And we’re back….
Yes my friends this is our 300th post since our September 2015 comeback. I’m not going to do anything special for it, but I figured it was worth noting. And also another opportunity to thank all of you for reading it, for your comments both pro and con, and most importantly for your friendship and support. I wasn’t sure when I re-started this how far we would go, but thus far, it’s been almost 6.5 years! We’ll keep going till it stops bring fun, and hopefully that won’t be for a long time.
Unfortunately, we have to start with some over the holidays obituaries.
John Madden- As a kid in the 80’s, even though I wasn’t a Giants fan, my dad and I would catch both the Giants games on CBS and the Jets games on NBC. More often than not, especially as the Giants became contenders, we had the good fortune of getting the Pat Summerall/John Madden broadcasting team. To me, they will always be the gold standard.
Madden had retired young as coach of the Raiders because he was burned out and afraid to fly. Broadcasting allowed him the chance to get to his games in a trailer known as the Madden cruiser. More on that later. But when he began as a color commentator, he sounded like no other voice who had ever broadcast a football game. Like Howard Cosell before him, he had a voice and a personality that you only had to hear once and then you would never forget him. He and Summerall were perfect together. Summerall was low key and succinct, Madden anything but. The two of them knew there football though, that was undeniable.
Now the tributes that poured out for him were well deserved, and as I said, I love watching and listening to him on CBS. But I will also say that as he moved around, first to FOX when CBS lost football, then to ABC/ESPN so he could do Monday Night Football and finally to NBC, I sort of felt like Madden almost took on the caricature of himself. What came naturally and genuinely at CBS, at times seemed forced at his other stops.
I like to play a game sometimes when I go on the NY Post’s Sports website: I try to guess which link will lead me to Phil Mushnick’s column. It was pretty easy this past Friday…
Mushnick had made it clear by the end of Madden’s run that he had little use for him*. Most of Mushnick’s issues with Madden were with his refusal to condemn bad behaviour from NFL players, be it on the field or off. Mushnick seemed to think that Madden promoted sometimes immodest celebrations on the field. I’m not sure about that, there were plenty of times I remember the camera would show something, probably in the hopes Madden would have something to comment about it and he said nothing. You want to argue that Madden could have and should have looked to put a stop to it? That I can buy, but I’m not quite as confident as the Post columnist is that Madden would have been successful.
But again, I felt as he got up in years that he was more about marketing himself than breaking down the games he was broadcasting. I could be way off on that, and if I’m being honest, if you asked me if I had the power of personality that he had, would I look to cash in on that anyway I could? I’d probably would.
In any case, there is no getting around the fact that he revolutionized football broadcasting, nobody can take that away from him. Some of the most enjoyable Sunday afternoons I had were listening to him commentate on a football game. And if the Madden cruiser, the video games, his appearances on commercials from Hardware stores to beer to athlete’s foot fungi were part of the package? Well, then that was the price we paid for that.
Betty White: We are still in the grips of the Coronavirus pandemic. We continue to be a hotly divided nation, this weeks look back at what happened this time last year was a perfect example of how split we still are.
But there was one thing I think, in fact I’m sure would have brought the whole of us together, a chance to raise our glasses a salute a national treasure.
That is, if Betty White had lived to celebrate her 100th birthday.
Alas, if we still do that a week from Monday, it will be without her, as the legendary actress passed away on New Years Eve-a mere 18 days away from her centennial birthday.
The best thing I saw written was a meme that said of White, “You must have been something special if you lived to be almost 100 and people still think you died too young.” That’s as perfectly said as you can get.
Mary Tyler Moore was a bit before my time, (I remember my grandmother watching re-runs in the afternoon when I was really little) but I caught enough of the Golden Girls to see how talented and funny she was.
But mostly she became America’s grandma, didn’t she? And if it may not have been a role she necessarily wanted, it was one she embraced. And embraced it with style, grace and most of all good humor.
Of the many stories that I heard over the past week or so, this one stuck out..
White had her own variety show back in 50’s (the 1950’s I guess I have to point out) and had hired Arthur Duncan and African American dancer to perform. When hate mail began to pour in from the South and stations were threatening not to air the program, White stood by her decision and kept Duncan on the show. “I’m sorry, but he stays” she told the network executives. Her show was canceled after a year. There was no regrets on her part either, and Duncan went on to a very successful career in Hollywood.
It’s stories like these that are why we mourn her passing, at 99. Too young
Way too young.
Sidney Poitier- And then to lose this national treasure just a week after losing Betty White was simply hard to take, another hero, who at 94, still feels like he’s gone too soon.
