This is my sports life.
It is not a crowdsourced database or a place for visitors to enter their own rankings. The point is to document my experiences and the way sports connect different periods of my life.
About the archive
Why this
exists.
Sports Passport is my personal record of the games, teams, venues, places, and people that have made live sports part of my life.
—Archive records
—Venues
—Years covered
5Life chapters
3Personal Top 10s
Editorial philosophy
What I want the site to preserve.
The archive is useful because it combines records with memory. I want the data to be honest about what I know, while the stories explain why certain games and places mattered.
Every record should lead somewhere.
A game should connect to its annual edition, teams, venue, city, life chapter, and any place it holds in the Personal Canon. The site works best as one archive rather than a collection of isolated pages.
The current year stays open.
The archive grows as I attend new events. The current annual edition remains visibly in progress, while completed seasons become part of the permanent record.
Confidence and reconstruction
What is known versus remembered.
The early years are different from the modern archive, so the site labels that difference instead of pretending every record has the same level of certainty.
Pre-2006 records are explicitly marked Verified or Notional.
Verified entries have surviving evidence or direct confirmation. The old Camden Yards games are supported by ticket stubs, and Indiana at SIU is directly verified. Other early entries may be plausible reconstructions of games I likely attended and are labeled Notional rather than presented as exact attendance facts.
Evidence is structured separately from confidence. Each event records an explicit evidence type and basis, such as ticket stub, attendance record, direct confirmation, documented archive record, or reconstruction. Source notes remain provenance; the site no longer guesses evidence classes from source wording at display time.
Verified
Evidence or direct confirmation
When I have a ticket stub, a strong surviving record, or a specific memory that verifies attendance, the event is treated as part of the confirmed archive.
Notional
Useful reconstruction without false precision
Some childhood events are included because they help preserve the shape of the sports timeline, but they remain visibly notional. They should never be mistaken for verified attendance.
The five chapters
A biography through sports.
The chronological Journeys are the narrative spine: family first, then the different sports cultures that came with each place I lived.
Personal Canon
Three rankings, three different questions.
The lists are intentionally separate because a favorite venue and a great venue are not always the same thing.
Top 10 sports experiences
The moments I most want to relive.
These rankings put the game and the memory first: stakes, atmosphere, personal connection, surprise, and the feeling of having been there.
Favorite venues
The places that mean the most to me.
Personal connection matters here. A venue can rank highly because of family, school, repeated visits, tradition, or the memories attached to it.
Best venues visited
The strongest venues on their own merits.
This list judges the venue itself: atmosphere, design, setting, history, sightlines, presentation, and the overall live-sports experience.
Annual review
The rankings can change.
I revisit the Personal Canon at the end of each year. New experiences can enter the list, and older ones can move as the archive grows.
Team dossiers
History supports the personal story.
Favorite-team pages go beyond my attendance record with championships, lore, traditions, and fun facts. Those historical sections use linked sources; my memories and rankings remain an editorial layer of their own.
Favorite teams
Illinois, Kansas, the Kansas City Chiefs, St. Louis Cardinals, Denver Nuggets, Colorado Avalanche, and Denver Summit FC receive deeper team pages because they are part of my actual sports identity.
Archive teams
Every other team I have seen still receives a canonical identity so appearances, records, venues, and annual editions can be connected consistently without implying fandom.
The through-line
Family, place, and time.
The emotional backbone is generational: Cardinals games with my father and maternal grandfather, the teams and venues that became part of each place I lived, and now the excitement of sharing sports with Penny. Her first sporting event being a Cardinals game with my mom brings that story back to where it started.