Obscure sports trivia

Havana. Auburn played Villanova in the 1937 Bacardi Bowl.

 

I am today years old when I learned McGill is in Canada.

 

Eh?

 

I’ve seen references to McGill before. Never thought too much about it and assumed it was a US school.

The answer to the trivia question wasn’t what I thought it was. I thought Harvard and Yale had gone north of the border to play. I looked it up. Turns out I was half right but it was Harvard and McGill who played each other in the 1870s. I was about to raise a stink when I clicked where McGill was and it’s a proud uni in Canadia.

And thus my comment.

 

All good. My response was a Canadian joke.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eh

 

On this side of the line, we’ve always been taught that Harvard - McGill was the first intercollegiate game with the forward pass. Not sure that factoid gets much run south of the border, sort of like Royal Montreal being the oldest golf club in North America. Only people up here care

McGill ‘93 here.

 

My niece is going to McGill next year.

 

We just got back from a 4 day weekend in Montréal (which was absolutely fantastic and I can’t believe I had never been there before). When we passed some McGill buildings, Mrs. W also didn’t realize it was a Canadian school. She must be a lurker here.

 

No need to let this linger. It's Terry Forster, who obviously was much more than "A fat tub of goo," a comment Letterman eventually grew to regret making.

Forster was a great hitter and should have pinch-hit more than he did but Chuck Tanner told him he didn't want to embarrass his position players by using a pitcher as a PH.

Called in from the bullpen, he retired Tony Oliva to end an inning, and then retired Harmon Killebrew to start his next inning in his MLB debut.

I was surprised to see who holds the current record for most innings between homers, it's almost double of Forster's former record. That's another question for another day.

 

Dammit, I nearly posted Forster as a guess. I knew he was a great hitter, but I was stopped by the stolen base clause.

We had a very good relationship when I covered the Dodgers and he could really take a joke or a good ribbing. When he gave up the critical home run to Joe Morgan, I just happened to be following him off the plane when we got back to L.A. His two little girls were there and we all walked down to baggage claim together. I said, "Hey Hoss, it's a good thing you have cute kids or you wouldn't have anything going for you."

His wife was a stone fox, might have been the prettiest wife on the team. One time, Al Campanis told me that she only married him because he was a ballplayer in Los Angeles and she hoped he could help her get into Hollywood.

 

I almost went there for college. Had visited Montreal with my family in the late 1980s and loved it. Applied on a lark and they actually offered me a good deal of money. At the end of the day, though, it just seemed too drastic at the time. Who knows, I mighta learned French. Instead I still only speak pig English.

 

We got married in 2021 and our honeymoon plans -- Greek isles -- got cancelled, so I said the nearest thing to a European vacation is to go straight up the New York State Thruway to Montreal. My wife had never been. I'd been a few times, including for a bachelor party in like 2005. Anyway, it is a great city, but we made the unfortunate mistake of visiting soon after Canada had reopened from the pandemic lockdowns -- people were not happy to see us, let's put it that way. We were the only car with American plates, which I believe helps explain why I got a $300 speeding ticket while driving to Mont Treblant. Mountie said I was going 80 in a 55, which was bullshit.

We seriously got the swerve from a lot of people in the service industry. Left a sour taste, but I understand in retrospect. They were all still really spooked about the pandemic and were barely accustomed to seeing friends, family and acquaintances, let alone a few ugly Americans from Connecticut.