The first African American to win the Oscar for Best actor, Poitier starred in some of the world’s greatest films. In 1967 alone, he did Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, In the Heat of the Night and To Sir with Love. (And I thought Carl Yazstremski was the only one who win the Triple Crown that’s year)
As a freshman in High School, we read the play A Raisin in he Sun by Lorraine Hansberry. When we were done, we watched the 1961 film, which starred Poitier, Ruby Dee and Louis Gossett Jr. All of them had also performed the play on Broadway. All of their performances were powerful, but Poitier was something else. I knew, even at that young age, I was watching an all time great.
And I never knew he directed one of my favorite movies as a kid, Stir Crazy, with Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder. According to Wikipedia, that was the highest grossing film ever directed by an African-American for many years.
But perhaps his most important legacy, is how many actors and actresses, both black and white have cited him as an influence, an inspiration. I know it’s cliche, but we owe so much to the people who were trailblazers, and Sidney Poitier was certainly that.
RIP to all 3.
FOOTBALL: Wrap it up already…
So I know I’ve brought this up before, but now that we’re here, I will repeat that this 17 game schedule for the NFL has been a disaster. I’m sorry folks, but here on January 9th, I feel like we should be watching the playoffs, not a shitload of meaningless games. I cannot be the only person in America that feels this way.
Maybe I’d feel different in my Jets were actually in contention for a playoff spot, or even if the Giants were, but I don’t think so. I think 16 games were perfect, and as much as I would have preferred having the Super Bowl wrapped up by the end of January, I was learning to live with an early February Suoper Bowl. But now we’re playing the Super Bowl on the second weekend of February? I’m sorry man, I’m in Spring Training/Hockey/College basketball mode by then.
And if it ends up being a Patriots-Buccaneers Super Bowl, and two weeks of hype about Brady vs Belichick, well I may have to leave the county for a couple weeks. That would just be a nightmare.
As for the Jets, last week’s game against the aforementioned Bucs was both exhilarating and aggravating. For 59 minutes they had the lead, only to lose, mainly because of a bone-headed play call by coach Rob Saleh. I know that offensive coordinator Matt LeFleur called a hand off to Braxton Berrios, and I know Zach Wilson said he took it upon himself to run the QB sneak, but from where I was sitting, it was on the head coach to say to Wilson, “Whatever you do son, don’t run a QB sneak.” He didn’t and I had to watch Brady march his team down the field in the 2 minute drill for only the 1,000,000th time. Tonight, the Jets lost to the Bills in a game that should have been like a 50 point blowout instead of the 17 point blowout it was. All I can say is if the Bills play like that against whoever they meet in the playoffs, it’s going to be a short playoff run for them.
But what’s amazing is that as $hitty as the Jets were this year, they weren’t even the worst team in their own stadium. That would be your NY Football Giants*, who while they finished with the same pathetic record as my Jets, did so in such unwatchable fashion. Yes, I know they were down to their 3rd string QB, but Dr. Daniel Jones wasn’t exactly setting the place on fire before he got hurt. Is that because of bad coaching, a lack of talent around him, or some combination of the two? That seems to be the $64,000 question around these parts doesn’t it?
I swear, watching the Jets and the Giants these last several years is like watching near the end of Rocky II, isn’t it? Both guys down, have been beaten to a pulp, every time you think one of them is going to get up they slide down the ropes back onto the canvas. Of course we know how rocky II ends (spoiler alert-he wins) but the Jets and Giants keep falling back down. Right now, it looks like the Jets are on one knee, about to grab the rope and pull themselves up, while the Giants are on their backs. Next year it could be the other way around. I saw some good stuff from the Jets this year, but I’ve seen too much as a fan to get too optimistic. That’s about all I can say.
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THIS JUST IN…….As we are going to press, Bob Saget, the actor who played family man Danny Tanner on Full House, then became a raunchy, foul-mouthed stand up comic, was found dead in his Orlando hotel room this afternoon at age 65. Details are still coming in, but this is not the start to 2022 we all were hoping for.
And of course our hearts go out to the families today who were victims of that awful fire in the Bronx. 19 dead so far including 9 kids. Just awful. I just thank God we have the best fire department in the world, or it could have been even worse, hard as that is to imagine.
Let’s just hope things get better from here.
Thanks again for your friendship and your support. I do hope even if you don’t agree with some of my takes, that you are at least enjoying it.
Stay Safe
and Have a Great Week
*Mushnick had little use for Summerall as well, and took some shots at him after he passed.
**I don’t know why I referred to them as the Football Giants being that the NY baseball Giants skipped town almost 65 years ago
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