Super Bowl Quiz, part III: 1) SB XIII: Pitt 35 Dallas 31…who
caught two TD passes from Terry Bradshaw? 2) SB XIV: Pitt 31
Los Angeles 19…who was the Rams leading rusher in the game
with 60 yards on 17 carries? 3) SB XV: Oak 27 Philly 10…who
caught two TD passes from Jim Plunkett? 4) SB XVI: San Fran
26 Cincy 21…who kicked four field goals for the 49ers? 5) SB
XVII: Wash 27 Miami 17…who was Miami’s QB? 6) SB
XVIII: L.A. Raiders 38 Washington 9…who was MVP?
Answers below.
C.K. Yang, RIP
I saw in the L.A. Times that this good man from Taiwan had
passed away at the age of 74 and I couldn’t help but lead with
him.
Years ago, when I was a kid, Sports Illustrated came out with a
board game based on decathletes such as Jim Thorpe, Bill
Toomey and Rafer Johnson. I spent hours playing it on my
bedroom floor…that is when I wasn’t playing Strat-O-Matic
Baseball or Football. And one of the decathletes who is forever
connected to Rafer Johnson was C.K. Yang.
Back at a time when Taiwan, not China, represented the people
in the Olympics and at the UN, Yang won the first medal for his
nation (Taiwan is a country to me…sorry China).
Yang Chuan-kwang was born in Taitung, Taiwan, the son of a
rice farmer, where he came to the attention of Taiwanese track
and field coaches. Money was raised so he could train in the
United States and he ended up at UCLA under the tutelage of
Elvin C. “Ducky” Drake. But as C.K.’s son said upon his
father’s passing, “One of the reasons he went to UCLA versus
one of the East Coast schools like Harvard and Yale was because
Rafer Johnson was training there.”
Johnson was himself a tremendous athlete and it was at the Rome
Olympics in 1960 that the two were forever cast in history.
Lisa Dillman / L.A. Times:
“The Rome Games were a seminal moment for the sport,
representing a blend of excellence, sportsmanship and goodwill.
Not only were Johnson and Yang, who had first met in 1956,
good friends and teammates in pursuit of a gold medal, they
shared the same coach at UCLA.
“In Rome, the two-day, rain-marred competition came down to
the final event, the 1,500-meter race. Johnson’s narrow lead was
67 points, but Yang’s personal best in the event was 4:36.0 and
Johnson’s 4:54.2. Yang would be Taiwan’s first gold medalist if
he beat Johnson by 10 seconds.
“Coincidentally, they landed in the same heat. Yang won the
race but lost the gold because his margin of victory wasn’t
enough.
“Afterward, Johnson and Yang fell against each other for
support, and Italian fans signaled their appreciation for the
incredible effort, chanting: ‘Give them both the gold medal.’
“ ‘I figured I had an outside chance to win after nine events…
until I found out Rafe and I were in the same 1,500 heat. I knew
he’d stay right with me, no matter how fast I ran,’ Yang later told
The Times. ‘If we’d been in separate heats, I’d have won the
gold medal, not Rafer,’ he said.”
The two remained close friends afterwards. C.K.’s son, Cedric,
remarked “Whenever my dad came back to the United States,
one of the first people he’d call was Rafer.”
For his part, Johnson always had mixed feelings about the
Olympic experience. “We were very close, which I’ve said
down through the years. We were so close that I was always a
little bit ambivalent,” Johnson told The Times’ Lisa Dillman. “I
obviously wanted to win. But we were such good friends, I
didn’t always feel great when we had to really go head-to-head.
It particularly came to a head in 1960. Up to that point, we
worked out together and did our training. Spent a lot of time
away from the track together. It was a unique relationship.”
When Pauley Pavilion opened up in 1965, Johnson and Yang
could be seen sitting together at UCLA basketball games.
Johnson was also there visiting C.K. at the hospital in his final
days.
Barbaro Put Down
Andrew Beyer / Washington Post:
“Unlike movies and books about the sport, real-life horse racing
does not often produce stories with happy and satisfying endings.
Modern thoroughbreds are so fragile that people who spend their
lives around the animals always brace themselves for the worst
outcomes.
