What it takes to make a memory

In Chuck Klosterman's "Three Man Weave", a small irrelevant junior college team called the United Tribes Thunderbirds in North Dakota with only 5 players competes against other irrelevant teams and makes for an epic memory. This memory is the greatest sports memory of all time for Barry Webster, one of the players on the United Tribes Thunderbirds. When ESPN gave him a phone call, he happily spoke on and on about his memory of beating a team with only 3 players at the end of a basketball game.

In Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio by James Wright the start of something new is described in a small town. No matter how small the town is though, the start of football season is always something major. Football and basketball both give people a tremendous level of excitement at every competitive level whether it is at the peewee level or professional level. Both stories share that the teams are irrelevant on the social scale; however, both teams are extremely important to the few people that care about them. The people telling the stories and recalling the memories in both stories seem to have an extremely vivid memory pertaining to those events because those were obviously meaningful moments in their lives.

The love of sports usually does not stem and develop from the professional level, but at a lower level of competition. However, my love for football developed when I was given Madden 2002 from my friend Erik. My memories that I’ll write about are similar in the sense that they describe my love for the game, but I grew up in a more urban environment so the events in my memories are more relevant in the mainstream sports world. The retellings help define a culture because it shows how significant sports are to their culture. In small towns sports are usually valued more because there is not as much to do or talk about which was clearly the case in both writings.