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Archive for July, 2010

Classic Team Logo of The Day

13 Jul

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.

 

Classic Sports Card of The Day

13 Jul

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.

 

Goalie Masks In Hockey

12 Jul

One of the first hockey posts that I did for this blog was a discussion of who was the greatest NHL goaltender of all time, and my choice was Terry Sawchuk, with the main reason being that not only did he dominate his era, but that era was the time when goalies played without masks. The blog included a picture of the accumulated damage done to Sawchuk’s face over the years. Most people would agree that the mask was a positive addition to the game. The picture above on the left is of another legendary goalie, Jacques Plante, donning his mask for the first time. I remember that same picture being used on t-shirts that read “GIVE BLOOD…PLAY HOCKEY!” In today’s game the mask has been replaced by the goalie helmet, and even though there are lot of creative masks being worn out there, it’s just not the same as it used to be. Boston’s Gerry Cheevers used a unique approach for his mask. He started each season with a clean white one, then would paint “stitches” on it in every spot he got hit as the season went on. His mask is shown in the picture above on the right. Here are a couple of other memorable masks from the past:

Mike Liut of the St.Louis Blues. 

      

Gary Simmons (also wore a “Cobra” mask in later years)

Here are some masks worn in movies, that wouldn’t quite make the grade for the NHL (the one in the top right corner is from the classic hockey movie “Slapshot”; I’m not sure about the others:

 

Classic Team Logo of The Day

12 Jul

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

12 Jul

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

09 Jul

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.

 
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Classic Team Logo of The Day

09 Jul

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

09 Jul

 

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.

 

MLB – Relief Pitchers

08 Jul

Today’s sports card of the day is of one of the pioneers of relief pitching in baseball, Roy Face of the Pittsburgh Pirates, and it got me to thinking how much pitching has become specialized in major league baseball today. In the past starting pitchers were expected to finish what they started, and horses like Don Drysdale, Bob Gibson, Juan Marichal and Wilbur Wood would be upset if they didn’t complete their starts. I believe Wood once won both ends of a doubleheader, although he didn’t start both games and was a knuckleball pitcher which is less strain on the arm.  In today’s game, a starter is considered to have made a “quality start” if he lasts 5 innings, and then the game gets turned over to the specialists, the middle relievers, the “set up man”, and finally, the “closer”. Pitchers are paid enormous amounts of money to come into a game and get 3 outs (sometimes only 1 or 2), then if they come in for an inning 2 nights in a row, they need to be rested. Yes, I did just roll my eyes. Don’t even get me started on pitch counts. For better or worse, the game is what it is now, and the role of closer has evolved into a much-respected position in baseball. New York’s Mariano Rivera has elevated the position to new heights. In the 1960s there were relievers who began the “closer evolution”, like Face, Hoyt Wilhelm and Ron Perranoski of the Dodgers. The first pitcher that I remember who started to glamorize the position was Rollie Fingers (pictured above) of the three-time World Series champion Oakland A’s in the early 1970s. His handlebar mustache paved the way for the mean-looking facial hair look of guys like Rich Gossage, Bruce Sutter and later on Dennis Eckersley. So the days of Koufax, Drysdale, Claude Osteen and Johnny Podres starting games and once in awhile turning the late innings over to Perranoski are over. Now every team has a five man starting rotation with each starter getting at least 4 days rest between starts, and a bullpen loaded with short relievers, long relievers, mop up men, set up men, left-hand specialists and closers to finish the job for them. When I see how many of those starting pitchers wind up on the disabled list, it makes me wonder if progress is always for the best, and gives me a greater appreciation for modern day guys like Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee and C.C. Sabathia, for whom the complete game is not a lost art.

 

Classic Team Logo of The Day

08 Jul

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.