RSS
 

Archive for the ‘Feature Stories’ Category

MLB – Top 5 Left-Handed Pitchers of All Time

08 Jun

One of the most valuable commodities for any major league baseball team to have is good left-handed pitching. Today I am listing my choices for the five top left-handed starting pitchers of all time. I did not include players from baseball’s old “dead ball” era like Eddie Plank and Lefty Grove, since their stats are somewhat skewed. My choices are therefore limited to players that I’ve actually seen pitch. Here are my picks for the 5 greatest “southpaws” of all time:

1. Sandy Koufax – Koufax has been called a “Supernova” because he played 12 seasons in the majors, but his best work was compressed into 6 years, from 1961 to 1966, when he was the most dominant pitcher in the game. He won 3 Cy Young Awards, and was voted the award unanimously all 3 times. He was a seven time all star, won 4 World Series and was Series MVP twice. He pitched 4 no-hitters in his career, and in 1963 was voted NL MVP, an award rarely given to a pitcher. My personal memory of Koufax, which pushed him to the top of this list, is the 1965 World Series when his Los Angeles Dodgers met the Twins. He refused to pitch the opening game because it fell on the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur, and the Twins won the first 2 games. After the Dodgers battled back to tie the Series, Koufax pitched a complete game shutout in Game 5, then after the Twins won to force a game 7, he came back on 2 days rest and pitched a 3-hit shutout to clinch the title for the Dodgers.

2. Whitey Ford – it amazes me how little respect this guy gets when people discuss the greatest all-time pitchers in baseball history, and that probably is due to the fact that he played on New York Yankee teams, for 16 years, that were loaded with marquee players. Still, to his teammates and Yankee fans, Ford is “The Chairman of The Board”. He was a 10 time all star and pitched for 6 World Series-winning teams in New York. He won the Cy Young Award in 1961, when only one Cy Young was awarded, not one in each league, and was also World Series MVP that year. Ford was a dominant post-season pitcher, with 10 World Series wins. He started Game One in a World Series for the Yanks 8 times. The one year he didn’t, in 1960, the Yanks lost to the Pittsburgh Pirates in seven games, and Ford only was able to start twice, winning both times.

3. Warren Spahn – if this list were based on longevity alone, Spahn would be at the top. He pitched for 21 years, and was a 20-game winner 13 times, including a 23-7 season when he was 42 years old. His 363 career wins are the most of any left-hander in baseball history. Baseball awards the “Warren Spahn Award” annually to the the game’s top southpaw. Really, you could rearrange the top 3 on this list in any order and get no argument from me. A story that best describes Spahn – on July 2, 1963, at age 42, he was involved in an epic pitchers’ duel with the Giants’ 25-year old ace, Juan Marichal. Both hurlers threw complete games in a battle that lasted 16 innings, finally decided, 1-0, by a Willie Mays solo homer in the bottom of the 16th off Spahn. Marichal threw 227 pitches that day, Spahn 201 in the loss.

4. Steve Carlton – Carlton’s career ended in 1988, and one stat he possesses is an indictment of today’s pitchers. He is the last pitcher from any team to throw 300 innings in a season. Also on his resume are 4 Cy Young Awards, 10 all star appearances, 2 World Series titles, a plaque in the Hall of Fame and even a Gold Glove Award for his fielding. In 1972, pitching for the last place Phillies, “Lefty” won 27 games, a remarkable feat considering his team won a total of 59 games all season. 

5. Randy Johnson –  “The Big Unit” was clearly not only one of the top southpaws of all time, but one of the top pitchers period. He won more Cy Youngs (5) than the others on the list, had more career strikeouts, and threw 2 no-hitters, including a perfect game. He is third on the all-time list for hit batsmen, so he was a throwback intimidator who used his 100+ MPH fastball and cutting slider to his advantage. Johnson was also a 10-time all star, and not only won a World Series (with the Arizona Diamondbacks) but was MVP of the Series. The stat that landed him at the #5 spot is his paltry 100 complete games in his 22-year career. By comparison, Spahn had 382, Carlton 254, Koufax 137 in 12 seasons, and Ford 156 in 16 seasons.

