MT KISCO- Up here in the sticks to celebrate the birthday of one of the most amazing and courageous people I know of. Trish Ludwig would kill me if I spent any more time talking about how awesome she is, so I’ll leave it at that.
Her birthday bash was a throwback to the golden days of yesteryear, not only for the great time we all had, but also for the rip-roaring hangover I woke up with on Sunday morning. To think I used to do this almost every weekend. Oh the humanity.
The party was at Pour, a wine bar here in town. From the outside it looks like someone’s house. But inside was real nice.
I’m not much into vino, so Trish’s hubby Karl (the Ace) Ludwig made sure to import some of Golden, CO’s finest. It did the trick too. Of course the best part of it all was catching up with all the hometown favorites.
I stayed at the Holiday Inn, which wasn’t bad considering it hasn’t been refurbished since the Eisenhower administration. I’m not making this up, here is a picture of the hallway outside my room.
If I was the hotel manager I’d have a pair of twin girls stand outside random people’s doors just for a laugh or two.
And I’m not sure what the town motto for Mt. Kisco is, but it ought to be Car Dealership Capital of America. There’s a boatload of them. Actually, it quite a charming little town, lots of nice places. All in all a perfect way to celebrate a phenomenal friend.
MARCH MADNESS
I will get to my requisite complaining about how terrible my brackets are in a few minutes. But for right now I had to speak about our boys from Jersey City the Saint Peter’s Peacocks.
That game against Purdue the other night was so much fun to watch. Their secrets of success was two things: 1) they played up in your shorts defense that was almost inpenetrable. And 2) (and how’s this for a novel concept), The guys actually cut to the basket and looked to make backdoor passes. I mean I haven’t seen that since the last time I watched Hoosiers. They weren’t bombing away from downtown like all these other teams do. Just good old fashioned basketball.
Now I suspect that the Cinderella story will end this afternoon at the hands of North Carolina which will suck on multiple levels. But you can’t go by me.
Going into today’s action, I was in 47th place out of a 50 participant pool. My inability to pick college basketball games is other-worldly. I would almost be better off picking all the number 16 seeds to go to the Final Four.
They really should have me on the those Selection Sunday shows. I’ll fill out my bracket, you bet the opposite and everyone wins! I win too because I expect to be handsomely compensated by the networks for my expertise or in my case, lack thereof.
Which leads me to…
SPORTS TELEVISION: Broadcasting Mega Deals
On April 1, 1990, Brent Musberger called that year’s Men’s tournament final between Duke and UNLV. It would be the final event Musberger would call for CBS, as negotiations for a new deal had broken down, and CBS was cutting him loose.
Musberger had done it all for CBS. He hosted The NFL Today, by far the highest rated pregame show on TV. He called NBA games, and very shortly was going to become the lead baseball play by play caller, as CBS had just taken over the national contract for MLB.
He’s been at ABC/ESPN now for over 30 years, mostly doing college football, but he really was the face of CBS Sports for most of the 70’s and all of the 80’s. At the time of his dismissal, it was almost impossible to think of him being anywhere else.
I thought a lot about that these past couple weeks as there have been some seismic shifts in the broadcasting landscape. Joe Buck, who to me was The face of Fox Sports much the same way that Musburger was the face of CBS, signed a huge contract to call Monday Night Football for ESPN. Al Michaels, who I think is overrated, but many still consider him a national treasure, signed a mega deal to call Thursday night football for Amazon Prime.
Michaels has bounced around, he was ABC’s baseball football voice for years before coming over to do Sunday Night Football for NBC. But Buck’s been with FOX since they came into existence. He became their main baseball guy when FOX got that contract in 1996, and has called almost every World Series since then. I was one of the few people around here who liked Buck, and for the record I think he does a much better job calling baseball than football. It sounds like his deal is just for MNF (I could be wrong about that) and if that’s true it means he’s making a lot more money for doing a lot less work. I mean who wouldn’t sign up for that in a heartbeat?
I was going to get into the decision that Mayor Adams made to allow performing artists and athletes to go back to work without having gotten the vaccine, but that’ll have to be for next week I think I’m done for this week.
Stay Safe
and Have a Great Week
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