“But even for the most hardened racetrackers, the death of
Barbaro was a painful and depressing loss. The catastrophic
injury that the colt suffered in the Preakness, followed by his
euthanization eight months later, constituted a double blow.
“The injury robbed the sport of a horse who might have been one
of the best of modern times, one who had the potential to
accomplish feats without precedent. His death cost the
thoroughbred world a stallion who might have made a lasting
imprint on his species….
“When Barbaro broke down in the Preakness and was
precariously trying to stand on his three good legs, a nationwide
television audience witnessed horse racing at its worst. But over
the next eight months, America saw the extraordinary devotion
to the horse by his owners, his trainer and especially the
veterinary team in the New Bolton Center in Pennsylvania. Dean
Richardson was everything that a human patient could want from
his own doctor – capable, honest, realistic, compassionate and
totally dedicated.
“Critics of horse racing often say that owners and trainers exploit
the animals in their care, but Barbaro’s final eight months
demonstrated the usual nature of these relationships. People in
the sport love these fragile creatures and are devastated when
they are hurt.”
Bing Devine…dead at 90
The great baseball executive died the other day. Bing Devine
played only a few games in the minor leagues before finding his
way into the St. Louis Cardinals’ front office in 1955 and
becoming general manager two years later, at which point he
hastened the Cards’ integration with the signing or acquisition of
the likes of Bob Gibson, Bill White and Curt Flood.
But it was in 1964 that Bing Devine pulled off one of the great
coups in the history of professional sports, a la the New York
Knicks’ acquisition of Dave DeBuscherre that helped propel
them to greatness; Ernie Broglio for Lou Brock.
Alex Belth recently wrote a book on Curt Flood titled “Stepping
Up” that has a good accounting of the deal.
“Through the first half of the 1964 campaign, (the Cards) were a
mediocre, slumping team. The Giants and Dodgers struggled
too, as the surprising Philadelphia Phillies jumped out to an early
lead. As the June 15 trading deadline neared, Bing Devine knew
that he had to make a trade to stir his team up.
“Two days before the deadline, as the team was preparing to
travel to Houston, Devine received a message to call the Cubs’
general manager, John Holland. The Cardinals were 28-29, tied
with Chicago for seventh place. St. Louis had lost nine of its last
twelve games, and fifteen of twenty-one overall. Holland knew
that Devine had been interested in Chicago’s young right fielder,
Lou Brock, and said that he’d be willing to part with him – but
he needed a starting pitcher in return. As a ballplayer, the left-
handed hitting Brock was raw, but he was amazingly fast and
surprisingly strong. His primary weapon – speed – went largely
unused in the power-hitting Chicago lineup, which preferred a
conservative approach on the bases.
“Holland told Devine that, in exchange for Brock, he wanted
Ernie Broglio, who had won twenty-one games in 1960 and
eighteen in 1963. Devine said he needed to speak to his
manager. On the flight to Houston, Devine presented the
proposed trade to (Cards manager Johnny) Keane, whose
response was quick and unequivocal: having coveted Brock for
some time, he asked Devine what he was waiting for.
“And so Bing Devine pulled the trigger on what at that point was
the most controversial trade of his career. Truthfully, he had
little choice but to do something drastic. He knew that his job
was on the line.
“Keane felt that Brock’s speed would be a terrific asset for the
team. On the other hand, many of the Cardinals players were
suspicious, even resentful, of the deal. Broglio was a proven
winner. The Cardinal players liked Devine, but some of them
wondered privately if he was acting too rashly. In turn, the
Chicago press believed that the Cubs had swindled the Cards. Of
course, in the end, it was the Cardinals who got the better of the
deal – by a long shot. Given the freedom to run the bases, Brock
excelled. He would go on to play fifteen seasons in St. Louis and
set the major league record for stolen bases, becoming an
offensive force and a Hall of Famer.”
[For his part, Broglio went 4-7 with the Cubs the rest of ’64 and
was a combined 3-12 for Chicago in 1965 and ’66 before leaving
the game.]
But for Bing Devine, the true impact of the Brock trade didn’t
come fast enough and he was fired by St. Louis owner Gussie
Busch on Aug. 17. The Cards were 63-55 and in fifth place, nine
games behind the Phillies. Of course this was the year of the
famous Philly collapse and the Cards snuck in there and went on
to win the World Series.
