Growing up in the 70s has left many of memories colored as the old pages of Sports Illustrated. Random athletes (Dennis Menke, Dave Osborne, Essex Johnson, or Bernie Parent come to mind) who's uniform colors or action photos are still in my head. That they were all successful athletes was reason for us to emulate them for whatever reason. An odd batting stance, a great Topps card, or an odd name easily might get you mentioned in one of our ball games. Sometimes people ask how do you know these random sports facts about skiers, horses, or even boxing? The answer off course is we had limited channels to surf, so the Wild World of Sports was consumed often. That and reading the Sporting News at the school library.
Like most kids I wanted to excel in a sport like baseball or football, but it just didn't happen. We started a XC team my sophomore year and I was on board immediately. I had plenty of colorful images of Bayi, Jipcho, Ryun, and especially a cat named Keino in my head. Sure, I knew many other track athletes because in the day you also read the Guinness Book of World Records. I loved those old school Kenyan uniforms and the way they went after it.
I gotta go run now...
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