This house was a good place to grow up loving Philly sports. Now it’s time to say goodbye.

On the day the couple saw the house for the first time, the kid scurried through the backyard, to the creek bubbling there, and he ran right to the edge and slipped and fell in, soaking himself from the thighs down.

Well, the couple figured, rolling their eyes at their son, guess we have to buy it now.

They would have bought it anyway. He was in law enforcement. She would be a librarian and schoolteacher for close to 30 years. The house was right where they wanted to be, in the suburbs but close to the city, a short drive from where they had grown up and where their families still lived. They wouldn’t have to change parishes, and the kid and his younger sister wouldn’t have to change schools.

The house was a beige colonial in a cozy cul-de-sac. It had a maple tree blooming in front and a kitchen with wide windows that let the morning sun stream in. It had a musty basement that they could fix up someday. And it had, set at the bottom of a slightly sloping hill, that backyard, with a willow tree and a row of bushes at one end, with the creek slicing through mysterious woods thick with nettles and knotweed.

The kid wasn’t yet 8 years old, and he thought the house and that yard were amazing. Then they got even better.

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Not long after the couple moved in, there was a knock at the front door. Two boys were standing there. They had heard there was a new family in the neighborhood who had a kid around their age. One boy lived two doors down. The other lived four doors down. They said two brothers lived just next door, and there were more kids living in houses around and not far from the cul-de-sac. Those kids and others — some of them blue-collar, some of them with a little more money, some Catholic, some Jewish, some Korean, some East Indian, some Black — would end up knocking on the door a lot.

It didn’t take long for the house to become a hub of activity. The closest stretch of street doubled as a hockey rink and touch football field, and the backyard was the neighborhood’s baseball stadium. A gray stone was first base. A thin tree was third base. The willow tree was both second base and a kind of Green Monster, a high outfield wall near the line of bushes, which functioned as an ideal home-run fence. A Wiffle bat and a tennis ball were all the equipment the players needed, as long as a foul ball didn’t splash into the creek.

If it did, that was just a reason to take a break from the game and explore the woods, to build a fort or a hut, then come running back with your legs and arms itching and stinging from the nettles, knowing that you were about to be slathered in Calamine lotion and that it wouldn’t help much. It was a small price to pay. Once your skin wasn’t so red and blotchy, it was back to the woods or the makeshift ballpark. Or to one of the driveway basketball hoops in the neighborhood. Or, after dark, to the house’s front porch — home base for every game of Ghost in the Graveyard. There were arguments and teasing and the occasional fistfight. It was a good place to learn how to get along with people.

To the kid, the house’s living room TV was a portal, transporting him to Veterans Stadium for Eagles and Phillies games, to the Spectrum for Flyers and 76ers games, to the Palestra for the Big Five. The couple joined him on those journeys and more: to Lexington, Ky., for Villanova’s national championship in 1985, to Tokyo for Buster Douglas’s upset of Mike Tyson in 1990, to Super Bowls and Olympics. And the kitchen was where the kid read about all those events and athletes every morning, newspapers open and spread out like a tablecloth. The house was a great place to discover sports, to learn how to talk and write about them.

The couple, after saving up, furnished the basement. They added a pool table, put in a modest bar, set up a turntable and speakers, and transformed what had been little more than a giant crawl space into a welcoming gathering spot. Their family and friends would congregate there at parties and holidays — ice swirling and clinking in glasses; John Mellencamp on the stereo, singing about small towns and memories; laughter and stories and chop-busting. The kid and his buddies could hang out, play pool, crash on the couch or on the carpeted floor. In high school and on summer nights in college, it was a good place to bring a date.

The couple hosted pre-prom photo sessions and graduation celebrations and loads of Sunday dinners, usually with an Eagles or Phillies game on the living room TV. The neighborhood didn’t change much over the years. When a family moved away, another family — sometimes friendly, sometimes private and quiet — moved in. So the couple never felt any compulsion or desire to find another house. The kid and his sister eventually started their own families, and the couple watched their grandchildren climb the maple tree in the spring and sled down the hill in the winter and toss rocks and branches into the creek in the summertime.

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Last week, someone knocked on the house’s door, and the couple answered it. In the dining room were stacks of boxes packed with books and photographs. In the driveway was a moving truck. The couple had lived in the house for 42 years, but the trouble with getting older is that staircases get steeper and floors get lower and a house, even this house, can get to be too much.

The kid hasn’t been a kid in a while, of course, but always, whenever he was in the house, part of him felt like he still was. He filled his car with boxes and lamps and plastic containers to drive them to the apartment that would be his parents’ new home. Before he did, he walked to the backyard, stared out at the creek, and snapped a photo. The couple who bought the house are expecting their first child in December. They’re lucky. They found a good place.