Devine became an executive with the Mets where he convinced
team president George Weiss to throw $50,000 into the lottery
for Tom Seaver (to be paid if they won the rights to him) and the
rest is history. Devine then returned to St. Louis in 1967 as GM
and stayed thru 1978, after which he held other executive
positions with various teams, including the NFL’s Cardinals.
Joe Namath, part III
As we continue with our erratic tale of Broadway Joe, in
perusing his December 1969 interview with Playboy magazine
Namath talked of the recruiting game and the selection of
Alabama.
Playboy: How many offers were there?
Namath: I usually say 52, but it was more than that. Athletes
today get a hell of a lot more offers because more colleges are
offering more scholarships than they did in 1961, when I
graduated from high school. But it was strange coming out of
high school and having colleges offer me as much money as my
father made in a year – and they did just that. This softened my
disappointment on the baseball thing [Ed. see previous Bar
Chat], because the schools were going to pay me.
Playboy: Which schools made the biggest offers?
Namath: I’m not copping out, but I don’t think it would be right
for me to name them, because this stuff took place eight and a
half years ago; and if I told you the schools, a lot of them could
be under different systems now. Things could have changed and
telling you would only be detrimental to them. I’m not saying
things have changed, only that they may have changed. But I
will tell you that the two schools I finally got serious about –
Maryland and Alabama – were the only colleges that offered me
a straight scholarship and the standard $15 a month for laundry.
I got around the country a lot before I boiled it down, though: I
visited Arizona State, Minnesota, Iowa, Miami, Indiana,
Maryland and Notre Dame.
Playboy: Why did you decide not to play for Notre Dame?
Namath: Two reasons: I talked with their coach, who at the time
was Joe Kuharich, and I wasn’t very impressed by him. More
important was the fact that there were no girls at Notre Dame.
Man, they told me they had a women’s college right across the
lake. What was I supposed to do – swim over to make a date?
Anyway, when I finally decided where I wanted to go to school –
the University of Maryland – I couldn’t get in. My college
boards score was five points below their admission requirements.
Playboy: And Alabama was your second choice?
Namath: No; at that point, I hadn’t been in any contact with them
at all. What happened was that Tom Nugent, Maryland’s coach,
got on the phone to Paul Bryant at Alabama to tell him that I was
still loose and to come after me. I found out later that he called
Alabama because Maryland never plays Alabama and Nugent
didn’t want me to wind up on a team he’d be facing someday. I
guess the reason I finally chose Alabama was because my
brother Frank had played under two of Alabama’s coaches when
they were at Kentucky and another of Alabama’s coaches had
been a senior at Kentucky when Frank had been a freshman
there. He liked the guys and thought it was a good idea for me to
go down there. By that time, I was so disgusted with the whole
recruitment business that I just said screw it and agreed to go to
Alabama. I hadn’t even visited the campus.
Playboy: How did you like it when you arrived?
Namath: It was hell, man. I was a Northerner and 99 percent of
the guys were Southerners. It was really lonely for guys from up
North. We had a kid from Cleveland, one from Silver Creek,
New York, one from Dayton and one from Rhode Island; but in
our freshman year, they all quit.
Playboy: Why?
Namath: Partly because they couldn’t cut it on the football field,
partly because of scholarships, but mostly because they were just
plain homesick. When I got to my sophomore year, only one
other “Northerner” was on the team – and he was from Virginia.
At that time, coming from the North and going to school in the
South was rougher than it is today.
Playboy: In what way?
Namath: The race thing. It was really out of sight, man. My
family lived in a part of Beaver Falls (PA) that was called the
Lower End, a low-income part of town. It was a predominantly
black neighborhood and the guys I hung out with were black.
Like, in high school, I was the only white boy on the starting
basketball team and the four other guys were black; they were all
friends of mine from the neighborhood….But when I got to the
University of Alabama – wow! Coming from where I came
from, I couldn’t believe it. Water fountains for whites were
painted white; there were different bathrooms for whites and
blacks; blacks had to sit in the backs of buses and whites had to
sit up front. I just couldn’t understand it.
