NOTE: This is a long entry about sports, so I'll understand if some of you don't want to read it. But before the mundane talk of pro sports there is a nice little remembrance of my pre-Little League baseball days you might enjoy. Don't say I never gave you anything.

For people who know me now, something in my past may be a little shocking. And yet, there it is, sitting in the back of the proverbial closet, a humerus on the tiny skeleton I keep there. It is a mildly amusing � and mild bit of information � fact but it is a part of who I am.

I hated football.

Back in the grade-school days of the 80s, when I was running around the playground in courderoy pants (before they came back as "cool") and button-downed shirts, I loved baseball. I played on a Cap League (one step below Little League in our town) team called the Dodgers where we played every Wednesday night and Saturday morning, with our fathers and coaches pitching from 45 feet away. We had blue t-shirts and caps and most kids wore jeans because we were 7-10 years old and no one had uniform pants anyway. One year, when most of the other kids on my team had already hit at least one home run (and these were fields without fences in the outfield; to hit a home run, you hit it over the outfielders' heads and ran around the bases before they caught up to the ball and threw it back) I was stuck without any. In one game, I hit a ball perfectly � far over the left-fielder's head. It was a home run for sure. But by the time I reached first base, where my dad was the coach waving me on to second, I was already giggling, a smile as wide as the base on my face. When I hit second, I was in hysterics. At third, the coach told me to stop. I'd been laughing so hard, I wasn't running fast enough and the ball was back in the infield by then. (Later that year, I did get a home run, after another close call where I launched one into the parking lot, but foul.)

I enjoyed athletic endeavors, and I loved watching baseball. The first game I ever played, in second grade, went 10 innings, and at that level a regulation game is six innings. I never wanted it to end, but it did, and we won. In 1983 I went to my first game when Uncle Paul took me to see the Yankees and Angels. I wanted to sit as high as possible because I'd never been that high, and we were somewhere midway up the top level on the first-base side at Yankee Stadium. The Angels had Reggie Jackson, the first player I knew by name, and I was excited.

I didn't get to another game for three years when Dad � no fan of New York or, even then, major league prices � finally relented and took me to Shea Stadium to see the Mets, the team he and Mom followed to some degree. The Mets beat the Cubs one night and the Reds � with player/manager Pete Rose � another, and that fall they won the World Series.

I was in for good.

I still thoroughly love baseball and look forward to this week every year, the week pitchers and catchers report to spring training camps in Florida and Arizona. In another two weeks they'll start playing exhibition games and by the end of March I'll have box scores and standings to look over. I love baseball's noble (and not-so-noble) history and it's place in American culture. It was the American game for a reason, playing a part in the assimilation of immigrant groups into the culture and in the development of our cities. And there are still so many aspects of it that apply to me.

So back then, I had no time for football. With no organized football league (no Pop Warner in my town, though I probably could've played somewhere, if I'd shown interest), it didn't appeal to me at an early age. My friend Matt's father coached at a local high school, and Matt was a die-hard Giants fan, but that didn't even draw me in. I couldn't sit through a televised game, it bored me so. (We later laughed when, through a family friend, I was invited to a Giants-Eagles game, getting to see a Giants game in person before Matt did.) I had a white No. 11 Dallas Cowboys shirt because that was the number worn by quarterback Danny White, and my name was Danny too. I have no idea where it came from.

But gradually, I came to appreciate the sport. I watched a little, threw the ball around with my friends. We'd organize afternoon-long games on the schoolyard on Saturdays or Sundays and go home to watch whatever college or pro game was on later. Over time, I became a fan. It also came to light that Dad had gone to Notre Dame and that Notre Dame had something of a football tradition. I slowly learned some of the golden history and some of the names, particularly that of a guy named Joe who, while at South Bend, officially changed the pronunciation of his surname to rhyme with a major award. As Don Cheadle might say, "He took the name 'THEESE-man' and made it 'THIGHS-man'." And then Laurence Taylor of the Giants took Joe's thighbone and made it crack.

Dad knew Joe Theismann because they both hail from South River, N.J., and his was the first name that stuck. And there was another Joe, that Montana fellow, and in the late 80s, he was The Man in the NFL. His career was at its peak, his status as bonafide Legend newly minted. It's one thing to be a college legend, to be known for fourth-quarter comebacks in bowl games against State U.; it's another to do it in the NFL, in the playoffs, in the Super Bowl.

