Things You Miss In Sports

Son of a bitch, I loved Bill Cunningham.
I listened to him talk to a couple of hookers on air late one night, and have never laughed so hard in my life.

 

I am going to be a disaster when Denny Matthews passes away or retires.
He was my voice when they were bad.
He was my voice when they were good.

 

Hockey standings that don't require a slide rule to decipher.

 

Australian Rules Football.

 

You love seeing them kick some behinds.

 

Another vote for Chicago Stadium -- and its pipe organ (loved it as a kid when the organist during the Bobby Hull/Stan Mikita era played "Three Blind Mice" to razz the officials if a call went against the Blackhawks). Even miss that unintelligible analog-clock hockey scoreboard that wasn't replaced until the mid-'70s. Always thought it helped the Hawks' home-ice advantage because they saw it 40 times a year and knew how to read it.

And old Comiskey Park and Bill Veeck's exploding scoreboard. That ballpark literally stank with atmosphere and craziness, and the 1960s incarnation of the scoreboard had to be seen and heard to be believed.

Shifting over to sports journalism, old-line sports columnists such as Blackie ("scattershooting while wondering whatever happened to Edgar Buchanan") Sherrod and Eddie Pope.

 

Pre-internet, full NHL stats were only available in the Tuesday paper. I would spend hours going over them each week. Plus it was the only way to update your hockey pool standings.

 

Early in the days of fantasy football, the suspense of waking up to scour the box scores to see if your game turned on an unknown TD. I kinda miss not having everything in real time. It made the rare TV updates an exciting new part of watching games back then.

 

Any point in history before ESPN decided a game-winning (RBI, base hit, home run, etc.) was now a walk-off (RBI, base hit, home run, etc.). The only players walking off are the losers.

 

ESPN also popularized first-ever and trailing a series 0-2 instead of 2-0

 

I can't be the only one who remembers what a revelation the 10-minute ticker was....

 

Pitt Stadium.

Climbing the hill to Pitt Stadium.

the Trailblazers old school look with lower case letters and vertical pinwheel logo.

Dick Stockton and Hubie Brown on a Sunday afternoon.

Van Earl Wright letting me know if the Blazers won on the west coast while getting ready for school.