[More next time. Source: “The Playboy Interviews: They Played
the Game”]
Stuff
–Dear Lord, with bird flu still simmering in Asia and parts of
Eastern Europe, please send an infected duck to Barry Bonds’
home so us baseball fans don’t have to endure his act this season.
Better yet, hand down an indictment for perjury that voids his
newly-signed contract with the Giants.
[Did you see that Barry Dirtball’s agent, Jeff Borris, said “I
believe 1,000 home runs are within Barry’s reach”? That would
kill me….absolutely kill me.]
–I made a major mistake the other day in talking of how I had to
root for the Bears because of the fact Wake Forest’s Desmond
Clark was on the team, totally forgetting that Wake’s Ricky
Proehl is on Indy! [Proehl was a December signing after an
injury and caught just three passes in very limited action. But he
could be a sleeper participant because of his experience on
Sunday.]
Anyway, with Indianapolis favored by 7 points, I’m going with
Chicago. While I’m wagering $700,000 (using extensive
leverage), I suggest that children under 18 only bet $125,000.
However, if you’re the child of a Wall Street executive, feel free
to put down at least $435,000 based on your parent’s bonus.
–I’m going to be really miffed if Prince doesn’t perform “1999”
during the Super Bowl halftime show. On one hand it seems like
a natural, with an opening perfect for pyrotechnics, but on the
other hand it may seem too ‘yesterday’. “Let’s Go Crazy” is
probably a lay-up.
But what of past halftime shows? In Super Bowl I it was the
Universities of Arizona and Michigan marching bands. In Super
Bowl II, Grambling’s band.
Oh, there have been some doozies; that’s for sure.
Like Carol Channing as entertainment for Super Bowl IV. Or
Super Bowl VII that featured the Woody Herman Band.
And holy cow….no wonder I have nightmares to this day
concerning a certain Disney ride. For Super Bowl XI the
halftime spectacle was “It’s a Small World.”
In fact the Super Bowl “extravaganza” was family oriented until
about SB XXVII which featured Michael Jackson; though this
one included “3,500 local children.” Yikes! But who knew back
then?!
James Brown was part of the show at Super Bowl XXXI, Gloria
Estefan has been a fixture a few times (borrr-ing), and the
programmers can always fall back on some kind of Motown
theme when they’ve run out of ideas.
The best, though, was clearly U2, Super Bowl XXXVI and the
first game post-9/11. I was also partial to Paul McCartney two
years ago.
–No wonder Tony Dungy is such a good person. Growing up in
Jackson, MS, he actually had two real parents! His father was a
science professor at Jackson Community College and his mother
taught Shakespeare at Jackson High.
–For the first time, I have heard commercials here in New Jersey
for residents to be careful of the bears. This means one thing,
sports fans; some are concerned enough about the coming spring
offensive to warn us and yet another excuse to load up on Chex
Mix and beer, by my way of thinking.
–From Lewis Smith of the London Times:
“Baboons plan ahead for expeditions to find food, just as people
work out how to scoop bargains.
“They calculate which trees and bushes must be reached early in
the day and which can wait, a study shows. The ability to
imagine future delights is likely to derive from an ancestor
common to humans and baboons 30 million years ago. The
baboons know that if they defer a visit to a particular tree, the
best pickings will have gone by the time they get there. So they
head for the best fruit, only later collecting less-prized food.”
[Did I ever tell you how ticked off I am at my local A&P because
the melon cubes are always mushy despite the expiration date
saying they should be fresh? Baboon Chat continuuuuuuessss.]
“Researchers at the University of St. Andrews established that
baboons in Blouberg Nature Reserve, South Africa, knew where
they were going and when, rather than taking food immediately
after they found it.
“Professor Richard Byrne said: ‘It’s like planning for the January
sales. If you stop for a coffee, the bargain on the third floor will
have gone.”
This is why I do my shopping in September.
–But wait…more monkey business; this time from New Delhi.
From Miam Ridge of the South China Morning Post:
“Throughout the city, thousands of fearless rhesus monkeys
roam, loitering at roadsides, swinging over walls, and hopping
through windows in search of food.”
