Like so many of the previous posters, it's the past for me.
The older I get, the more I savor the memories of the past. My wife and I would love to wander the town where we grew up a block away from each other for a summer day in 1965 or '66 to savor what we remember and re-see what we've forgotten. It's the "Our Town" phenomenon, I guess.
If I could time travel, I'd bounce around from pre-history, like the Captain, to watch mastodons on the march, to Shakespeare's London to see Burbage in full throat in a rehearsal at the Globe, from the forests of colonial New England to the old West where I could ride a fine horse into new country, in the words of Gus McCrae. Then there's Leonardo's workshop, V-J Day in Times Square, Philadelphia in the summer of 1776 and various courtrooms where Thurgood Marshall helped to reshape a nation.
For me, for so many reasons, I would love to be able to say that I had seen Jackie Robinson's first professional game (not counting the Negro Leagues) at Roosevelt Field, Jersey City, (my hometown) on April 18, 1946.
He was with the Dodgers' top farm club, the Montreal Royals, who were playing the Jersey City Giants, and to near-unanimous cheering, he kicked serious baseball ass in front of nearly 52,000 fans (in a stadium that seated about 24-and-change) who watched him ground out in the first, hit a three-run bomb to left in the third, bunt for a hit in the fifth, steal second, go to third on a groundout, fake a steal of home -- forcing a balk -- and then repeat the same feat in the eighth (bunt single, steal, advance on an out, fake a steal, get balked home). Oh, and in the seventh, between the two bunt hits, he singled to right, stole second again and scored on a triple.
Four hits, 7 total bases, 4 runs, four RBI, 3 assists, two putouts, 2 stolen bases. Hey, have a feckin' day, Jack!
Montreal won 14-1. Jackie figured in 7 of those runs.
How do you like that kinda shite, white baseball?!
He was a man. Damn right he was.
Sorry. Just thinking about that moment gets me jazzed up.
Oh, and for good measure...
The famous 1908 Merkle's Boner game at the Polo Grounds.
Babe Ruth's three-homer game at Forbes Field, Pittsburgh, 1935. It should have been his last game.
Any performance at the Globe of a Shakespeare play during his lifetime. Or at the Blackfriar's, perhaps to see "Cymbeline."
The Gettysburg Address, or anything Lincoln said in public.
Watching Daniel Inouye win the DSC (belatedly upgraded to the Medal of Honor) in Italy. Read about that the next time you feel like bitching about pain.
Seeing the Palisades from the Half Moon as it sailed up the Hudson in 1609. The moment Fitzgerald immortalized at the end of "The Great Gatsby."
"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past," he wrote.
How right he was, fellow lovers of classic comics...