 
2 Comments

Posted in Baseball, Feature Stories

 

NHL – Top Five Goaltenders of All Time

06 Jun

Television today is loaded with various reality shows. They are everywhere and range from the interesting to the ridiculous. Another type of show that has become popular is the “list” show, where topics like “Best TV Moms Of All Time” or “Greatest One Hit Wonders of the ’80s” are covered, usually by a group of washed-up celebrities. I find these shows interesting since they stir up debates over whatever topic they are listing, and I’ve decided to begin doing the same thing on this blog with sports topics. I’ll start today with a list of the 5 greatest NHL goaltenders of all time. This was a tough list to compile, since there have been so many great ones over the years. I’ve left off the list a couple who are probably a bit underrated because they played on talent-laden teams – Billy Smith of the New York Islanders and Grant Fuhr of Edmonton. There are a couple who will be on most people’s list but didn’t make the cut on mine – Gerry Cheevers and Dominik Hasek. Bernie Parent was a tremendous goalie but doesn’t have the longevity of the others. The one man who was toughest to eliminate from the final list was Johnny Bower, who helped Toronto win 3 Stanley Cups in the 1960s. He was one of the best and played for many years, but in my opinion was one of the guys who “hung around” during the expansion days long past his best years. Despite leaving Bower off the list, 3 of my top 5 are old school guys from the 1950s and ’60s who played a lot of their careers without masks and without the advantage of the modern equipment and padding that today’s goalies have. Here are my choices:

1. Terry Sawchuk – I featured the photo above on an earlier post where I proclaimed Sawchuk as the greatest goalie of all time. He played most of his career in the pre-mask era and his face shows the effects. During his career, he won 4 Stanley Cups and 4 Vezina Trophies, and despite not being technically sound, he stopped nearly everything and was known as a great competitor. He had 103 shutouts in his career, the most in history until Martin Brodeur surpassed him. In my opinion, he deserves the top spot on this list for courage alone.

2. Patrick Roy – if this were a top ten list, it would probably have 4 Montreal goalies on it. Roy is the best goaltender on a franchise that defines the sport. He won 4 Stanley Cups, 2 with the Canadiens and 2 in Colorado, and was the Conn Smythe Trophy winner 3 times. Roy was one of the greatest clutch performers at the position of all time.

3. Martin Brodeur – although my list favors the old-timers, you can’t ignore excellence no matter what era it was achieved in. Brodeur has won 3 Stanley Cups and 4 Vezinas, and is the only active goalie on my list, so his stats are still fluid. As stated above, Brodeur surpassed Sawchuk for all-time career shutouts, and like Roy did in winning his 2 Cups in Montreal, he backstopped teams that had no business winning championships in New Jersey. Like Roy, he was the difference in his team being championship calibre and being average.

4. Jacques Plante – another old school Montreal goalie makes the list. When you look at his career numbers, you have to figure that he should be higher – he backstopped the Habs to 5 CONSECUTIVE Cups in the late ’50s, won 7 Vezina Trophies and even garnered a Hart Trophy as league MVP once. Those Montreal teams did have some of the greatest players of all time on their roster however. Plante was an innovator also – he was the first to don a mask (after taking a shot to the nose).

5. Glenn Hall – another of the greats from hockey’s golden age. Hall won 2 Cups and 2 Vezinas, but his greatest career achievement may be this – he started 502 consecutive games in goal. There is no way any of today’s pampered players ever touch that mark, which obviously is an NHL record.

 
2 Comments

Posted in Feature Stories, Hockey

 

Happy Birthday, Yogi Berra!

