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When you shake it all down.

You live and die with your sport teams.

My blood bleeds a combination of Dodger Blue, Laker purple and gold, Ram white and blue.

RIVALRIES

As much as I love my Rams, Lakers, Dodgers, USC and Smokin Joe Frazier.

I hated the Niners, Celtics, Giants, Norte Dame (Ali I didn't hate but didn't love either).

What is odd is you need those teams you hate.

We take our sport memories and enshrine them, creating personal halls of fame in our minds.

And when it comes to images, especially Fearsome Foursome images, it keeps our history immediate, as if nothing were ever really lost.

Or gets old.

It is coming on 20 years since Gibson's HR and seems like a week ago friday.

27 years since I sat next to my late Father in the Rose Bowl for Super Bowl 14 and it seems it was just 2 days ago.

Pat Summerall's voice of introducing the Rams defense that day is embedded in my mind forever.

I see my Mom with her pall mall cigarette and coffee cup looking at the radio waiting for Vin Scully next word the night he threw his Perfect game.

Images can take you back in time that 30 years seems like days ago.

I hear my Father say "turn around" as we were outside the Forum and Wilt Chamberlain walked right by this 12 year old.

Sometimes, images can take you back to bittersweet memories.

Merlin Olsen kneeling as he knows he just lost the last chance to get to the Super Bowl in the 1976 NFC Championship game.

Or the Lakers losing game 7 of the 1984 NBA Finals.

From the World Series, Ram playoffs, NBA Finals.

Where were you when the Lakers won their championships, when Sandy Koufax threw his perfect game against the Cubs, when Magic Johnson hit that mini sky hook, when Vinnie hit Waddy. When the fight of the century happened.

Images and memories.

What a great exacta.

YE OLDE RAMS ALL-TIME TEAM

The game had changed. They hadn't. The earth had cooled. They couldn't.