The logo of the Cleveland Barons NHL team, which played in the league from 1976 through 1978. The Barons were relocated to Cleveland from Oakland, where they entered the league as the Oakland Seals in 1967 and later became the California Golden Seals. They ran into financial trouble in Cleveland after only 2 seasons and eventually the league merged them with another team with money problems, the Minnesota North Stars, with the team keeping the North Stars name and playing in Minnesota.
I’m very proud of my grandson Josh who is the regular catcher on his youth baseball team this year and doing a fantastic job. I have to admit though, that he is poking a hole in my theory of how a coach picks his catcher on a little league team. I always enjoyed coaching my son’s Babe Ruth league teams when he was growing up, and one of the enjoyable things was taking a group of 12-15 kids who show up at the first practice and organizing them into something that resembles a real baseball team. There’s always the short, agile, quick kid who can hit, field and throw (usually because he had 3 older brothers who had him out in the field playing with them at the age of 2). He is automatically the pitcher / shortstop. Then there’s always a tall, gangly kid who doesn’t throw very well but catches the ball and for some reason always seems to be lefthanded. He is your first baseman. But I always joked that I had a method for picking out a catcher each year and Josh doesn’t fit the mold. The first practice session was usually held in early spring and up here in Buffalo that means the players are all decked out in winter jackets, winter gloves under their baseball mitts and winter wool hats instead of baseball caps. Then there was always one kid who would show up late, flying in on his BMX bike, hair messed up, decked out in shorts and a camouflage t-shirt, with snot hanging out of his nose. His idea of parking his bike would be to jump off it and let it crash into the backstop to stop it. You just waited for this kid to show up, pointed at him and said “Get the gear on, you’re the catcher!” I always assumed this was pretty close to the same method hockey coaches used to choose their goaltender, and football coaches their nose tackle, since all these positions require a “special breed” of person. There’s a reason baseball has always referred to the catcher’s equipment as the “tools of ignorance”. The poor guys who play the position take a beating and work harder than anybody else on the field. Actually I think it was a catcher who made up that term, and I always hear Fox broadcaster Tim McCarver, a former catcher, use it.
One of the all-time classics when it comes to logos, the logo of the 27 time World Champion New York Yankees baseball team. I’ve never been a Yankee fan but you have to respect a franchise with the 27 titles, 40 pennants and an honor roll of Hall of Fame players and managers that this team has produced over the years.
A 1986 Fleer card of the greatest basketball player ever, Michael Jordan of the Chicago Bulls. Having led the Bulls to 6 NBA titles, he is now the measuring stick by which all other “great” players are measured.
The long wait is finally over for Chicago Black Hawks fans. After a 49 year drought, the Hawks wrapped up the Stanley Cup title when young star Patrick Kane scored in overtime to defeat the game Philadelphia Flyers in game 6 in Philly. The Black Hawks are a surprise champion this year, even though they made the natural progression from being eliminated in the conference finals last year to winning it all. There weren’t many prognosticators picking them to win. It’s a strange situation in Chicago in that most of the moves made to build this team were made by former general manager Dale Tallon, who was fired after last season. The team basically got lucky in finding Cup winning goaltender Antti Niemi, a former backup, and now has a situation where former starter Cristobal Huet is making over $4 million dollars per season. Another strange situation was captain Jonathan Toews winning the Conn Smythe Trophy as MVP even though he was scoreless in the finals, but the trophy is actually given to the MVP of the entire tournament, so Toews is deserving, although Dustin Byfuglien (that’s a lot of letters for a name pronounced Buf-lin)would have been a good choice also. Despite not scoring, Toews dominated the faceoff circle in the finals and just generally provided leadership. Credit has to be given to coach Joel Quenneville also. After the Flyers held serve by winning games 3 and 4 at home, he made the strategic decision to break up his big line of Toews, Byfuglien and rookie Patrick Kane, and the result was balanced scoring and 2 solid wins to secure the Cup.
A couple of early logos of the New York Giants football team. The giant QB in the logo doesn’t have a facemask so the logos are probably from the early 1950s. It looks like they switched to a left-handed giant quarterback somewhere along the line.
From PuckJunk.com, an old hockey card of defenseman Al Arbour, when he played for the Chicago Black Hawks, who recently won their first Stanley Cup in 49 years. Arbour went on to greater fame as the coach of the New York Islanders when they won multiple Cups. Sporting the glasses on this card, he already had the look of a scholarly head coach.
You knew they’d be a desperate team in this game and would battle hard and probably win, especially on their home court, but the way the Boston Celtics defeated the Lakers last night to even the NBA Finals series at 2-2 was astonishing. One of their “big four”, Paul Pierce, got off to a quick start and got the Celts an early lead, but in the 4th quarter they took control of the game with a lineup on the floor that consisted mainly of Glenn Davis, Nate Robinson, Tony Allen, Rasheed Wallace and only one of their regulars, Ray Allen, and he contributed pretty much the least of any of the guys out there. Coach Doc Rivers kept sending the starters over to the scorer’s table to put them back in, then Robinson or Wallace would drain a 3-point shot or Davis would grab a big rebound or score a huge basket and Rivers would call the starters back to the bench. While this was going on the starters – Kevin Garnett, Rajon Rondo, Pierce and Kendrick Perkins – were leading the cheers from the bench for their replacements. This is 2010 in the NBA, the era of the superstar, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the 2 teams in the finals are the teams whose “superstars” play unselfishly. The Lakers also usually get big contributions from their bench, but nothing like what the Celts’ bench did last night. I had to laugh when the Cleveland Cavaliers post-season began to unravel against Boston. As the Celtics continually shut down or contained LeBron the announcers would say that he’s getting no help from his supporting cast. So after racking up the league’s best regular season record by running an offense that pretty much consists of running down the shot clock to about 10 seconds and then clearing out for LeBron to do his thing, now the supporting cast is supposed to figure out what to do to “help” LeBron. If the Cavs somehow manage to resign James, they’ll only win a title when they figure out that it’s not who the players are playing around James but the style of play the team is playing that revolves around him. Obviously the Celtics don’t have that problem, as they dominated the fourth quarter with all their stars on the bench, and you didn’t hear one whimper of a complaint from any of those stars afterwards. Now if they can only tone down Rasheed’s drama queen diva act every time he draws a foul!
The logo of the Minneapolis Lakers, who played in Minnesota from 1947 until 1960 and were the forerunners for the defending NBA champion Los Angeles Lakers. Their star player, George Mikan, dominated the league and was voted as one of the top 50 NBA players of all time.
