Things You Miss In Sports

I miss the days when the NFL draft was not a TV event and Mel Kiper was nothing more than a wannabe scout.

And the days when only a few deranged junkies cared about recruiting other than on signing day.

 

He would badger the F1 guy into an answer then brag, “there’s someone else who agrees with me.”

 

Having kids makes me care about who wins. It makes him so happy.

Of course, not two days after Notre Dame wins the national championship on a dramatic buzzer beater he was moping this morning because the White Sox lost the third fucking game of the season.

So the joy is fleeting.

 

Holy shit I totally remember that -- I think I was stuck on the 91 listening to every word, mouth agape.

 

Hamilton used to drive me nuts. I thought he had setup callers. He would proclaim that he had "notes from all 32 NFL teams." More than likely, he would find a note about, say, the Steelers, and have one of his friends call in to ask what is going on with the Steelers. If somebody honestly asked about, say, the Jaguars, he'd be lost.
I hated it when those Easterners would come here. Werndl, Tony Bruno, there was a guy from Cleveland (can't remember his name), the guy doing Duck Calls after hockey games is from Buffalo. All they talk about is their former teams. We could care less.
Hamilton comes off like a badass on radio. I met him once during the '93 Stanley Cup playoffs (the Kings were on his station) in Toronto. He was the complete opposite, so out of his element, shy and quiet. He reported from Toronto then went on vacation, didn't go on to Montreal for the Final.
Kentera's show was awful, but you had to listen to it driving home after Friday night prep night. He had people phoning in with reports from their high school games. That idiot from St. Paul called every week. "The Swordsmen were stout on defense, led by ...." and he named 18 guys. "The offense was led by" and he named 15 guys, mostly the same as the guys on defense. Kentera never cut off the dude.

 

If he didn't know it, he'd make it up.

Pretty sure that was Dave Denholm. Or Dewey Something. I thought the same thing - why were there always easterners coming out here to do local sports talk?

 

Saw a story about the Giants suddenly not a hot ticket in SF. You could still find parking in their lot for $165, third deck seats for $100 and standing room for $55 for Opening Day.

 

IIRC, that was a segment where he had the two local media columnists at the time, Jay Posner from the UT and John Maffei from the North County Times, with him on the air and they started taking callers. In addition to 'starting from the bottom' statement, Hamilton also said something about people of color only wanting to talk about the NBA. I was listening at the time and envisioning the two columnists sneaking "Oh, shit" looks at each other in the studio.
That episode came back to bite Hamilton in the ass a couple years later: He got the job as the Vikings play-by-play announcer, but then an African-American sportswriter, who was working for a publication charitably referred to as a 'shopper' and who had just been let go as the Vikings' radio call-in host, wrote about Hacksaw's comments, and the Vikings rescinded the job offer. The thing I remember is that the story the Minnesota guy wrote had no quotes from Hamilton, or even a 'refused to comment.' I heard through the grapevine that Posner called him for his own story on the controversy and asked the guy if he attempted to contact Hamilton for his side of the story, and the guy said "I don't need to talk to him; he knows what he said."

 

Yes, that's the guy. He came here as the "next big thing" on Fox Sports West or something. I didn't take long for everybody to figure out he didn't know shit, and he wound up reading scores on weekend radio.

 

Was it Larry Fitzgerald's dad? Here is a snippet from Wiki:

Fitzgerald's father, Larry Fitzgerald Sr., is a sportswriter for the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder. When he covered Super Bowl XLIII, he was believed to be the first reporter to cover his own son in a Super Bowl.

 

You mean this guy isn't a badass?



His name is 'Hacksaw'! Can't get more badass than that.

 

He's so bad-ass Trump just hired him as his NSA.