The first radio interview I ever did was in the winter of 1975. I was a freshman at UWSP and sat down with former major league shortstop Tony Kubek at his off-season home in Wausau. Kubek was then part of the broadcast booth for NBC coverage of baseball and had just come off the 1975 World Series, which some observers called the best Series ever. One of the things I remember about the interview (and yeah, I do have a cassette of it in a box somewhere) was Kubek's belief that we were on the cusp of an explosion of television sports. Boy, was he right. This was long before ESPN and 24 hour sports talk and every sport under the sun finding a cable niche somewhere. But Kubek understood that people loved the unscripted nature of sports programming. You could not know…ever…what you might see. I thought about that again as I watched the end of the Packer game Saturday night. After the Packers went 4 and out with a couple of minutes left you could have said, ok, that's it and turned the game off. If you did that you missed all of the unlikely stuff that came after. Aaron Rodgers pulled his magic again…two long passes to Jeff Janis(who had run a wrong route in the end zone earlier in the game earning Rodgers disgust)…Hail Mary Part 2…tie game…weird coin flip(yeah I said coin flip) and then the Cardinals stunning the Packers as old pro Larry Fitzgerald came through in the clutch. Even the best Hollywood writers wouldn't have come up with that stuff…and if they did…we wouldn't have believed it. The magic of sports, and what keeps us watching, is the possibility that we may see something we never have before. Even the most mundane mid-season games sometimes have these moments, but when they happen in the harsh spotlight of the playoffs, the feeling seems to magnify. Kubek was right in 1975. The technology has allowed us to embrace almost every sport when and where we want it…but it's still the games themselves and the performances of the players that can lift or deflate our spirits. As every Packer fan knows today.
Kubek lives in Appleton now and I will always thank him for allowing a callow teenager who called his house and requested an interview to come and talk baseball with him. It got me started on this journey.
The Badger mens basketball team answered Nigel Hayes for a gut check and they earned a victory over 4th ranked Michigan State on Sunday. The Badgers went hard to the basket and earned lots of trips to the foul line. Hayes was engaged early and hit some big shots. Bronson Koening nailed a clutch 3 late and found Ethan Happ for the eventual game winner. Credit also a tough defensive stop with a backcourt trap that got the Badgers the ball back down one. Just a great win for Greg Gard and his squad. They travel to Penn State on Thursday.
The Bucks have won two straight as they beat a good Atlanta team on Friday night and also topped Charlotte on the road Saturday. Khris Middleton has been smokin hot recently and the Bucks seem to be figuring it out. They play at Miami on Tuesday.
This is the anniversary of the death of Curly Howard in 1952. The funniest Stooge was only 48
Songs Of The Day (from my I-pod)
The Saga Of Pepote Rouge-The Band (1977) one of the stronger tracks on the album “Islands” which was a collection of tunes that hadnt been released. Islands was the last studio album to fulfill their contract with Capitol so “The Last Waltz” could be released on Warner Brothers. Disappointing album considering how good the last one was (Northern Lights, Southern Cross).
