Monday, September 21, 2009

Our Parents Had it Better Than Us

So, it my post yesterday I theorized that one of the reasons that Packer losses don't upset me that much is the fact that they are the only local team to win it all in my lifetime. That led me to thinking of how our generation has had a relatively lackluster run of Wisconsin based sporting success in our lifetime.

My Dad as born on Halloween in 1946. If he were still alive he would be 63 this year. In those 63 years, what would he have seen?

  • Milwaukee Braves: The Braves moved to Milwaukee in 1953. Pretty good timing for a 6-year old. They had stars like Hank, Eddie Matthews and Spahn. # of the best players of their time. The Braves won it all in 1957 and went back to the World Series in 1958. My Dad was 11 in '57. A good age for a baseball nut to see a World Series game at their home park. My Dad saw 2 World Series games in person as a kid. I saw 1 Division Series game in person as an adult. No comparison there. True, our parent did have to deal with the Braves leaving town, but they did win a World Series. Plus they had some White Sox games at County in two of the 5 years the city was without a team.
  • Milwaukee Bucks: The Bucks won it all in 1971 and made it back to the Finals in 1974. My Dad was just out of the Army in '71 and he got to experience an NBA title as a young adult. He actually has a program and ticket stubs from 2 of the Finals games he went to in '71. His hate for the Celtics stemmed from the '74 Finals.
  • Green Bay Packers: NFL Championships in 1961, 1962 and 1965 and Super Bowl wins in 1966, 1967 and 1996. So, my Dad saw 6 Packers championships to my 1.
Solid run for those in our parents age bracket. We have one Super Bowl title. We have two baseball play-off appearances (and most of us were too young to take anything away from the first one), A good Bucks team in the '80's that became complete garbage, save 2001, and a football team that actually won a title but never became the dynasty that they could have become. Both of the state's main college basketball teams made the Final Four and the Badgers have won 3 Rose Bowls, but no championships. Hey I think the Wave and the Admirals may have won it all!

3 comments:

  1. Dont forget our parents enjoying Marquette's 1977 title. I was a tender 5 months old in March of 77, although I still celebrated hard.

    ReplyDelete
  2. True, but our generation had awesome movies like Airplane, Trading Places, Beverly Hills Cop, Spy's like us and Better off dead.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Emmett - The Murdock family does not count Marquette as an existing entity.

    ReplyDelete