First memory

My first memory.
Super bowl 13. My Dad was a Chargers fan. I was watching the Super Bowl with him and he was rooting for the Steelers. Ever since then I've been hooked.

 

If you were born with in a 100 miles of Pittsburgh your memory of the steelers occurred shortly after you were born and in my case in Jan 1942 they did go 7-4 but most of the time they wasn't very good until the 70s....

 

Mine is from sometime in the late 70s. I had a new friend at church who had just moved to Ohio from Michigan. His family invited us over for dinner and we became very good friends. He and his brother were both huge Steelers fans. My dad is a huge Browns fan. Strangely, when I was a kid, he used to take me to a lot of Indians games, but never really talked much about football with me. So this new friend of mine and his brother were really my introduction to football, and since they were Steelers fans, that was the team that they got me hooked on. I quickly learned all about Bradshaw, Swann, Harris and all of those guys. I've been hooked and bleeding black and gold ever since.

 

Being from Montana everyone seemed to be Bronco fans, so I had to find another team. My older cousin had a Steelers helmet and I loved it, but really didn't understand football...however I was officially a Steelers fan. I believe it was the late 70's SB with the Cowboys when the score was going back and forth, my dad told be that he bet $5 on the Steelers with a guy at work on my behalf...this was when the Steelers were losing. $5 in the late 70's for a 7 year old was a lot of money.

The Steelers came back and won the game...I was jumping around excited that I won $5...then my dad told me that he was just kidding and didn't have a bet made.

I remember being more upset that I lost out on the $5 then being happy about the fact my team just won the SB.

 

I`m so lucky as a fan. My first interest in even watching pro football was in `72 and I adopted the Steelers as my team during the regular season. I was 12 years old at the time and before that was only interested in playing sports instead of watching it on TV. I don`t remember which game, but I think it was a TV game not that many weeks before the "Immaculate Reception" game.

Some of the thinking in my decision was I loved the Steeler defense and that they were a team that could out physical the Raiders who I hated as they were considered the biggest cheaters and dirtiest players in sports, both players and coach.

Needless to say, it what a great decision for a new fan of pro football to make.

 

Watching a young Slash electrify and sadly losing the Super Bowl to the cowgirls and I still passionately despise them even til this day.

 

I actually wanted to wear the Black jerseys for that game just because I think they are much cooler but I understood why he didn't do it and am fine with the outcome.

 

It probably was broke but that actually is "fine" with Jack Lambert. LOL!

 

It was 10 years before I was born. It was 1972. I can still remember watching the old NFL Films as a kid and thinking that play was so awesome.

 

At first glance I thought I read that you were 10 years old before you were born and I was humming the Twilight Zone theme and thinking - your poor Momma!

 

Other than vague memories of my Dad getting us to really early Mass on Steeler home game Sundays cause he had season tickets since he came home from WW II - my first real Steeler memory occurred when I accidentally tore my very first Steeler game ticket around 1958 along the perforation from playing with it every minute of every day for about 4 weeks after I was given it for being an alter boy at Church and I was petrified because it clearly stated in BOLD that the ticket was VOID if the stub was detached. So I ever so carefully glued a narrow sliver of paper across the two pieces and colored it in to match the background ticket colors and cut small perforations along the back with a penknife so it would tear correctly and didn't sleep for weeks leading up to the game thinking I was going to have to "knothole" it from outside of Forbes Field. Worked out fine as the ticket taker could care less about my faux ticket. Otherwise can't remember a thing about the game who we were playing or who won - back then most likely the other team won.

 

My first football memory didnt even involve the steelers. It was sometime in the 70's my dad was watching a chargers game and they won on a last second touchdown pass. I remember the electricity of all. i didnt even know football but the way it had finished just excited the hell out of me. So I started to learn about all the teams. Because all my fathers side of the family are all from Cleveland and hated the steelers I decided to choose them as my favorite team. There was nothing greater than going to family reunions in cleveland all deck out in Steeler gear....good times

 

I was born at St. Clair hospital in Pittsburgh. The doctor spanked me and said the next one will be harder if you don't start following the Steelers! If you follow the Browns I'm putting you back.

On a serious note though. My parents having all the neighbors over the house every Sunday for Steelers games and all the neighborhood kids would be outside throwing a football around. I was 6 years old when the immaculate reception happened and I remember being outside and you could the whole neighborhood cheering.

