Cool! I am late to the party because I was off birdwatching.

Take it to the "And Your Bird Can Sing" thread.

This is dumb but it's fun to try and remember. I wonder if I can do this in chronological order of first visit? I know I'm forgetting someone.

MLB - Milwaukee County, Wrigley, Skydome, Jacobs Field, Miller Park, RFK, PNC Park, Nats Park, Coors Field, Angels Stadium*, Dodger Stadium, Citi Field (...and I'm a Mets fan)
NFL - Bills
NHL - Blackhawks, Sabres, Capitals, Bruins, Thrashers
MLS - DC United
Cricket - an Ashes test at the MCG
AFL - Hawthorne, Melbourne, North Melbourne
A-league (not that one) - Rochester Rhinos
MiLB - Rochester Red Wings, Brooklyn Cyclones, SWB Yankees (in Rochester)
AHL - Rochester Americans
College - RIT Tigers hockey, probably a couple games at my D3 alma mater by accident

And I showed up at New Comiskey, Camden Yards and a frozen four game but was sold out or couldn't afford the tickets.

*I have no idea what the angles' stadium is called. I'm assuming it's Los Angeles Park of Anaheim in California or something stupid. And I'm giving up on stadium names since most people won't know the non-baseball ones anyhow.

If your point is to stem the devaluation of the term "sport" to nearly kind of competition, then I would agree with you. But those discussions don't usually center there. It's usually trying to say that an activity with subjectivity (figure skating, gymnastics, diving) or perceived low physicality (auto racing, bowling, golf) is not a sport. In other words, I don't like it so it's not a sport.

I look at it as trying to make something that used to not be considered a sport, into a sport because that is the "hip" or cool term. You grow up knowing what a sport is and isn't then you get older and all the sudden the stuff that wasn't a sport is now being classified as a sport. Along with a whole host of other things that don't resemble anything that you have perceived your whole life to be a sport (Poker is a sport? Seriously?) and there is a natural pushback against it.

Yes I go overboard on that pushback, in that I find subjective scoring to go against what I feel is a fundamental nature of a sport. You shouldn't win or lose a competition because a judge is from a different country. At that point it time it's a competition to me.

And yes I also find low physicality to go against a sport. I love bowling, participate in it 2 times a week, there have been times in which I was in 5 leagues in a week, so I don't want to see it insulted, but again it just doesn't feel like a sport. If the majority of the participants are sitting around drinking beer during the event, it just doesn't feel like a sport. I've shot a 290 hammered to the gills. Golf is similar, to me. There is just nothing there that makes me think it's a sport. And yes I know that is a very subjective opinion. (Note I don't think of racing cars as low physicality, I think of racing cars as more about the car than it is about the driver. I don't care one whit about the physicality of it or not, if the source of propulsion is provided by something other than effort produced by the human participant, I just can't see it as a sport)

*I have no idea what the angles' stadium is called. I'm assuming it's Los Angeles Park of Anaheim in California or something stupid. And I'm giving up on stadium names since most people won't know the non-baseball ones anyhow.

Correct attitude towards it. I doubt I could name any of the new stadium names other than Busch stadium(because it used the same name as the previous two stadiums) and it's doubtful I could identify which team half of them belonged to if given a listing.

By textbook definition ####### chess is a sport

As I've mentioned before, bridge really wanted to become an Olympic event. To the point where they introduced drug testing.

It was a shambles -- as you might expect given that many participants are aging and/or obese. One member of the winning side told organizers she couldn't provide a urine sample. Not unwilling, physically unable.

Bob Hamman was just dropped from the top US team. He won his first important event in 1963.

Don't know how you feel about curling (actually I do. Basically, "who cares") but it involves tossing around a 44lb hunk of granite plus some very vigorous sweeping. Top players can last into their 50s. And it used to be common for top players to be seriously out of shape.

Attended in person:

MLB: Metrodome, Kingdome, Oakland Coliseum, Dodger Stadium, Angels Stadium, Target Field, Kauffman Stadium, Chase AZ (tour only)
NFL: Metrodome, Gillette
NCAA Football: Metrodome
NHL: Xcel
NBA: Metrodome, Target Center
NCAA Basketball: Williams Arena

I mainly follow MLB and NCAA basketball now. NCAA basketball is nice because it starts when baseball ends and finishes when baseball starts. NBA finals are during baseball season and annual camping/fishing trips right after school lets out. What's the point of watching a whole season if I'm going to ignore the finals?

That is great stuff. I first got into MMA through grainy old videos of Sakuraba and I do sometimes still miss the Pride days.

I've always felt like one of the truly gratifying things about MMA was that you got to be at the very genesis of what always seemed poised to become a major international sport. Prior to UFC 1 in 1993 the idea of free-form fighting existed only in a few tiny pockets in Brazil and Japan, and the Japanese version was scarcely a decade older. After the "bloodsport" aspect of the UFC generated so much attention and resulted in the unsurprising backlash from jackbooted government thugs, there were several years during which it was incredibly difficult to see any sort of MMA if you were a fan of the early UFC. No cable provider carried the UFC pay-per-view events and of course decent television wouldn't have anything to do with it, so online networks sprung up where, if you were lucky, you could get an 8th-generation videotape of a 2 month-old UFC event.

I remember waiting eagerly for my boxes of bulky videotapes featuring the latest bare-knuckle Vale Tudo events from Brazil, or Pancrase action from Japan, events months and sometimes years old, and being so captivated with what I was seeing. Now, of course, the sport is big money, at least for the owners of the UFC if not the fighters they employ, but for a long while there following MMA wasn't too different than being a boxing fan in 1900, enamored of a quasi-legal spectacle looked down upon by the vast majority of the populous. Those were the days!