It used to be like Christmas morning

when in July during my formative years I'd see the mail come and my Eastbay football issue would be waiting for me in the mailbox. This was back before the internet was used for anything other than AOL chatting. There were web pages and stuff but they'd take forever to load and they were hit or miss. No one shopped online, at least around here. And around here we didn't have any nice Niketown stores or any of that garbage. Nothing more than Olympia Sports. And let's just say Olympia Sports generally sucks in it's supply of decent shit other than running shoes and we'll leave it at that. But seriously, I used to love the day that magazine would arrive. I'd spend a week or two just stewing over what I should get. And bang, a week's pay from Coastal T Shirts would be headed to ma'dukes so I could throw cleats, gloves and whatever else on her plastic money card.

This is also a good time for me to remind everyone out there that I was the first person in the state of Maine to wear Under Armour. It was back as an eighth grader in the fall of 1998 (which is crazy, right? I mean, that was only 10ish years ago. And now Under Armour is EVERYWHERE. Polyester, moisture-wicking t's are just the thing to wear for any activity. That's pretty wild to me.) and the only place you could by Under Armour was by mail direct from Under Armour headquarters in Maryland. I saw their add in a Street & Smith's NFL preview magazine that Skip would always pick up around the 4th of July to read while we'd sit on the lake at my grandparents.

They made t shirts. Period. They made two different shirt fits: Tight and loose. They had two different colors: white and black. You could get long sleeve in and short sleeve in both, but with the tight shirts you could get sleeveless and a half shirt. All "Heat Gear," all the time. Just shirts that would stay lightweight when they got wet.
And look where we're at now. Under Armour makes 90000 (or so..) different things and every other clothing supllier has copied their design to one degree or another. Under Armour is a uniform and clothing supplier to a bunch of colleges and hell, they even make sneakers. Not bad, UA. But let the record show: It was me, baby. Me.

It was really kind of funny because the year after I got a long sleeve and a short sleeve shirt was when they started offering new colors and different thicknesses. And most everyone else who played football around here started wearing it. '99 was the first year they offered their underoos, too. Not the underoos they sell now but their standard compression shorts. This redesign also lead to a slightly different (now current) chest logo. The first logo used to have little cutouts where the U and the A cross over one another. This allowed me to prove without a shadow of a doubt I brought this stuff into the area (Don't ask me why I remember [or care to remember...] this, I think it's pretty strange, too). Everyone remembers Miller as the Under Armour guy because he had 65 different shirts for all occasions. I had a couple of them, but dammit, my favorite was the one I got first. Sleeveless. As a sophomore it got torn in back so by the time I was a senior it was basically a half shirt. And it wasn't exactly white when it was all said and done. But there's something special about your first. It's like a new pair of underwear. At first, it's constrictive. But after awhile it becomes a part of you. Cheers.