There was another occasion when I was about 10 years old and my dad took me to a hunting and fishing club where Jack Ham, Rocky Bleier, Coach Noll and several other Steelers players were attending for a fund raising benefit. The crappie, bass and blue gill were all biting great that day and my dad had to pry me away from my fishing pole and drag me up to the club house to see those guys. I'm glad I walked up there to be among them.

 

Growing up in San Diego, it was rare to see a team other than the AFC west on tv (except for MNF) so I didn't get to see the Steelers often. The earliest game that stands out is the "Immaculate Reception" playoff game. My oldest brother was a rabid Raiders fan and the rest of the fam was rooting for the Raiders too. As the youngest, my celebrating had to be subdued!

 

Likewise, when they came home my mom and dad got season tickets. Dad went for 54 years.

 

not sure of the first memory, but it was well before chuck and 3 rivers came to be.

 

First pro game I remember was the Steelers vs Rams in the SB. Watched it at the neighbors house, and I've been a fan ever since.

 

I can remember being a kid in the 70's and living in upstate NY all you heard about was the Jets, Giants and Bills. My best friend lived next door and we played that electric football game when you put the guys on it and turn the power on and it vibrated. He was a Cryboy fan so I took the other team, back then it came with the Cryboys and........the Steelers. Born was a Steeler fan, and probably them winning the super bowls help as well......especially vs my buddy's Cryboys!

 

I remember that electric football game, with the tiny foam football, and the bases on the players, that you could theoretically, rotate the base, to send your "blockers" a certain way, etc...
And line up your "running back" to follow them...

Then you turned on the power, and the players ran in random directions, no matter what your genius "plan" was...

LOL...

Good times!

There was a more obscure game, produced before that, where the way it was played, was, the offense and the defense, had "play cards", that they could choose from...

For instance, the offense could either choose to run, or pass.. then pick which side of the field to run to, or throw to..
They basically picked from about 100 scripted plays,

And the defense picked what alignment they wanted to play, based on down and distance, or just whatever they wanted to do...(about 20 cards to pick from)...

They could blitz, cover, pick their alignment, whatever..

Each side picked their cards to play, and the defensive card had windows cut out, that overlapped the offense`s play card.

So you now have about 6 possible outcomes that showed in the "windows" created by overlapping the cards...

From the "most likely outcome", to the "least likely outcome", represented...

Slide those two cards into the game, and the offensive player, slid a bead on a pin against a spring, kinda like a pinball plunger, against the "plunger", and let the bead bounce...(there was a spring at the top, to, so it was a pretty random "bounce"

Where it landed, determined the outcome of the play.

The more likely outcomes had a bigger distance between the "hash marks" beside where the bead landed, and the less likely outcomes, had a smaller distance, between the marks, and there were several "in between" marks...

Follow where the bead landed, to the left of the "hash marks", and you found out how successful the play was...

You either nailed the best possible outcome, or got stuffed, or somewhere in between..

They all took into account which side of the field, you moved the ball to, and you kept track of that, as well, and when you pulled the cards out of the game, it mechanically wound down the
"Game clock"..

To the left of where you put the cards in, and bounced the bead, there was a football field, that you kept track of down and distance, and if you were left, right, or center of the field...

I believe it was called "NFL Strategy", or something like that...

I used to beat my Dad at this game for years, and somehow lost it, over my last couple moves...

Any of you older members, remember this game?

I`m thinking I need to look for it on E-bay, or somesuch...

Very cool game, for those of us that came of age, before the "Madden" phenomenon...

(Or TecmoBowl... LOL)...

GO STEELERS!!!

 

I too have memory's of Dick Shiner Bill Saul and Steelers playing at Pitt Stadium. Then Dan hired the Emperor, and I knew things
they were a changing. It was great growing up locally as a kid knowing your hometown team was the baddest ass team in all
of football and they intimidated other teams by there play. God they were good.

 

i totally agree ward. not quite in diamonds days but i remember them at pitt stadium and as you said after chuck it took off quick. what a team they built. that stadium was like the most modern thing since a rocket ship it seemed like. LOL man landed on the moon and chaz noll landed in pittsburgh.

 

Bleedsteel, I was gonna write about the foam football and the adjustable base but was like oh nobody will remember that lol. I can also remember it got pretty big and I was able to order any of the other teams. It was so awesome looking thru the catalog and picking a team and waiting for it to so up by......yes snail mail, lol! but like you said as you get older and move a few times things get lost and so did my game,.

I think I saw the game your talking about but never played it. Also funny you mention TecmoBowl that was good stuff too....lol! Thanks for the walk down memory lane, man do I feel older......

 

Was it this one?