Bring on Soda Popinski!

As children my brother and I were never allowed to be sports players for Halloween.  When you walked around the neighborhoods going Trick or Treating, you always saw tons of kids dressed as Yankees or Giants or Rangers, but my Mom would have nothing of it.  I think she had some good points, too.  First off, kids wore sports jerseys all the time, anyway (and that's basically all dressing like an athlete entails), so wearing a hockey sweater wasn't "special" enough of be called a Halloween costume.  I also think she didn't like it because it wasn't unique, and I can respect that - Halloween is all about standing out, and you can't do that if 47 other kids in your community are wearing the same thing as you.

Now that I'm older, I pick my own Halloween costumes (though I still always consult Mom . . .).  While I'm now "free" to go as an athlete, I've never done so.  It always feels like a bit of a cop out and, unless done really well, seems a bit weak.  That being said, it's always in the back of my mind - as a huge sports fan whose life revolves around my fvorite teams, why shouldn't I go as Chipper Jones or John Tavares or Danilo Gallinari?  All of this got me thinking - maybe there's an in-between option.  Maybe there's a way I can go as something peripherally sports related, but which also brings in some of my other interests.

This year, I have a costume I'm pretty excited about.  In addition to sports, I've always been a fan of video games, particularly early 1990's era Nintendo Entertainment System games.  On top of that, I love obscure cultural references.  Is there an obscure costume that combines 20 year-old video game characters and sports, you ask?  You bet there is!  I give you a sneak preview of my 2010 Halloween costume concept: Little Mac from Mike Tyson's Punch Out!

Though he's advanced some, Little Mac's classic look remains relatively unchanged.

It's a relatively easy costume to execute, since it basically only involves black shoes, green shorts, a black tank top and boxing gloves.  It's also a good costume, in my opinion, because even if people don't get the specific cultural reference, they'll just assume I'm dressed as a generic boxer, which as a backup interpretation works pretty well.  All in all, I'm pretty excited about this idea and think I can pull it off reasonably well (and I pretty much already own all of the necessary ingredients).  Unless someone has an alternate great last-minute idea, I'm going as Little Mac this year.  I'm looking forward to seeing what other interesting sports-themes costumes are out this Saturday night.