12 May

When you’re a sports fan, over the years you develop a “love” for the teams you follow in each sport, and almost as much of a “hate” for the teams that are their rivals. As more and more time goes by, however, you come to realize that that “hate” grows into what is more of a respect – respect that the “hated” team gave you a lot of aggravation because your team just couldn’t beat them. My “hatred” for coach Don Shula was monumental during the years that his Miami Dolphin teams dominated the Buffalo Bills, but looking back, there was no way those Bills’ teams were going to compete with Shula’s Miami teams. So the “hatred” becomes respect once you have the perspective of realizing that the guy was one of the best, arguably THE best, NFL coach of all time.

I’ve been a Cleveland Indian fan my whole life, and my “hatred” for the New York Yankees goes back a good 45 years, since the Indians have been consistent losers most of those years while the Yankees have been dominant. I still catch myself checking out the baseball scores and being momentarily upset when I see that the Yankees beat say, the Twins or the Tigers, then realize – “wait, that’s a good thing for the Indians.” Old habits die hard. In the case of the old Yankee teams I grew up despising, I really have a great deal of respect for them now. Looking back, the 1950s/’60s dynasty was winding down in the first few years I remember following baseball, and in actuality they struggled for most of the decade of the ’60s. I have the utmost respect for the Yankee players of that era now – guys like Whitey Ford, Mickey Mantle, Clete Boyer, Elston Howard, Moose Skowron, Tony Kubek, Bobby Richardson and especially Roger Maris. In my mind, Maris’ single-season home run record of 61 still deserves an asterisk, only now the asterisk should be followed by the statement – “the REAL non-chemically enhanced single-season record.”

Out of all those old Yankee players, the guy you can’t help but love is Lawrence “Yogi” Berra, whose birthday is today. Yogi was nearing the end of the line when I remember him playing, but I do remember him being a tremendous clutch player, even at the end of his playing days. With apologies to Johnny Bench and Carlton Fisk, Berra is the greatest major league catcher of all time. He may also be the greatest ambassador for the game that baseball has ever had. I don’t know if there has ever been a person born on the planet who loves baseball more than Yogi, and any time I catch a show that includes him telling old baseball stories or giving a tour of his museum, I can’t help but stop and watch. Thank you, Yogi, for being a part of an era in baseball when I learned to love the game, even though at the time I thought I “hated” you. And Happy Birthday, Yogi! Here’s wishing you many, many more birthdays too, even though, as you would say – “the future ain’t what it used to be.”

 
1 Comment

Posted in Baseball, Feature Stories

 

NFL – A History of Draft Busts

26 Apr

The National Football League’s annual player draft is scheduled for later this week, and despite the fact that the league and its’ players are locked in a labor dispute, there is still plenty of excitement among fans as their teams add what are hopefully the missing pieces to becoming a competitive championship contender. Inevitably, some of the most hyped players in this year’s draft will turn out to be busts. Finding a franchise quarterback has been a hit and miss thing over the years. For every Peyton Manning and Phillip Rivers, there is a Ryan Leaf, Tim Couch or JaMarcus Russell. Teams like the Cincinnati Bengals, Arizona Cardinals and Buffalo Bills regularly blow it on high draft picks, so it’s not an accident that those teams are perennial losers. Look at the names over the years for these teams – for the “Bungles”, there’s Ki-Jana Carter, Peter Warrick, Akili Smith, Dan Wilkinson and David Klingler. The Cardinals have chosen Matt Leinart, David Boston, Eric Swann, Kelly Stouffer and Steve Pisarkiewicz. Buffalo’s picks have included Walt Patulski, Tom Ruud, Erik Flowers, J.P.Losman, Mike Williams and Tom Cousineau. When the Bills picked O.J. Simpson first overall in 1969, it turned out to be a pretty good pick. The second pick that year, made by the Philadelphia Eagles, was defensive back Leroy Keyes. Leroy who?