Montana played across the country from New Jersey, for the San Francisco 49ers. Without any allegiance to the local teams playing in New Jersey yet still using "New York" in their names, I began watching how the 49ers did. I followed them, became a fan. I watched the 1989 Super Bowl as Montana worked more magic and was hooked. It hurt, though, in 1991 when the Giants knocked the Niners out of the playoffs and Montana out of San Francisco. He went down with an elbow injury from a hard hit and that began the slide into retirement. Steve Young came in and performed so well that Montana was traded to Kansas City to finish out his career.

Yet I still followed the 49ers and came to like Steve Young just as much. I got to go to a 49ers-Jets game one year and was one of the few happy people in the Meadowlands when Young led the Niners to something like a 35-3 victory. I used the binoculars we'd brought both to look at Young on the field and Montana on the sidelines. I bought the t-shirt from Sports Illustrated in 1995 when they won their fifth Super Bowl. But then, over the years, the team faded, changed coaches, lost their owner (himself a Notre Dame grad) in a legal snarl, lost Young to a career-ending series of concussions, missed the playoffs. They've rebounded in recent years, making the playoffs and, this season, winning the division. But the current management wasn't happy with the lack of success once they got to the playoffs, and instead of giving coach Steve Mariucci the chance to improve upon that record in the last year of his contract during the 2003 season, they abruptly fired him. (The Niners claimed Mariucci asked for more power, more say in player personnel decisions; Mariucci and his agent deny that accusation.)

Mariucci found a new job before the Niners found a new coach. The Michigan native returned home to coach the Detroit Lions, who perhaps more unfairly dismissed their coach (to whom they'd given a post-season vote of confidence) days after Mariucci's firing. San Francisco interviewed canidates for weeks, expressing their interest in the defensive coordinators of several NFL teams while they said they wanted a more defensive-minded coach for a team that has no trouble scoring points but struggles to keep opponents out of the end zone. By the end of this past weekend, they said they'd have a coach by the end of the week, and three defensive coordinators were at the top of the list � or so everyone thought. Ted Cottrell of the Jets and Greg Blache of the Bears were both highly considered (and both are black, a big deal with the NFL), as was the 49ers' own defensive coordinator, Jim Mora Jr. A few college coaches � Rick Neuheisel at Washington, Bob Stoops at Oklahoma � were mentioned, but not seriously by either the 49ers or the coaches themselves.

And then yesterday, the 49ers announced they'd be hiring offensive-minded Oregon State coach Dennis Erickson. At first I thought, Damn, that sucks for those other three who thought they had a good shot and were sitting by the phone. Then I thought, Hmm ... I'm not so sure I like this. Finally, I decided I'm no longer a 49ers fan.

First off, Cottrell was the one I'd hope would get it because I've become something of a Jets fan over the past five years (as with the Yankees, there are too many Giants fans in this area) and I'm sure he's earned it. He's been mentioned as a candidate for various head-coach openings the past two offseasons, and the NFL could use a few more black head coaches. It's not an Affirmative Action kind of thing, but there are certainly a lot of qualified guys out there.

Secondly, Erickson screwed his former employer. A week ago today, Erickson signed 21 high school seniors to national � binding � letters of intent to attend Oregon State and play for him in Corvalis. Today, those 21 18-year-olds no doubt feel a little confusion and, perhaps, apprehension at beginning camp in August. After all, the man who made all the promises to them won't be there to see that they're carried out.

And third, Erickson's a prick. He coached the Beavers back in the 2001 Fiesta Bowl when a clearly better team dismantled a slower Notre Dame squad. (That's the first time I've admitted as much in print. If you visit that link, you'll see little mention of the game.) But it wasn't the fact that Oregon State beat the Irish so handily, it was the way they did it � with all the arrogance and bravado of a bully who doesn't steal the lunch money to expand his wallet but for the sheer joy of inflicting suffering. It wasn't so much the winning that mattered, it was the humiliating. It was the same way with Erickson's teams at the University of Miami in the late 80s and early 90s (which I loathed). He'd brought the brashness from the Southeast and moved it to the Northwest. In short, he's the "cock" in "cocky."

So now I'm something of a free-agent fan, like Michael Volpe was regarding baseball several years ago. I'm not going to write to teams or really put much thought into it. I'll probably loosely consider myself a Jets or Steelers fan and just enjoy NFL football for what it is, and what it can never be � college football, which is so much better anyway.

But until Erickson coaches his way out of San Francisco, I won't be pulling for them.