As I mentioned in Part 1, there would likely be a part 2…and potentially more. There are just too many moments, too many memories, too many nostalgia hits to limit to just one post, so here we go!

Barry Bonds hits 756

Let’s start thing with a little controversy, shall we? Let me start off by saying that, as an adult, I am a baseball purest, and as such, I believe that Hank Aaron is the true home run king. But my memories of this moment lay in a time when I was a huge Barry Bonds fan and was not yet fully aware of the scope of steroids or the part they played in Barry career. With that said:

I remember exactly where I was. I was 14. It was August 2007, just days before I was to begin my freshman year of high school. The summer was ending, and I was finishing up what would be the last summer I would spend at my grandparents’ house in the Florida panhandle. Under normal circumstances, at the end of summer, I’d climb in the backseat of my grandparents’ Cadillac, and they’d drive me home to Orlando. This particular summer however, for reasons I can’t remember, my parents instead made the six-hour drive northwest to pick me up.

The Giants were playing the Nationals. I had been glued to all of Barry Bonds’ at-bats for the entire season, and so was the national media, as Bonds entered the 2007 season with 734 home runs, just 19 behind Hank Aaron’s all-time mark, so other sports broadcasts would often be interrupted to show Bonds’ at-bats. Bust on this night against Washington, as expected, the game was being nationally telecasted.

Baseball fans everywhere tune in on the night of August 7th with bated breath hoping to see Bonds make history. My dad was seated next to me on my grandparents’ multi-colored sofa. He was conflicted, as was I about potentially witnessing the moment, as we had both grown up Braves fans, and therefore weren’t thrilled to see Aaron’s record be broken, but with Bonds sitting at 755 with over a month and a half to go, it was inevitable, so we might as well witness it, right? That and I was a huge Bonds fan at the time, so I was too excited to be thinking about Hammerin’ Hank that night.

Then, in the bottom of the 5th inning with the score tied at 4 and Washington’s Steve Bacsik on the mound (a name that I’ll never forget despite him only having a 5-year MLB career), it happened. Bonds crushed a 3-2 pitch to right center field for the record setting blast. What I remember even more than Duane Kuiper’s iconic “BONDS…he hits it high…he hits it deep… it is OUTTA HERE!” call, is my dad saying, “He did it.” the second it left Bonds’ bat.

Looking back on it now, I view Bonds differently, and I view his record differently, but that moment is frozen in time, sitting next to one of my favorite people in the world in one of my favorite places in the world, and for that, the moment can’t be tainted.

Vince Young in confetti

Sometimes, there are moments you can never forget and sometimes, there are single images that are burned into your memory forever. While I’ll never forget that championship game, this moment qualifies as the latter. We all remember the game: the 2006 Rose Bowl – a high-octane shootout that ended with a Vince Young touchdown run with 0:19 left to give Texas the 41-38 victory over the then-dynastic USC Trojans. Widely seen as the greatest college football games ever played.

It was one of the first times I can remember feeling a part of must-see TV. I’ll never forget going to school the next day, because I had P.E. for first period and most of my friends were there too. We usually spent the first 10 minutes or so in the locker room changing into the required P.E. clothes, but on this morning, we all dressed out as fast as we could so that we could all gather by the back lockers and talk about that incredible game. When the time came for the boys to leave the locker room to go outside for class, none of us wanted to go because they had started playing the game highlights again on the TV in the corner of the locker room.

The moment for me came when the clock hit zero. I wasn’t necessarily a Texas fan, but I loved Vince Young. Every kid had those few athletes that they imagined playing as in the big moments in their backyard. For me, when I had a football in my hands, that player was Vince Young. I would practice throwing on the run and scrambling out of trouble, even when there were no defenders bearing down on me. It honestly still bums me out that he didn’t have a better NFL career.

But that image of Vince Young on the field, pointing up to the sky, with confetti raining down is still one of the most iconic images in college football history, and I’ll never forget it.

Iron Bowl Kick Six

Here’s the one moment from either Part 1 or Part 2 that I don’t necessarily have pleasant memories of, but it lives rent-free in my head just the same. My mother was born and raised in southeast Alabama, my father just 40 minutes away, across the Florida-Alabama line. As I mentioned earlier, I used to spend summers (and holidays) going back and forth on State Road 73 between both of my grandparents’ houses. My grandfather on my mom’s side was a die-hard Alabama fan, and all of my mom’s relatives either graduated from Troy University in Troy, AL (where my parents met) or graduated from Alabama. My grandfather on my dad’s side graduated from Alabama AND was the cousin of former Alabama rimson Tide and NFL QB Kenny Stabler. Alabama football was all I knew.

Usually, when the Iron Bowl rolled around, we’d already be in Alabama for Thanksgiving. The energy across the state during Iron Bowl week is always electric. There’s an old joke I was told as a kid that I still use to this day: There are three main vehicle colors on the streets of Alabama – red, blue and primer – as motorists across the state would buy their vehicles based on their rooting interests. I remember a particular instance where I rode with my grandparents to a doctor’s appointment, and as we were sitting in the waiting room, a couple came in decked out head-to-toe in Auburn gear. Then, the wife told the husband she was cold, so the husband went to the car and came back in with two large matching Auburn blankets. I leaned over to my grandmother and whispered, “I think they’re Auburn fans.”