So when the NFL teams begin choosing college players this Thursday and then do interviews praising their picks as the greatest athletes ever, remember these names – Ryan Leaf, Brian Bosworth, Tony Mandarich, Todd Marinovich, Rick Mirer, Andre Ware, Jeff George, “Pacman” Jones, Art Schlichter, Lawrence Phillips and Todd Blackledge. This list of draft busts includes a combination of players who were over-hyped, self-promoted (remember “The Boz”?), chemically enhanced, emotionally immature and even prone to criminal activity.

ESPN has been running a series of programs titled “Jon Gruden’s QB Camp” and “Jon Gruden’s Rookie Camp” in which Gruden, a former Super Bowl-winning NFL coach and current Monday Night Football analyst, puts this year’s draft prospects through the paces, both on the field and in a meeting room/interview atmosphere where he looks at game film of each player, with that player, and asks for explanations of why they made a certain decision, on both good and bad plays. He asks tough questions about the player’s character, and how they’ll handle the media scrutiny when they are in the NFL. The programs offer terrific insight into the personalities and mindsets of each player, and changed my opinion of some players, both positively and negatively. The quarterback programs were especially enlightening, and showed me that some of these guys are a little too much style and not enough substance, while others who are considered second or third round picks might be getting short-changed. ESPN also ran another special that detailed the drafting of Tom Brady and the six quarterbacks who were drafted ahead of him. It included footage of Brady’s combine workouts, where he looked like a skinny, gawky junior high kid who had no business trying to pass himself off as a pro football prospect. It just goes to show you how hard it is to measure a potential player’s heart.

 
No Comments

Posted in Feature Stories, Football

 

NFL – March 28, 1984 – Dark Day In Baltimore

28 Mar

                                      March 28, 1984 – Colts flee Baltimore in the dead of the night.

March 28, 1984 was perhaps the darkest day in the sports history of the city of Baltimore. Twenty-seven years ago today, the people of that city woke up to the shocking news that in the middle of the night, Baltimore Colts’ owner Robert Irsay had packed up the team’s belongings on Mayflower moving vans and moved them out of the team complex to Indianapolis. Irsay had continually threatened to move if he didn’t get a new stadium, but the city’s politicians never really believed him, since the Colts were one of the NFL’s flagship franchises with a rich tradition. They had come into the league in 1953 as a replacement for the defunct Dallas Texans, and that horseshoe logo on the sides of their helmets had become one of the most recognizable symbols in pro sports. They had a long history of great players and coaches – John Unitas, Raymond Berry, Lenny Moore, Gino Marchetti, Don Shula, Bubba Smith, Mike Curtis, Bert Jones, Jim Parker, Art Donovan, John Mackey, Alan Ameche and Ted Hendricks. They had won four championships, including “The Greatest Game Ever Played”, their 1958 sudden death overtime win over the Giants. The team was so entrenched in the community that they had their own marching band and cheerleaders (see below). This was long before the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders existed.

                                                                 Baltimore Colts’ cheerleaders

Irsay became the most hated man in the city, not only for moving the franchise but for the sneaky, cloak and dagger manner in which it was done. When Irsay’s mother was contacted for her reaction to the move, this was her statement:  “He’s a devil on earth, that one. He stole all our money and said goodbye. He (doesn’t) care for me. I (haven’t) even seen him for 35 years. My husband, Charles, sent him to college. I made his wedding. Five thousand dollars, it cost us. When my husband got sick and got the heart attack, he took advantage. He was no good. He was a bad boy. I don’t want to talk about him.” Irsay’s son Jim is currently the owner of the team, and after his father passed away admitted that he’d had a difficult childhood, and that his dad had problems with alcohol and wasn’t the most rational person to deal with most of the time.

