORTS BUCKET LIST

A s an anonymous sports fan once said, Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the places and moments that take our breath away. I dont actually know if the guy who said that was a sports fan (or a guy, for that matter), but I do know that, for those of us who love sports, the thrill of seeing an epic event or a storied arena is something close to the meaning of life. The voltage that runs through the crowd before the first pitch or the opening tip- or face-off of game sevenany game seven; the buzz of anticipation that fills the arena in the minutes before a heavyweight title fight; the insane, raucous energy unleashed in Cameron Indoor Arena as Duke takes the floor against Carolina; the palpable current that surges through an Olympic stadium as the sprinters coil into the starting blocks for the 100-meter finals: for a sports fan, this is what its all about.

WE ARE ALL THRILL SEEKERS and memory collectors (memory hoarders, even, if I am in any way typical; my brain is stuffed with all sorts of sports junkopinions, recollections, facts that will probably never come to light again and are of no further use, though I hold on to all of them and accumulate more every day). As we check items off our bucket lists, those checks are mementos, and the lists are the scrapbooks of all the places weve been and the games weve seen. But the list isnt just historical, its aspirationala to-do list, a note to ourselves about our agenda, an impatiently tapping toe: times a-wastin. What are we waiting for?

Before you knew it, LeBron the rookie phenom ...

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TAKE A QUICK GLANCE at the bucket list in this book and youll notice that the items fall into three distinct categories: those that focus on people (individuals or teams), on places, and on events. The aim here is to cover a broad spectrum of sports and the widest possible sweep of geography. It is the nature of any bucket list to be personal and subjectiveand therefore inherently debatable. What weve tried to do is preserve the passion and personal preference at the heart of such a list while creating one that, based on our decades of experience as sports journalists covering and attending events, will be useful to all kinds of fans. We couldve easily made a list that included nothing but rivalry games between Division 1 college football teams, for instance, each crackling with its history of triumphs and grudges, and charged anew each year with expectation and pressure. Instead, we chose to include a much wider range of sports and just a few exemplary rivalry games (huge football games that by any measure belong on every fans list).

BY THE SAME TOKEN, you might notice events or places that strike you as conspicuous by their absence here, but rest assured that nothing obvious was omitted without deliberation. The World Series, for instance, is not on this list, though I have attended Series games in various cities and collected memories there that I wouldnt trade for a club-level Super Bowl ticket (Reggie Jacksons three home runs on consecutive pitches in Game 6 against the Dodgers in 1977? Check. Kirk Gibsons pinch-hit walk-off fist-pump homer against the As in 88? Check.) But interleague play has neutralized some of the thrill that used to attach to the Series when it was the only chance to see National and American League teams meet (All-Star exhibitions notwithstanding). And its an event you really want to see your team play in; even if youre a serious baseball fan, would Game 2 of, say, a Twins-Padres Series, make your life feel more complete? Finally, no one can predict, till a couple days before it starts, when or where the World Series will be. If the stars align, you have to be ready, on the spur of the moment, to pounce. But then, you dont need our list to tell you that. Its a game of opportunity, and thats also why our list is not ranked. We add items to our list when the need becomes irresistible, and we check them off whenever we possibly can. Whats important is seeing the people and places and events, not trying to do the impossible by dictating the order in which they should be seen.

THE FLIP SIDE OF LEAVING out a few obvious items is including a few that might strike you at first as odd. I can almost hear the heckler now: Elephant polo? Whats that all about? To which I can only say: Who wouldnt want to see guys ride around on stampeding pachyderms, chasing a little ball and whacking at it with incredibly long mallets, trying to knock it into a goal? And though the intention here is to be mostly realistic, to include events and places you might reasonably hope to see, I believe that any decent wish list ought to include some wishes that arent odds-on to come true. Maybe you dont have to summit Mount Everest, but wouldnt you like to get close enough to try?

DURING THE TIME it took to assemble this bucket list, another kind of reminder kept popping up, the kind that marks, in sports terms, the passage of large chunks of time: the appearance of an old players obituary, or the retirement of a player I realized Id watched as a kid breaking in, as a rising star, as a prime-time player, and as a trusty veteran; a player Id watched for his entire career, from beginning to end. Sure, there will always be another season, but the long good-byes of Derek Jeter and Kobe Bryant, the last postseason bows of Peyton Manning and Tim Duncan, and the final bell for Muhammad Ali and Gordie Howe should remind every fan that wait till next year, while often consoling, is not always the best advice we can give ourselves. When a new stadium opens and they tear down the old one, remember that the urgency of a bucket list comes not just from our own ticking clock, but also from the buzzer that sounds on teams and leagues, on buildings and athletic careers.

...was the NBAs venerable King James.

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THE BEST WAY TO SEE all those athletes and places and games is in person, of course, with your own eyes. But in the meantime, we offer herein pictures and a few wordswhat we hope is a tempting glimpse and a goad to action. Take a look at these hallowed places and these inspired feats, then go see for yourself. Get out there and bear witness to that once-in-a-generation player or that era-defining team, duck into that legendary stadium or that arena where an athlete once did something so astonishing that were still talking about it with awe and reverence all these years later. Theres time left on the clock, but its always running.

Bad weather is good news for the Packers, who often thrive on the frozen tundra, as they did in a 2008 postseason drubbing of Seattle.

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WHY: IN THE DEAD OF WINTER, EVERY PACKERS HOME game recalls the Ice Bowl, the 1967 championship game against the Cowboys, when the temperature at kickoff was 15 degrees below zero, the wind chill -38 (it would reach -57); neither the refs whistles nor the marching bands instruments would function in the arctic cold (when referee Norm Schachter blew his whistle on the opening kickoff, it froze to his lips); and field conditions were abominable. Just the way the Packersand their fanslike it. (Sure enough, the Packers win at home at a rate that approaches 80 percent.)