Think I started just after Christmas of 2001/start of 2002. I beleive that would have been 1.4/1.4b (correct me if I'm wrong). Was addicted then, took a little hiatus, and now addicted again. Not sure how I found out about DB.
I found out because a couple of my mates in #beyondunreal showed me and we kicked around a little, that's how BuD was created - Beyond Unreal Deathball... aka Brutal Deluxe (after the speedball team)
i started @ the grand old time of 1.4b, was introduced by panda when we were playing footy one time, been playing ever since then, tho have decreased my playing time a lot recently due to CTF.
I bought UT2003 for bombing run but got bored of that pretty fast. Was at a lan at my friend's house and checked to see if there were any mods for it yet and saw the sticky thread by CliffyB in the official forums about Deathball 1.0 and the rest is history.