There was a program aired recently on ESPN chronicling the Colts’ cheerleaders and band, which stayed together even after the team moved, playing charity events around the city and hoping for another franchise, which finally happened, ironically, in an even more controversial move when the Cleveland Browns moved to Baltimore. The city of Cleveland sued and forced Browns’ owner Art Modell to forfeit the Browns’ name and all the team’s records, so the relocated franchise became the Ravens, and the “new” Browns eventually came back into the NFL as an expansion team. In the ESPN show, the old Colt cheerleaders admitted it was painful for a long time after losing the Colts, but eventually they were able to forgive and forget and were now Raven fans. The show was taped the year after the Indianapolis Colts had won the Super Bowl behind the play of Peyton Manning, and the cheerleaders said they had actually pulled for Manning and the Colts to win, because Peyton reminded them of a young Johnny Unitas. Franchises move all the time  in professional sports, but like the move of the Brooklyn Dodgers to the west coast in 1958, this was a move that not only relocated a pro sports team but ripped the heart and soul out of a community. Those types of moves are stark reminders that professional sports really are, more than anything else, a “business”, and always subject to the cold, heartless tactics of the business world.

Bass drum from the Baltimore Colts’ band on display at the Football Hall of Fame in Canton.

 
2 Comments

Posted in Feature Stories, Football

 

Jalen Rose, Grant Hill & The “Uncle Tom” Debate

23 Mar

                                                        ESPN’s Jalen Rose

Two of the best things about ESPN are the “30 for 30” documentary films produced by the network and the First And Ten morning program, aired weekday mornings and featuring a debate desk segment where sportswriter Skip Bayless engages in lively arguments with guest debaters on timely sports topics. Recently, one of the films, about the early ’90s Michigan college basketball team that featured five starting freshmen dubbed the “Fab Five”, stirred some controversy and was debated in at least 2 segments on First And Ten. In the documentary, one of the freshmen players, Jalen Rose, ridiculed the black players from Duke University as “Uncle Toms”, verbalizing the feelings of many black inner city athletes at the time who felt that well-to-do, two-parent  black families who sent their kids to an elitist school like Duke were “selling out their race”. Rose, who went on to have a successful NBA career, is now an NBA analyst for ESPN, and in my opinion one of the most knowledgeable and entertaining ex-athletes working in the media today. He is frequently a guest debater on the First And Ten show, and gives Bayless all he can handle in arguments about not just basketball but all sports. Rose was invited on to explain/defend his comments from the documentary, and wasn’t proud of them, saying that he hopes people who see the film realize they were made by “a seventeen year old inner city kid with absolutely no filter between his brain and his mouth”.  Frankly, I believe Rose, and if you see the film and realize how much Michigan administators used the “Fab Five” to sell merchandise and make tons of money off of their notoriety at the time, while the players saw none of the money, you come to realize why those players developed attitudes toward “The Man”.

The next day, the subject was debated again, this time between Bayless and African American NBA writer Chris Broussard, another highly respected journalist. Bayless pretty much conceded his time to Broussard to make his case, and ESPN’s resident NBA insider made an eloquent argument. He exonerated Rose, who had been criticized in an op-ed column written by NBA player Grant Hill, son of former Dallas Cowboy Calvin Hill, who played at Duke during the Fab Five era. He said he understood Hill’s criticism also, and that it was good for the “Uncle Tom” reference to be discussed, since it has become a subject hotly debated in the African American community. He said he was disgusted by the way that even today, young blacks with no clue about the history of that term among blacks, were using it to denigrate affluent blacks in two-parent families. He criticized the hip hop community for promoting the idea in their songs that affluent black men who man up and parent their children were “Uncle Toms who sell out their race”, and offered the thought that the real sellouts to their race were the black men who joined gangs, ignored their children, sold drugs, brandished weapons and wound up in prison, thus propogating long-held stereotypes of the African American race. It was a powerful argument, and included stories of how some in the black community once criticized Bill Cosby’s television show as “an unrealistic portrayal of a black family.” It was a powerful argument, and was another example of what I see all the time in the world of sports – that sometimes sports shows that are generally considered “light entertainment” can do more good and shed more light on the real human condition than some of those pompous Sunday morning political programs.

                                           NBA Insider Chris Broussard

 
No Comments

Posted in Feature Stories, General

 

March Madness!

