Things You Miss In Sports

"Sports talk radio sucks" is one of those things that have become conventional wisdom/accepted truth that just doesn't really hold up. A case where a few bad apples have given the wrong impression.

 

Craigers and the Feel Good Edition ...

 

And here I thought I was the only one who watched that type of channel back in the day.

The cable system in my college town had a version of that channel that showed sports results on the screen accompanied by audio from the National Weather Service radio providing current weather conditions and the forecast for the next five days. This was a year or two before ESPN and maybe five years before the Weather Channel, so it filled a nice niche.

 

Going to throw a different one out there. The glory days of semi-pro football, which was probably from the mid 1960s to the mid-1980s. I toyed around with a book idea about these teams and leagues at one point, but realized it was a book that wouldn’t sell.

But if you lived in a town/small city with a good team, it was a fun experience. My little part of redneck eastern Pennsylvania had several of these teams and the rivalries were pretty heated. They were driven by several factors:
— pro football and college werent 24-7, 365 , so these teams provided an outlet for football junkies.
— college football programs were more strict when it came to admissions, so a lot of top local talent from high schools never left. They took factory jobs and then spent time on these teams. The talent level was fairly high because of that.
— nfl teams recruited off these rosters so there was a chance you might see some guys who had brief pro resumes. (Watching in the 1980s, our local team had several usfl refugees and nfl scab players).
— it had a definite wrestling feel to it in terms of theatrics, blown calls, cheap shots, etc.

 

Thinking Craig Sager was a good guy.

 

We had some kind of local station that was nothing but a camera panning various analog gauges. Wind speed; wind direction; barometer; clock, etc. As a gauge-o-phile as a kid, I was glued to that channel. Family still makes fun of me for it.

 

I remember having to call the score line after 11:30 to get West Coast scores. Line was always busy due to our nation's gambling problem. I don't miss that, mind you. I don't really miss Boston Garden, either, even though it is was the site of many glorious sports experiences for me. It was also a dump.
I do miss Saturday afternoon baseball, which is almost extinct except for the Fox Sports game. Some people like the 4 p.m. starts, but I don't.

 

It is better now to have almost every game televised and easy to get, but I do miss Monday Night Baseball, and the Saturday Game of the Week, where you could get the random Phillies-Expos game and see players you only read about in The Sporting News.

 

They weren't especially good beers, but I miss the ads from the '60s/'70s Chicago TV/radio sportscasts for brands such as Hamm's, Schlitz, Falstaff, Meister Brau, Stroh's and Old Style (the classic Chi-town favorite). Seems as if it's mostly Bud, Bud Light, Miller Lite and Coors Light anymore.

Here's a Hamm's ad from a '65 Cubs broadcast featuring WGN's Jack Brickhouse and legendary Blackhawks play-by-play man Lloyd Pettit.

 

The Cotton Bowl game actually being played in the Cotton Bowl.

 

On a similar note, regional adult baseball leagues. When I was a kid, my town had a team, and they played teams from other towns. I was a little young, but from my understanding now, the games drew hundreds, and sometimes up to 2,000 fans.

The league that my town's team lasted roughly 20-something years before fading in the late 80s. The team hung on for a few years, died out, and was revived dyer a few years. I'm not sure who they play now.

On a similar note, when I wa the SE of a small town daily in the late 90s, there was another regional league that played Sunday doubleheaders and we would print the results and stays. My EE wanted me to do a color story on fans at the games

It was a hot summer day, I go there and there's hardly anyone watching, except for a few in their cars. I took some pics of the game and left. My editor, who was much older, couldn't understand why there was nobody there because of hometown pride. I told him people had other things to do on hot summer days than sit outside and watch 5-6 hours of baseball.

The league died out a year or two later.

 

CNN Sports Tonight with Nick Charles and Fred Hickman.

The “tastes great/less filling” commercials. Actually, all the Miller Lite commercials from that era.

Sending away for Blue Jay tickets and finding them in the mail weeks later.