Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Ball Players You Admired as a child?

I met Joe Pepitone in a gun store on Long Island. He was buying an over-under shotgun for skeet. I happen to have a ball and glove in the trunk, and he was nice enough to sign both. Still have them.

The list is endless.

For baseball, there is Schmidt, Ripken, Ozzie, Nolan Ryan, Sandberg, Brett, Boggs, Yount........ The list goes on and on.


Football...

Barry Sanders. Montana/Rice... Walter Payton, Dickerson, Munoz, Marino, Reggie White, LT........ So many others, too.

Hockey.....

The Great One. Kurri, Savard, Stastny, Messier, Lemieux, Hawerchuk, Coffey....

It is always fun to consider great athlete's place in the history of their sport!

I always enjoyed watching Mike Cameron. I wasn’t really a child, but was in my late teens when he came to Seattle to take over for Griffey. Chicago had given up on him and Cincinnati had to give up something for Griffey. No one knew how people would deal with losing Junior. But, a couple games into the season, Derek Jeter hit a ball to deep centerfield and had that smug Jeter look on his face, only to have Mike Cameron run up the wall and bring the ball back.

Cal Ripken, Nolan Ryan, and Emmitt Smith.

For baseball it was HOF pitcher Bob Gibson of the St. Louis Cardinals.

Loved watching brewer baseball with my grandfather as a tike. Early color tv set with volume off, radio play by play by bob uecker, lights off, often a summer t-storm rumbling thru dairy country WI in the background.

Robin yount, paul molitor, jimmy gantner, gormon thomas, pete vuckovich, moose haas, cecil cooper, ben oglive, pete ladd, rollie fingers, don money.

Nice memories. Baseball was a real part of culture then.

Sandy Koufax

Johnny Bench, George Brett, and Larry Bird

I was fortunate to see the Cubs play many times as a kid. I remember watching Ferguson Jenkins and Bob Gibson one summer day dueling it out at Wrigley field. Must have been 1970 ish....

Mickey Mantle.

Man, where to begin? Growing up as a kid in Ohio, we lived and died with the Big Red Machine. Pete Rose was royalty back then. I moved to Minnesota and my favorites were the Twins. How could you not like Kirby Puckett, Kent Hrbek, and Dan Gladden? Black Jack Moriss's pitching performance in the world series was one for the ages. Everybody seems to have stories about chance encounters with the Twins. I worked a health fair for the Twins staff one time. Many of the players came by us. All were decent and sociable except Chili Davis. He was about as big of a pompous azz as I've ever met.

It has been great to see so many names brought back from memory. It has also been refreshing to see a thread dealing with people that has not had one instance where it has veered off into anyone's sins of politics.

Yaz and Fisk.

Roberto Clemente

Next door neighbor girl............That girl knew how to play ball!

Mickey Mantle, he was my childhood hero.

I got to hear about the old greats, my grandfather and father played pro ball. Grandfather was signed by cards and I always heard about Musial. Dad was 1st round pic for mets and got to warm up next some great mets pitchers, he only made it to triple aaa though. I just remember always getting a pack of ballcards every time we stopped at the store. Good times. I wish cards were still around for my kids.

For me it was Don Mattingly, Wade Boggs, Bo Jackson, Dale Murphy.

I hate that Trout is out on the west coast on a team that will never do anything. Rarely get to see him play and definitely not in the playoffs.

Honus Wagner

I thought Wabbi would pick Honus!!!!!

Freddie Lynn of the Red Sox was my guy because we played the same position.