16 Mar

The annual NCAA college basketball tournament, better known as March Madness, gets underway this week, and productivity around offices will surely drop as workers tend to their brackets and keep tabs on opening round games. This tournament has grown into a monster, with a record 68 teams qualifying. The NCAA added “pre-qualifying” games to make teams from lesser conferences earn their way into the 64 team field. The tourney has come a long way from what I remember growing up in the 1960s, when 16 teams qualified, duked it out for a few days, with coach John Wooden’s UCLA Bruins usually coming out as champs in the end. The 1966 tournament was a significant and historic one, in that underdog Texas Western, starting 5 black players for the first time in NCAA championship history, defeated heavily favored powerhouse Kentucky, with an all-white roster,  72-65 to win the title. The game was played at the height of the civil rights movement in this country, with racial tensions high. It’s no coincidence that Jerry Chambers, a white forward from Utah, was voted the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player even though his team didn’t even get to the title game. Kentucky coach Adolph Rupp has been painted as a blatant racist, and he probably was a product of the times, but by 1969 he began recruiting black players. The story of coach Don Haskins’ Texas Western team’s unlikely title is chronicled in the movie Glory Road.

Just like all other sports, college basketball and the championship tournament have expanded greatly over the years, and March Madness has become one of the most anticipated sporting events in the country. It has expanded to the point where the “March Madness” title game is actually played in early April. The college game has changed in recent years, with the top players, dating back to guys like Kobe Bryant, Kevin Garnett and Lebron James, skipping college altogether and jumping directly from high school to the NBA. The rules have changed now to force players to play at least one year of college ball, creating the “one and done” phenomenon where major college coaches recruit top players knowing they will only have them for one season. There aren’t as many recognizable superstars in college as in the past, and it’s created a type of parity in the game, to the point where, this season, there is absolutely no clear favorite to win the title. I won’t pretend to know enough about the college game to even try to pick a winner, and I feel sorry for people trying to fill out those office brackets. My only advice would be to look for teams that play a solid “team” game, like Butler last season,  to advance to the Final Four. That seems to be the trend. With no bonafide “superstars” to dominate, the teams that play unselfish basketball are the teams that win. It’s kind of refreshing actually.

 
No Comments

Posted in Basketball, Feature Stories

 

R.I.P. Rick Martin

14 Mar

New Sabres’ owner Terry Pegula with the famed French Connection line – from left – Rene Robert, Rick Martin and Gilbert Perreault.

Sunday was a sad day for Buffalo Sabres’ fans, and the organization, as the news of the passing of French Connection legend Rick Martin became public. Martin was a bonafide superstar in the earliest years of the franchise, and a key player in the club’s quick rise from an expansion team in 1970 to playoff team in 1973, and Stanley Cup contender in ’74-75, when they lost to Philadelphia in the Finals. When the Knox brothers were awarded the franchise prior to 1970 they made the wise decision to hire Punch Imlach as coach and general manager, and Imlach’s first two number one draft choices were brilliant, as he picked 2 players who would help form one of hockey’s most famous lines ever – Gilbert Perreault and Martin. At the time, when professional sports added expansion franchises, they did little to help those teams. They would usually get to pick old, washed-up players in an expansion draft and take a decade or more to develop into competent teams (baseball’s New York Mets and Houston Colts/Astros, added in 1962, are good examples). But Imlach did what was considered impossible back then – he built a team that qualified for the playoffs by their third season. The Sabres were beaten in six games by a powerhouse Montreal Canadiens club but in the waning moments of the deciding game, they were chanted with “Thank you, Sabres” by an appreciative home crowd. The team took a bigger step forward the following season when they advanced to the Cup Finals, losing to the defending champion Philadelphia Flyers in 6 games. The Flyers had an intimidating, stifling team and much superior goaltending, with Bernie Parent, probably the best in the NHL at the time, matched up against Gerry DesJardins, who had been signed at midseason, and an aging Roger Crozier. Martin was a standout in the ’73 series loss to the Canadiens, totaling 5 points (3 goals) in the 6 games. Martin was just as good in the 1974 run to the Finals, racking up 7 goals and 8 assists for a total of 15 points, in 17 total playoff games. The Sabres this time eliminated the vaunted Canadiens in the semifinals. Martin was all of 23 years old at the time. “Rico” is second to Perreault on the team’s all-time goal scoring list, even though he’s ninth on the list in career games played, playing 681 games with the team compared to 1,191 for Perreault. Unfortunately Martin’s career was cut short by a devastating knee injury that forced him to retire at the age of 30. He has yet to be voted into the sport’s hall of fame, probably held back by the lack of total numbers due to the injury-shortened career. Martin’s biggest asset as a player was his wicked slap shot. Bobby Hull was always considered to have the hardest shot of any player in history, but Martin’s coach, Joe Crozier, once said “Hull may have the harder shot, but Rick gets his away quicker and is always on target.” He had a reputation for having a hair-trigger with his shot, and for it being so hard that it routinely would knock goaltender’s gloves off their hands. He was truly what hockey experts refer to as a “sniper”, a natural goal scorer.