But by the time, 2013 rolled around, my grandparents were getting older and had moved into the house next door to my parents in Orlando, Florida, so Thanksgivings and Iron Bowls looked much different than in years past. On this particular night, it was a tight game. Prior to “that moment”, there was moment that stood out in my house. Early in the 4th quarter, the game was tied at 21 and my dad was sitting next to me on the couch. My mom walked in the room and asked my dad to get something for her from the laundry room. So, my dad walked into the garage, and while he was standing in there, Alabama QB AJ McCarron threw a 99-yard touchdown pass to give the Tide the lead. Myself, my mom and my grandparents were screaming in excitement, and my dad ran in from the garage. We laughed because he had missed the play of the game – or so we thought. On Alabama’s next possession, hoping for another score to put the game away, I jokingly told my dad to go stand in the garage. He did. Feeling bad for him, his mom told him to come back. Maybe he should have stayed in the garage…

Then it happened. I don’t need to paint a word picture. It’s become one of the most iconic clips in college football history, and to be honest, the less time I have to spend dwelling on it, the better. Chris Davis – a name I’ll never forget – returned the kick and the house fell silent. All I could think was, “Why didn’t Saban just run the ball and take it to overtime?” A 57-yard field goal was outside of Adam Griffith’s range anyway. Griffith’s career long at Alabama was 55 yards, and that would come two years after the infamous “Kick Six”. I didn’t even stick around for postseason interviews or commentary. I went straight upstairs, got in the shower, and tried to wash off my lowest moment as a lifelong Alabama fan.

To this day, I still don’t watch the “Kick Six.” If it comes on for whatever reason, whether it be a commercial on ESPN or a YouTube highlight compilation, I don’t look. I mute, or fast forward, close my eyes, change the channel – whatever I have to do to avoid reliving that terrible moment. It’s just my process. Unfortunately, no matter how hard I try to avoid it, that play is likely to stay with me as long as there is breath in my lungs…but I digress.

Red Sox-Rays 2013 Brawl

Unlike most of these moments, where I witnessed them on the TV screen, I was in the building for this one. This game didn’t have playoff implications. It was a random regular season game on a Monday night in Tampa in the middle of June. But what happened in this game isn’t something I’ll forget anytime soon.

The adventure started right away when the Red Sox erupted for six runs in the top of the 1st inning, but the Rays answered back in the bottom of the inning when outfielder Matt Joyce hit a solo home run off of John Lackey to get Tampa on the board.

Things began to intensify in the bottom of the 2nd, when Joyce came to the plate a second time against Lackey. After getting ahead of Lackey 3-0, Joyce lined a ball into the stands, narrowly missing his second home run in as many at-bats. Joyce would end the at-bat by grounding out, but despite being up 6-2 at the time, Lackey apparently took exception to the long foul ball, because things escalated in Joyce’s 4th at-bat.

In the bottom of the 6th inning, Joyce stepped in the box again with his team trailing 6-4. On the second pitch of the at-bat, Lackey drilled Joyce in the back with the 0-1 pitch. Joyce made his way toward Lackey and the benches cleared. Joe Madden swore it was intentional. John Ferrell swore it wasn’t. Tale as old as time.

This is when things got interesting, even for those of us in the stands. We were sitting about five or six rows up on the third base line, right in front of the visitors’ bullpen mounds. I was in the first seat of the row, right next to the steps. It just so happened that the section to my right was full of Red Sox fans, who, by the 6th inning, were likely 2-3 beers deep at this point. The Red Sox fans, who were just feet from me and the group I was with began chirping at our section of mostly Rays fans as we were on the field wearing Tampa uniforms. I remember being concern that a brawl would break out between the two sections with my group of out-of-towners trapped in the middle of it. Luckily, no one left their designated seat, and all of the pushing and shoving was confined to the field.

After the dust settled, the game continued on. The Rays would tie the game in the bottom of the 8th on a wild pitch by Rays reliever Junichi Tazawa. The game would go to extra innings, and I remember feeling like the extra frames lasted forever. Both teams scored twice in the 10 to keep the game tied, then the once exciting offensive game disappeared. The two teams put up zeros for another three innings. As the game reached the 14th inning, I remember glancing over to the outfield scoreboard to check the other scores from around the league. This game had started at 7:00 and it was now past midnight. The West Coast games that hadn’t started until 10:00 were about over. The tense and restless crowd under the now-displaced dome of Tropicana Field had been in their seats for almost six hours.

Mercifully, in the top of the 14th, Boston’s Daniel Nava singled to center and driving in two. The Red Sox would close it out in the bottom have of the inning, and Boston walked away with a hard-fought 10-8 win.

Admittedly, I had to look up the box score of the game, to remind myself of some of the on-the-field details, but I will never forget the feeling of being in those stands wondering if things were going to get out of hand for a church group full of college kids who were visiting from Orlando. It was a WILD night…

So, there you have it. That’s it for this set of plays and moments that live rent-free in my head – for better or worse. I still have more moments I could go over, and honestly, I enjoy revisiting them (for the most part), not just from a sports perspective, but from the perspective of where I was, who I was with, and what made them so memorable. Thank you for indulging me. If you have any favorite sports moments or special memories, please share them in the comments. I’d love to share in those memories with you. Until next time…