Flanked by Dan Marino (left) and Steve Young at the Hall of Fame luncheon. Barbara Young

SI.com's Peter King will keep a daily blog as he travels across the country visiting NFL training camps. Click here to read all of Peter's entries.

This is a Day I'll Remember for a While

Canton, Ohio 1 p.m.

Canton Civic Center, Hall of Fame roundtable luncheon. The place is packed. I'm on a stage in the middle of the place, with the two yellow-jacketed enshrinees, Dan Marino and Steve Young, is front of me, Young to the left (fittingly) and Marino to the right.

Joe Horrigan, the Hall's Vice President in Charge of Everything, asked me to emcee this luncheon a few months ago. Quite frankly, I immediately began thinking of a way I could say no. Training camp is a time I like to see as many teams as I can in a two-and-a-half-week period, and because the Hall ceremonies come smack dab in the middle of that time, I usually skip them. But I thought of what an honor this would be, and what a good time it would be to emcee a roundtable chat with Marino and Young, two of my favorite people in the time I've covered the NFL. How can you turn down something as cool as this?

You know how nutso the crowd Sunday was for Marino? As nutso as I've ever seen a crowd at a Hall induction in any sport. So when I got up at the podium, I said, "I'd like to try an experiment, if you don't mind? DAN MARINO"

The place erupted. I stood in awe of the roof coming off the place. For 54 seconds, I couldn't go on. The roar was just enormous.

It made me realize there have been heroes in sports in my lifetime: Mickey Mantle, Bill Russell, Reggie Jackson, Michael Jordan, Joe Montana, Mark McGwire, Roger Clemens, Brett Favre. But a guy who's up there with all of them is on the same stage with me, tired and awestruck by it all.

I did make an interesting mistake early on. I believe it's called 'an inauspicious debut.' I introduced Young's wife, Barbara, as "Steve's young wife, Barbara." I didn't mean it, but she didn't seem to mind.

We sat on the stage, and I asked Young and Marino the things I'd want to know. Stories from Young's ill-fated USFL days. How Marino now gets such a quietly vengeful kick out of all the teams that passed on him on draft day 1983. Young quieting a family member who yelled out "Joe Who?" after Steve threw six touchdown passes and won Super Bowl XXIX MVP. And this: I had to know from Marino whether he'd warmed up on Sunday morning for his 35-yard throw to Mark Clayton that capped his speech, and I had to know whether he thought to himself: I'm going to look like a pretty big fool, and a washed-up one, if I overthrow the guy.

No, he never threw a ball all day before picking that one up.

And no, he never thought he might throw an errant pass.

"Never entered my mind," he said. "I knew I'd hit him right in the chest."

That, ladies and gentlemen, is why Dan Marino is Dan Marino.