After he retired, Martin was a successful businessman, owning a bar that was appropriately named Slap Shot. He was active in the Sabres’ alumni association and participated in many charity golf events, and was a supporter of local law enforcement. Those who knew him say that what they’ll miss most about him is his sense of humor and his general all-around “regular guy” personna.

 
1 Comment

Posted in Feature Stories, Hockey

 

MLB – Willie, Mickey and The Duke

02 Mar

                                                                 Duke Snider

Major League Baseball lost another of its’ major icons on Sunday when Edwin “Duke” Snider passed away at the age of 84. Snider was lucky enough to have played in what is considered baseball’s golden era of the 1940s and 1950s, in what was the hub of the sport at the time, the New York metropolitan area. His team, the old Brooklyn Dodgers, was immortalized in Roger Kahn’s book The Boys of Summer and during their Brooklyn years were affectionately known by their fans as “Dem Bums” . Those fans had a battle cry of “Wait ‘Til Next Year”, as the Dodgers routinely lost in the World Series to the New York Yankees, but in 1955 finally broke through and defeated the Yanks to win the title. Pitcher Johnny Podres was the Series hero, winning the deciding game. In what was typical of his career, Snider hit 4 home runs in the Series, and that stat pretty much flew under the radar. In New York at the time, fans debated which of the local teams’ centerfielders – Snider, the Yankees’ Mickey Mantle, or Willie Mays of the New York Giants – was the best, and Snider routinely was the third choice. Looking back on the careers of the 3 players, rating Snider third is probably the right choice. He didn’t have the speed, range or all-around ability of Mays or Mantle. But the fact is that in the decade of the 1950s, no player hit more home runs or had more runs batted in than Snider. It could be argued that he was the greatest left-handed power hitter of his generation.

Snider was a broadcaster for 14 seasons with the Montreal Expos, and living in Buffalo, I was able to pick up a lot of the Expos games on Canadian television. I remember Snider having a silky, easy-to-listen-to voice and a great passion for the game. He was a perfect choice for broadcasting the sport – he was easy going and made the game interesting with stories from the past and a knack for knowing the strategy of the game.

Snider, Mantle and Mays were, of course, immortalized in Terry Cashman’s song Talkin’ Baseball (Willie, Mickey and the Duke) in the 1980s. Click on the link below to check out the video.