But last week the city’s monkey catcher, Nand Lal, resigned
under pressure from animal rights groups. It seems that Mr. Lal
would lure monkeys into a box and then take them to an
“overcrowded shed on the outskirts of the city, which animal
charities have described as a ‘monkey prison.’”
Incredibly, there were only a few monkeys in Delhi as recently
as 1991, but as the human population has soared and forest areas
eliminated, the monkeys have been forced to move into the city.
And it seems they like government buildings, probably because
India is notorious for its stifling bureaucracy and the monkeys
know there is a lot of paperwork involved before they can be
kicked out. But after several broke into the defense ministry and
tore up important papers in 2004, “India’s Supreme Court
ordered that the city should be monkey-free.”
At first the government tried relocating them to other states, but
these folks were none too pleased, and then Delhi officials
introduced Langurs, which are bigger and more aggressive
monkeys, to scare their rhesus pieces cousins away, but this only
scattered them further.
What to do? India’s leading paleontologist, Iqbal Malik,
“believes New Delhi’s monkeys should be rounded up, placed in
a sanctuary and used, in the place of forest monkeys, for
laboratory experiments.”
I’m not telling the monkeys….you tell ‘em.
–Uh oh…Brad K. passed along a distressing tale, sort of in line
with the black bear warning in New Jersey. [Brad himself has
had run-ins with bears near his Jersey home, but no one was
hurt!]
It seems that thousands of residents in Juneau, Alaska, lost power
when a bald eagle, lugging a deer head, crashed into transmission
lines. According to the AP, “The bird, weighed down by the
deer head, apparently failed to clear the lines. A repair crew
found the eagle dead, the deer head nearby.”
Now what Brad and I are worried about is the fact New Jersey
not only has a large eagle population, but we have like ten times
the number of deer than when George Washington was traipsing
around, for crying out loud. Ergo, it’s a combustible
combination; hordes of eagles bearing deer heads causing
unspeakable damage on not just our transmission lines, but also
the bridges connecting New Jersey to the Big Apple. I can only
hope the authorities are making preparations.
–Harry K. relayed the story of the technician with the U.S.
Forest Service who had a run-in with a “7-foot-long panther with
‘jet black’ fur,” according to reporter Sammy Fretwell of The
State newspaper.
It seems that Terrance Fletcher was doing his thing down by the
Chattooga River, which separates Georgia and South Carolina,
when he spotted the black cat, dove into the river, and crawled
up the bank in South Carolina to escape. “The animal started
running…so I decided to run and get away and jump in the river
to get across to the other side,” said Fletcher. “It was a life-
changing event for me.”
Well…black panthers are certainly not native to that area,
“meaning Fletcher might have seen a river otter or a bobcat, state
wildlife officials in Georgia and South Carolina said.” And no
tracks were found.
However, before we consign Terrance to an institution, one
Georgia game official said it could have been an exotic pet that
escaped. [Possibly devouring the as yet to be discovered owner
in the process…at least by my way of thinking.]
Harry K. notes it all comes down to this; if called by a panther,
don’t anther!
–Iona lost again (to Canisius on Monday) and is now 0-21, plus
it lost its top scorer and rebounder for the remainder of the
season. The New York Times’ George Vecsey caught up with
coach Jeff Ruland who had just purchased some books; “The
Mammoth Book of True Crime,” by Colin Wilson, “Pistol: The
Life of Pete Maravich,” by Mark Kriegel, and “The Secret Life
of Houdini: The Making of America’s First Superhero,” by
William Kalush and Larry Sloman. Ruland told Vecsey he might
make himself disappear.
But while it would seem bleak for Iona as it seeks to avoid being
the only Division I school aside from Prairie View in 1995 and
Savannah State in 2005 to go winless, Iona does have two games
remaining with 3-18 St. Peters (Jersey City, NJ).
–Not for nothing but Wisconsin’s football team finished #5 or
#7, depending on the poll, and its men’s basketball team is now
#2. But Florida, current national titleholder in both basketball
and football and still #1 in b-ball this season, has them beat.
Update: Doh! Wisconsin lost on Wednesday to Indiana.
[I’m officially hopping on the #15 Nevada bandwagon myself. I
suggest you join me as we ride Nick Fazekas to the Final Four,
baby!]
