Here is something that I thought might be interesting. You all know that psychological tactic of “word association,” where someone says a word and you just run off whatever first comes to your mind. Well, I think it might be interesting to see what happens if we use sports teams. So, as a somewhat regular segment, I will just throw a team out there and you guys respond with whatever first comes to your mind and run from there. It can be anything: players, coaches, games, uniforms, events in your life, etc. No internet lookups, no deep thinking, just knee-jerk reactions to what you see in your mind when you hear a certain team. We will start with a very random one (and the responses–at least mine–will be very off-the-wall, in fact some of them may not even make sense or have anything to do with the team).
What is the first thing your mind sees when you think of:
THE SAN DIEGO PADRES
AS ALWAYS, THE ONLY ORDER IS THE ORDER THAT THIS CAME TO MY HEAD:
bip roberts
tony gwynn
mailing it in in the 1998 world series
bruce bochy
awful uniforms
ozzie smith and the greatest play in baseball history
jack murphy stadium
the huge petco park
jake peavy
a blond-haired, blue-eyed surfer for a shortstop with the very black name
johnny podres
milt thompson’s leaping catch to save a walk-off grand slam in a late-august ’93 game
the pre-awfulcontract kevin brown
laid-back, bored and boring fans
trevor hoffman
Tony Gwynn. Tony Gwynn. Trevor Hoffman. Eric Show. Ken Caminiti. Bruce Bochy. Tony Gwynn.