Talkin’ Baseball (Willie, Mickey & The Duke)

 
No Comments

Posted in Baseball, Feature Stories

 

NFL – Super Bowl III – The Game That Changed The Game

03 Feb

 

                                             Pro Football HOF Super Bowl III Display

The Games That Changed The Game is the title of a book written by Ron Jaworski, chronicling games over the years in which creative, innovative coaches like Sid Gillman and Bill Walsh introduced wrinkles that changed the way the game was played. I haven’t read the book so I don’t know which specific games Jaworski mentions, but without a doubt Super Bowl III was a game that definitely changed the landscape of the entire sport. The third NFL-AFL World Championship game, which was the first to actually be called the “Super Bowl”, didn’t have any amazing strategic developments that drastically changed the way the sport was played, although the methodical way Joe Namath and the New York Jets’ offense attacked the vaunted Baltimore Colts’ defense was pretty amazing. Most sports fans know the general storyline of the game. The Jets, representing the young, upstart American Football League, entered the game against the Colts as 18-20 point underdogs. The NFL’s Green Bay Packers had won the first 2 title games between the leagues, dispatching Kansas City and Oakland in games that were mostly one-sided. In this matchup, the Colts were considered a juggernaut, coached by young genius Don Shula, with an overpowering defense, generally thought to be even better than Vince Lombardi’s Packer teams. At the same time, the Jets were a long shot to even get through the playoffs in their own league, and even though they advanced to the Super Bowl, were not considered the overall best team in the AFL. According to all the football experts at the time, this game was going to be a monumental blowout. Shockingly, at a pre-game event at the Miami Touchdown Club (the game was played at the Orange Bowl), Namath, in response to a heckling Colt supporter, boldly proclaimed,”We’re gonna win the game. I guarantee it.” He then went out and backed up his words, engineering a conservative, ball-control game plan that resulted in a 16-7 win for the Jets, and for the entire AFL. Namath, in the 1968 regular season leading up to this game, didn’t have a spectacular year, throwing only 15 touchdown passes compared to 17 interceptions, with only a 49% completion percentage. Also, he didn’t have an outstanding statistical passing day in the Super Bowl. He mostly did what modern day coaches would call “manage the game”, beating the Colts’ blitzing defense with quick, short passes to his backs and tight end to keep drives alive. The Jets scored only one touchdown, on a short run by Matt Snell, and amazingly, Namath didn’t complete a pass in the fourth quarter of the game.

At the time of the game, nobody, except for the Jets themselves, believed the mighty Colts could lose. After they blew out the Cleveland Browns 34-0 in the NFL championship game, they were being touted as “the greatest team in pro football history”.  Looking back now, it was a classic case of a team being over-hyped. The Colts’ roster was actually full of aging players near the end of their careers – like Earl Morrall, Tom Matte, Jimmy Orr, Bobby Boyd and Lou Michaels. Their 34-0 thrashing of the Browns was revenge for the 27-0 pasting the Browns had put on the Colts in the 1964 title game, but that was misleading. By 1968, Jim Brown had moved onto an acting career, and QB Frank Ryan had been replaced by journeyman Bill Nelsen. The Browns were in the beginning stages of a downward fall, and that hammering by the Colts in the title game made the Colts look more dominating than they really were. The Colts’ defense overwhelmed the NFL that year using a blitzing zone scheme that confused the rest of the teams in the league. What was overlooked prior to the Super Bowl was the fact that the Jets faced a lot of zone defenses in the AFL, and were well-equipped and confident that they could beat the Colts’ defense. The result of the game was a shocking Jets’ victory that changed the perception of the AFL as a second tier league. In the early 1960s some NFL owners laughed them off as a “Mickey Mouse” league, but this game established the AFL as equals to the older league, and a year later the Kansas City Chiefs added an exclamation point by upsetting the heavily favored Minnesota Vikings in Super Bowl IV. Again, the pundits overlooked the fact that the Vikings were led by an old recycled QB from the Canadian League, Joe Kapp, and had a roster peppered with aging players like Mick Tinglehoff, Karl Kassulke, Roy Winston and Bill Brown. At the same time, the Chiefs were led by dynamic young players like Mike Garrett, Otis Taylor, Willie Lanier and Buck Buchanan. The problem was the AFL was very much underpublicized at the time compared to the older NFL. That changed completely going into the 1970s.

 
1 Comment

Posted in Feature Stories, Football

 
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »