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Snapshots
© St. Petersburg Times, published March 21, 2003
I guess it all started with Fran Drescher and Beck.
Back in 1994, a few friends and I gathered at the old Damon's on Fowler Avenue to watch the first day of the NCAA Tournament. The whole day. Little did we know that nearly 10 years later we would have a new tradition and a cache of memories.
Yeah, it sounds a little crazy to watch basketball from noon to midnight, but I don't hunt, fish or golf. And really, this day is about so much more than basketball.
It's about Drescher, who capsulized the fun of that first day without even knowing it. During every commercial break, CBS ran a promo for Drescher's The Nanny. Soon, I started standing up every time I heard her nasally voice and shouting "The Nanny." After a while, everybody around me was doing the same thing.
Beck came into play because while we watched games, we also played NTN trivia. Our name on the television screen? The Losers, and we chanted the song Loser every time we got a question right.
From that day forward, we pledged to gather every year on the first day of the tourney. And we have, except for the year I went to Atlanta for first- and second-round games and ended up talking to Robert "Tractor" Traylor's grandmother.
But that's another story.
Times colleague Mike Readling has been there from the beginning, and he has the shirt to prove it. Once, after we moved to the Damon's on Courtney Campbell, Mike befriended a huge group of Dayton fans. There was no way we could cheer against the Flyers while sitting among them, and the Ohio fans were so grateful one literally gave Mike the shirt off his back.
Mike wears it only once a year -- tournament day.
Now the tradition has expanded and typically includes 25-30 people. A lot of the guys are fellow sports writers, who occasionally bring laptops to complete stories. We pick Damon's because the four big-screen televisions allow us to watch all four games at once.
And you know how I feel about ribs.
Most people drop in and out at lunch or at dinner or somewhere in between. Only a few brave souls gut it out for all 12 hours. And I do mean brave. After all, I do go home to a wife.
The late-night crew got a real award three years ago, however. As the bar emptied, Reggie Jackson came in and sat in the booth behind us. I wanted to ask him why he hadn't been there all day like the rest of us.
Of course, I'm not sure if our tradition compares to the tradition of four Missouri fans who were at Damon's on Thursday. For 18 years, Denny Beckley has headed on a trip to first- and second-round games. A lot of years, they picked two cities close together and saw eight games in two days.
Now that's what I'm talking about.
Amazingly -- because they pick the site before Selection Sunday -- they never have seen Missouri, even though the Tigers have made it nearly every year. This year, Dave Foshage, Scot Pollard and Gary Martin have joined Beckley for the Tampa games.
"We had to choose between Indianapolis and Tampa," Pollard said. "Indianapolis or Tampa? Ha."
Through the years, they have seen plenty of upsets: Cal over Duke, UTEP over Kansas, Austin Peay over Illinois and South Alabama over Alabama.
"We cheer for Missouri and anybody playing KU," Beckley said.
Sitting diagonally from the Missouri guys were Jon Aschermann and his four friends from Mount Zion, Ill. Just like the Missouri folks, they have traveled to a first- and second-round tournament site every year. And like the Missouri guys, they were in Chicago in 1993 when Jason Kidd's dramatic shot propelled Cal over Duke.
The common interests, however, led to good-natured ribbing instead of friendly conversation. Aschermann said, "Whenever I want to talk to them, I just do this," before donning a fake set of rotten teeth from a costume shop.
The Missouri guys countered by yelling, "Let's go Hilltoppers," for Western Kentucky, Illinois' first-round opponent.
This is the beauty of gathering together. Friendships evolve through the cheers and jeers. When Stanford scored at the end, effectively covering the Las Vegas spread, the Missouri guys booed and everybody laughed.
Ultimately, the question is "Why?" Why do so many fans build their days off, their trips and their memories around the tournament?
"It's the best time of the year," Beckley said. "There's no greater three-week period. The college game is so much better than the program. The kids are playing their hearts out, and it's not for money."
Added Martin: "You get to be with your friends, meet new friends. It's just great."