Childhood Heroes (Athletes)

As I check my man Shawn Kemp reigniting his career in the great land of Italia, it reminds me that some of the guys I looked up to as a kid are still going strong.

For lack of posting anything good at all over the past several weeks, I will go through some of these childhood idols. First, let's take a look at the athletes...

#1: Nick Van Exel. Something about the way he transformed Cincinatti's program and took them to the final four with the most swag that I had ever seen (with the acception of the UNLV team combined), I fell in love with Van Exel's game as a kid. Despite my relentless efforts to switch to a left-handed jumpshot at the age of 12, it couldn't be done. In fact, I really had no handles and no court vision either, so my game was a far cry (very far) from Van Exel. I sure wasn't the only kid in the world with a Van Exel poster hanging on my wall, but I was probably the only kid with three Van Exel posters hanging on my wall.


#2: Ken Griffey Jr. I think anyone that was raised in Seattle during the 90's was hoping to be Jr. He owned the city's sports fans and deservedly so. Surprinsingly he's still doing it big in the league (okay, he sucks now but let's all root for him and his quest to get a World Series ring). But as "The Kid," his effortless homers and life-risking catches were enough to inspire several injuries while jumping into chain-link fences in south Seattle.


#3: Wade Boggs. My third lefty in a row, for some unknown reason he was my favorite player, along with Griff. Boggs put up great numbers consistently and perhaps I just enjoyed looking at the back of his baseball cards and all those 200 hits, 40 doubles, .330+ avg., etc. every single year. My mom hated Boggs because he was a well-known asshole, but I couldn't fall in love with Harold Reynold's game.


#4: Deion Sanders. Prime Time. Nuff said. But really, who will ever be able to say that they played for the Dallas Cowboys, San Francisco 49ers, New York Yankees, and the Atlanta Braves? Not to mention the Ravens, Redskins, Falcons, Cincinatti Reds, San Francisco Giants and Florida State Seminoles. He was like an ill mix of Ricky Henderson, Rod Woodson and Luke.


#5: Jerry Rice. I'm pretty sure that Jerry Rice is the best football player that I've ever seen. He never disappointed and everybody knew that Joe and Steve were throwing the rock his way. Dallas had to acquire Deion just so they could try to stop Jerry. Yes, every time we played football, we wanted to be #80.


#6: Michael Jordan. He was pretty good, played shooting guard for the Chicago Bulls.


#7: Rickey Henderson: He could hit for power, steal a base any time he wanted and most importantly, was a cocky son-of-a-bitch. To kids, that was awesome. He was the reason I bought an Oakland A's hat and I failed in trying to emulate his stretched out batting stance. I also think he was the first man to rock a gold chain while playing professional sports, although I could be wrong.


Honorable mentions: Magic Johnson, John Elway, Randall Cunningham, Barry Sanders, Gary Payton, Shawn Kemp, Dominique Wilkins, Barry Sanders, Jose Canseco.