Sports Appreciation Day: Football won me over with an all-out blitz

When was the day I became a sports fan? When wasn't I?

My father always took my brothers and me to New York Yankees games as we were growing up. We'd sit in right field for doubleheaders, hoping like heck those bad Yankees teams, the pre-Steinbrenner teams, would win. We'd go for bat day, helmet day, ball day, all of the giveaways. Baseball was my first love then.

Fred Taylor Running Back, Jaguars I wasn't really good growing up. The thing that drew me to football when I was nine years old in 1985 was watching Refrigerator Perry and Walter Payton. I just wanted to run the ball all time. When I started playing, I wore No. 34 for home games for Walter Payton and No. 33 on the road for Tony Dorsett. Watching the Bears in 1985 really got me into football. I didn't know much about the NFL until then. I would collect the Sprite and Coke caps with the players on them, too. I loved watching Payton and the Big Guy run. I just wanted to run it like them.

But football pushed it aside in my heart as I grew older. I remember the day my dad took us to watch the New York Jets practice at Hofstra. When the players came off, I couldn't wait to get an autograph or two. One problem: No paper. So I ended up finding a 7-Up carton and using that. I remember I got the autographs of Eddie Bell and Al Woodall. Who? They weren't exactly Joe Willie, but it was a big deal to me. I was hooked.

I went to my first NFL game at Philadelphia's Franklin Field, seeing the Eagles play the Pittsburgh Steelers, and baseball would always be second fiddle after that. Joe Greene threw a helmet toward the stands that day. I loved it.

Football Sundays in my house were events. We'd plan the day around watching the games on television; even my mother, the biggest New York Giants fan there was, made it a weekly ritual. Instead of Sunday dinner, we had Sunday appetizers, sitting in front of the TV. My grandmother, a woman right off the boat from Italy, never quite understood. She was old school, where Sunday dinners were an all-day affair, course after course. Not in my house. Not with NFL football. Grandma never got it, although she did love saying Vinny Testaverde's name.

The Giants were my passion growing up. I loved Ron Johnson and Spider Lockhart. I had Giants pajamas, Giants trash cans, Giants everything. I can remember listening to NFL Draft updates on the radio -- yeah, before TV -- waiting to hear what the Giants were doing. I remember playing this game as a kid called Pro Draft. You built a team using football cards. I was a general manager of the best kind in my mind. I could evaluate talent, I thought. Funny, isn't it? Some things never change.