i remember 'flipping', an early foray into gambling
2 people would agree to each bet a card of similar value , put them in a protective sleeve and put them on the floor
then you'd each stand a certain distance away and flip a generic/scrap card at it
person who got closest to hitting/being on top of the card won

That was a pretty great World Series. A pretty great postseason all around that year. I remember Game 6 was on a Saturday night. I was just out of school. I didn't have a "grown up" job yet. That was a bad time to come out of college. I was still working as a cook in the restaurant where I worked as a kid. The game must have run pretty late because I think the restaurant was open at least until ten on Saturdays and I was home to catch the last few innings.

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Freedom is our Strength.

As a 10 year old kid I was definitely pulling for the Mets with pre drugged out Gooden and Strawberry on the team.

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Flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami

i think if there's something along the lines of a theme to pick up on here it's that most people peaked around their 20s when they had adult/ish perspective to add to their childhood consummate obsession, and of course the great combine of society hadn't pimpslapped em upside the head like "ITS TIME TO GROW UP CUZ YOU AINT GROWING UP TO BE AN ASTRONAUT, SON" and that balance of young and old seems to be when people have the best mix of childhood love and adult perspective before the former burns out and you just stick to your most important stuff.

so for me i'd have to say that it was prolly around 2001-2010..... that's when i started playing fantasy baseball and fantasy football, and 2001 was when fantasy baseball dragged me into baseball and i fell in love with vlad/expos and made it a thing to rep all their games in chciago, and then that fall i started watching the bears every week and by the playoff game i realized (over a roughly mixed 151, cuz i dont think theres such a thing as a non-roughly-mixed 151) that i was a bears fan..... and obviously adding fantasy football that season gave me reason to invest in the sport and whatnot, cuz in the 90s i was just casual and while i did watch a good amount of the bulls that was because they were the bulls and that's just what you did.

now in the 2010s i usually have fantasy burnout in most of the leagues i'm not winning/close-to-winning, boers and bernstein isn't as good as it was 10-15yrs ago so i dont have that "male soap opera" (wrestling anyone?) thing as !!! as it used to be (tho UK sports talk with the newness factor of soccer fills some of that) and while that newness of soccer seems to get the most purely emotive reaction out of me (again, newness) i think i'll be a cold withered husk of a guy worried about the 2-3 fantasy teams he cares about and having appointment bears/arsenal games, and of course i'll watch the bulls after the new year.... but i doubt it'll be with nearly as much of a fervor as i used to have back around 01-09 or thereabouts, aka my 20s..... i think thats when everyone peaks cuz once you round that corner into your 30s thats when real life starts tugging on your cape so hard it's like "where'd my cape go?"

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I agree with Sini's comments down in the thread. Life issues kind of take over and you can't focus on sports as much as you did in your youth. That has played a role, though in the case of college hoops the product is so watered down its difficult for me to stay in tuned. I follow the NBA as much as I ever have, but the other sports not as much. I used to follow all three equally as a youth. I will follow the Sox as they were my favorite team growing up but thats about it.

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1996-2000. In college with 3 TVs, 2 always had sports on and if I wasn't playing video games in the middle one, the 3rd did too. I put big college football games in my date book. It was a lot of fun being surrounded by people who weren't from Chicago as you got the perspective from fans of a lot of different teams. Some of them were particularly unique. One of by good friends was from Wyoming and played on a state 3rd place team and was a big HS basketball guy. The biggest city he had ever been too was Dubuque and he came and stayed at our place over Thanksgiving. He was amazed when we took him to see Genie Pingatore, the guy from Hoop Dreams, live and he even stopped and talked to us because he's a cousin of my mom's (button 48). Later at Christmas he saw the Proviso West tournament and he was like these teams would beat the Wyoming state champs by 100.

It's probably safe to say that we were the biggest sports fans amongst our group of friends.

Once upon a time, sports-talk radio was specifically designed for us.

I've waxed and waned over the years, but I'm probably more into sports now than I was at any other time in my life.

sports radio...completely different discussion.

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@audioidkid