The logo of the Houston Colt .45s baseball franchise, which entered the National League as an expansion franchise along with the New York Mets in 1962. The Colts flew somewhat under the radar as the Mets dominated the news as a laughing-stock franchise. Hall of Famer Joe Morgan started his career as a Colt. The team’s owner, Judge Roy Hofheinz, had the world’s first domed stadium built, The Astrodome , and the team moved into the dome in 1964, and was renamed the Astros.
Archive for July, 2010
Classic Sports Card of The Day
A 1970s basketball card of Phil Jackson, who was one of the best “sixth men” in the NBA in his playing days, coming off the bench for the New York Knicks title teams of 1969 and 1973 to provide a spark at both ends of the court. Jackson’s coaching career has far surpassed his playing career, as he has coached the Chicago Bulls and now the Los Angeles Lakers to 11 NBA championships.
Classic Team Logo of The Day
On the left is the logo of the Cleveland Rams, who played in the NFL until 1946, when they were moved to Los Angeles. The logo always looked like a ram’s skull to me. The logo on the right became the Rams logo after the move to L.A. It’s pretty much the same ram skull with the California sun adding some color to the horns, and the ram’s mouth is open. Ironically, the Rams moved from Cleveland to L.A. to avoid competing with Paul Brown’s new Cleveland Browns franchise in the All America Football Conference. The Browns moved into the NFL in 1950, and promptly won the league’s championship game in their first season in the league, 30-28, over the Rams.
Classic Sports Card of The Day
www.CheckOutMyCards.com is one of the best online sites for sports cards, and this hockey card of Buffalo Sabres Hall of Famer Gilbert Perreault is an example of the great cards that can be viewed there. The Sabres won a coin flip with the other expansion team entering the NHL in 1970, the Vancouver Canucks, and Buffalo general manager Punch Imlach used the pick to grab Perreault, who anchored the Buffalo franchise for 17 seasons, and led them to 11 straight playoff appearances. Perrealt was a 9 time NHL All-star, won the Calder Trophy as rookie of the year, and holds most Sabres franchise scoring records. His jersey number “11” has been retired by the team.
FIFA World Cup Finale
The FIFA World Cup Soccer Tournament finally winds up on Sunday with a championship game between Spain and The Netherlands. I know soccer is the most popular sport on the planet but I’ve never had the slightest interest in it. I’ll admit I’ve been impressed with the athleticism of some of the players they’ve shown on the World Cup highlights, especially the goals scored on “headers”. Soccer to me is the best sport to start out youngsters in, due to its’ simplicity and the fact that all you need to play is a ball. All over the world the sport is played by kids whether they’re rich or poor, and in fact it is probably recognized as the one thing kids can enjoy in poverty-stricken nations. But here in the U.S., in my opinion, it is a bit of an elitist sport. When I think of soccer in the U.S., I think of this incident – once my son was playing in a baseball game on a complex that had other fields around the baseball diamond, and a foul ball was hit into a soccer field in the complex where a kids’ soccer game was going on. The ball rolled up to the feet of a father of one of the soccer kids, a rosy-cheeked snooty looking guy dressed in khaki pants, a golf shirt and a cardigan neatly tied around his shoulders. He picked up the ball and as players from the baseball field called to him to throw it, he twirled around and flung the ball into a nearby woods. It was unfortunate that those kids playing the soccer game had to hear the obscenities that the baseball players, mostly in their late teens and early twenties, heaped on this guy. But that pompous ass, to me, pretty much sums up soccer in the U.S. With all due respect to the Rwandan team that shares my website’s name, the Rayon Sports Football Club, I’m afraid this is one sports fan who will never warm up to the sport of soccer.
Classic Team Logo of The Day
The San Diego Clippers of the National Basketball Association came into existence in 1978, when the Buffalo Braves franchise was moved there. This is their logo. The franchise lasted in San Diego until 1984, when they moved up the coast to Los Angeles. The franchise, amazingly, did not qualify for the playoffs in the NBA after leaving Buffalo until 1992, when they were already in Los Angeles.
Classic Sports Card of The Day
This is a 1957 Topps football card of Hall of Fame quarterback Bart Starr. Starr’s career began in 1956 when he joined the Green Bay Packers as an “afterthought” 17th round round draft pick, so this card is from early in Starr’s career, before Vince Lombardi arrived to coach the team. Starr flourished under Lombardi’s tutelage and developed into one of the most efficient, if not flashiest, quarterbacks of the 1960s, and without a doubt was the winningest signal-caller of the decade, leading the Packers to 5 titles.
Classic Team Logo of The Day
Logo of the World Hockey Association’s Birmingham Bulls, who were owned by bombastic John Bassett. Bassett tried to lure Wayne Gretzky to the Bulls but didn’t succeed, but did sign Canadian national hero Paul Henderson, who had scored a big goal to defeat the Soviets in 1972. Of course Henderson did little to excite the fan base in Alabama. Bassett did sign a number of future stars to his team, and they were nicknamed the “Baby Bulls”. Among those players – Michel Goulet, Rick Vaive, Craig Hartsburg and Rob Ramage.