–Every now and then we just have to mention a particularly
strong NBA performance, as much as it kills us, and so the Bar
Chat “Performance of the Week in a Supporting Role” goes to
Dallas’ Austin Croshere who, picking up the slack for the absent
new papa Josh Howard, scored 34 points on 11-14 shooting (7-
10 from downtown) in just 24 minutes in the Mavericks’ 122-
102 win over Seattle.
–“For Better or For Worse” update. Congratulations to Michael
on his $25,000 advance. At least we know he’ll be blowing it on
booze and women which should spice up the strip some. But note
to their daughter, who on Tuesday was whining about going
home following the fire that destroyed the family’s apartment.
Look kid, stop bitching. If this is the worst thing that happens to
you in your life, you’re pretty lucky.
More importantly, both Jeff B. and I look for Pitiful Wimp
Anthony [Jeff prefers “Big A.” because he’s convinced the dufus
will win out for Liz’s affections] to find out about Liz’s busted
relationship with Cop Paul when he bumps into Mr. Patterson.
–James Billington, the librarian of Congress, listed his five most
important books for Newsweek.
1. “War and Peace” by Leo Tolstoy. “You can often learn more
about today’s history by reading a novel than by reading a
newspaper.”
2. “The Possessed” by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
3. “Moby Dick” by Herman Melville
4. “The Nature and Destiny of Man” by Reinhold Niebuhr
5. Keats’s poems.
Personally, I would have added any book on the 1969 New York
Mets, or any Calvin & Hobbes collection.
–When I was in Ireland last, this past August, the locals in
Lahinch warned us the police were cracking down hard on drunk
driving. Seeing as how our longest drive when visiting this town
is from the hotel to the clubhouse, it’s not much of a problem but
we heard horror stories of how some members there had been
charged with DUI right after leaving the golf course grounds. So
we were careful and actually walked to the club one day when
we knew we’d have a few pints on site.
Then as we were leaving at 5:00 a.m. the final day to get our
flight home from Shannon, right before we got out of town we
were pulled over and my friend who was driving was given a
breathalyzer. Luckily we had stopped imbibing early that
evening and everything was OK.
I bring all this up because I know many of you travel to Ireland
and it’s true, the country has been cracking down in a big way on
drunk driving that by some reports plays a part in 40% of the
nation’s fatalities; 400 total in 2005. This is no laughing matter.
But there is another aspect to this story…the rural pub is dying
because people are afraid to drive. According to Bloomberg
News’ Louisa Nesbitt, some 200 such establishments closed last
year alone, with the valuable licenses then picked up by urban
pub owners. With many of the communities having lost their
post offices and other gathering places, this is a real blow to the
social fabric. At a typical pub, where 40 might have congregated
in past years, today only 10 do. Alcohol consumption is down
8%.
So what’s the solution? Rural bus services, but they’re probably
money losers without heavy subsidies from the government.
And that’s your Irish Pub Report; another free feature of Bar
Chat.
–Finally, congratulations to David Letterman on his 25 years as
a late-night host. Goodness gracious, where does the time fly. I
still have fond memories of his afternoon slot, while nowadays
I’m in bed long before he or Leno come on.
Top 3 songs for the week of 1/30/71: #1 “Knock Three Times”
(Dawn) #2 “My Sweet Lord” (George Harrison) #3 “Lonely
Days” (Bee Gees)…and…#4 “One Less Bell To Answer” (The
5th Dimension) #5 “Rose Garden” (Lynn Anderson) #8 “Your
Song” (Elton John) #9 “One Bad Apple” (The Osmonds)
Super Bowl Quiz Answers: 1) SB XIII: John Stallworth caught
two TD passes, including a 75-yarder. For the game the combo
of Stallworth and Lynn Swann caught 10 for 239 yards. 2) SB
XIV: Wendell Tyler was the Rams lead back then. 3) SB XV:
Cliff Branch caught two TD passes from Plunkett. 4) SB XVI:
Ray Wersching kicked four field goals. 5) SB XVII: David
Woodley was Miami’s QB, and a poor one at that; 4 of 14. 6)
SB XVIII: Marcus Allen was MVP as he rushed 20 times for 191
yards, including a 74-yard TD scamper.
Next Bar Chat, Monday p.m.
