First Blog Post

I will start by saying this, this is my first ever blog/blog post. I am a 29 year old painter from Va, I have two kids and a beautiful wife who I love very much, I also love sports. In fact I think my wife encouraged me to start this blog in part to keep me from talking to her about sports. To introduce you all to what sports I love i will rank them first, for me it goes like this: Football, Baseball, Basketball, Hockey, then whatever is on at the moment. I will watch anything from a women's tennis match (mostly for the sound effects) to a world's strongest man competition if it is the only sport on at the time.

Next I should tell you my favorite teams as they will be the ones I will be writing about the most. To start I live in the Richmond, Va area if that helps you understand some of my teams. First I am a Hokie in everything on the collegiate level and I also pull for former Hokies in the pros no matter who they play for. Full disclosure: I did not get a degree from Virginia Tech, I didn't care much for school growing up and decided it would be better for me to go to work and just get an associates degree from a local community college. I became a Hokie by growing up watching the games with my father and traveling with him to Blacksburg as often as we could. Lane Stadium and Cassell Coliseum are special places to me because that's when me and my dad had the most fun when i was growing up. Hopefully I will get to write about some good news for the Hokies tomorrow as it is signing day for football recruits.

The Redskins are next on the list. This one is a little harder to explain but it basically came down to location and who my friends liked. Most fans become fans of certain teams because of their father's influence or at least it seems that way to me. My dad doesn't care for the NFL much because he was a Baltimore Colts fan and when Irsay took them to Indy in '84 he gave up on pro football, although he still gives me sh*t for liking the redskins. For me, when i was probably 12 or 13, I wanted an NFL team to root for and needed to figure out who it should be. I figured the Redskins were close so I could potentially go see a game, most of my friends liked them, and they have a hell of a fight song, Hail! Obviously I made a mistake with that one but some times we make decisions that we can't go back and change, someday they will get better I just don't know when.

The Orioles are next and they are another team passed down from my dad. I loved the O's growing up and still do, for me there is still something special about baseball. Some, well most people say it is boring, but I think it is a beautiful game and the atmosphere around the game is so different than the other sports. There is a real reverence with baseball fans that you don't see elsewhere, baseball fans respect the game and its past more than any other sport in my opinion. As for the Orioles, they are probably the worst organization in professional sports over the last 14 years but i still keep hope that they will be able to resurrect a once proud team to a city that deserves it. I still get to Baltimore as often as I can and about a month before the end of the season I start saying "Wait until next year, they'll get it figured out before next year". Which i am saying this year as well, the AL East better look out, if nothing else it looks like the O's will throw a different pitcher at them every game.

Lastly I will touch quickly on the New Jersey Devils. Probably the strangest of my team picks but pretty easily explained. When i got into hockey they were winners, during the 1999-2000 playoffs I watched every game that came on and attached to them for some reason. Maybe the defense, or maybe just the fact that they had a player with the last name Niedermayer and I loved the movie Animal House. Who knows the long and short of it is that I now have a $200 Devils jersey with name on the back, and each year I comment on how expensive it would be to go see a home game (still haven't been able to do that).

So there it is, hopefully I will have some interesting topics about these teams in which to write about and I hope you all will enjoy reading about them. As you can see by the teams I follow I am a bit of a glutton for punishment so let me what you think. Don't forget tomorrow is a big day for the Hokies, signing day ticker should be up on hokiesports.com tomorrow morning. Talk to you soon