Friday open thread: memories

So we got to talking in Slack earlier this week about who we’ve had the honor of seeing play in person during our lives. It started, as a surprising number of things do given that we are a blog about Arsenal Football Club, with a discussion about baseball, This time, PDB was talking about how fortunate he felt to have had the opportunity to see Ichiro Suzuki play in person for his beloved Seattle Mariners.

The conversation morphed into which famous players (and, to be honest, some not-so-famous players) we’ve seen play in person, and the sporting events that we’ve attended. Some of the all-time greats came up - Jordan, Gretzky, Hamm, Ripken.

For me, the greatest athlete I’ve ever seen in person is Alex Ovechkin and the best event I’ve attended was a Stanley Cup Finals game during the Caps winning run. I also had the pleasure of seeing Cal Ripken play many times, including one of the number-reveal-on-the-clubhouse games - I think the Orioles did the number change for the last 30 up to the record.

As far as soccer goes, it’s pretty close between my top two. I’ve seen Mia Hamm play for both the USWNT and the Washington Freedom in the old NWSL. I saw Nicklas Bendtner score a hat trick against Porto in the Champions League. Having trouble deciding which one of those is better /sarcasm.

What about you all?