The 2013 Gettysburg calendar on sale now

                I have published a calendar for 2013 with images from the Gettysburg battlefield.

          The calendar can be found on eBay. Search for “2013 calendar with 14 photographs of the Gettysburg battlefield.”

          I’ve had a lot of help with the project and I am grateful to everyone who, in one way or another, helped me get this done. The calendar was printed by Custom Printing of Oxnard, California. My friends there helped me avoid some classic production errors.

          My son, Sean, helped get the images right. He and my daughter, Regan, jokingly gave me a compass so I wouldn’t get lost on some Civil War battlefield, which I’ve done.

          My wife Amy has been extraordinarily supportive. I am not the world’s most fun guy when I get to Gettysburg because I am very focused on completing my to-do list. My to-do list seldom includes anything other than the battlefield when we are in Gettysburg.

          I hope you all like calendars.

 

          Thanks for reading.

This weekend's NFL winners will be...

Just for fun...

My NFL picks for the weekend are the Broncos over the Ravens, the Packers over the 49ers (I'm on shaky ground there, not too sure), the Falcons over the Seahawks and the Patriots over the Texans.

Only time will tell. What are your picks?

Thanks for reading.

Just one job to do...

            Don Liddle was a pitcher for the New York Giants in the 1950s and he was a member of the Giants team that played the Cleveland Indians in the 1954 World Series.

          Leo Durocher, who would later write the best baseball book I’ve ever read, was managing the Giants that season and he brought lefthander Liddle in as a relief pitcher in a tight spot in the first game of the Series.

          Liddle’s assignment: Get the next batter out so Durocher could bring in another pitcher to face the next guy. Liddle accomplished the goal and the game moved on.

          But how Liddle got the out and what he said after the out was recorded is part of baseball lore.

          You see, the next batter was Vic Wertz. Wertz, who had a journeyman career as a first baseman and an outfielder, crushed one of Liddle’s pitches toward centerfield. An absolute rocket.

          One reporter later wrote that Wertz’ bomb would have been out of every other major league park, including Yellowstone. But the game in question was played in the spacious New York Polo Grounds and there was a lot of room in centerfield.

          Lots and lots of room. There is no definitive source for the depth of centerfield at the Polo Grounds that day, but most sources say it between 460 feet from home plate to the wall and others say it was 485.

          Most estimates say Wertz hit the ball about 420 feet, but whatever the distance was, Willie Mays made a spectacular effort to run the ball down and catch it somewhere near the centerfield wall. Mays’ over-the-shoulder catch is one of the more celebrated defensive plays in baseball history. Watch it on Youtube; he looks like a baseball version of Elroy Hirsch, the Hall of Fame wide receiver.

          And every bit as great as the catch was Mays’ throw. Upon catching the ball, Mays whirled and hurled and the throw was good enough to keep any runs from scoring. There were runners at first and second base and the runner at second tagged up and went to third, but that was it. It was a stunning play by Mays.

          And so, as soon as the ball returned to the mound, Durocher came back out, took the ball from Liddle and brought in another pitcher.

          Liddle strolled to the dugout, fired his glove at the bench and sat down saying, “WelI, I got my man.”

          It’s a great line and it’s classic baseball.

          Thanks for reading.

Southern football up North

When Bear Bryant returned to Alabama as head coach in 1958 the Southeastern Conference was already a tough place to win. The schools were a part of the fabric of their cities and states, just as they are today. Every road game was a trip to a hostile environment and the teams played hard.

          But even so, one of the SEC coaches said a few years later, “Bear Bryant has made every coach in the SEC put his golf clubs away.”

          Today, the SEC has claimed its seventh straight national football championship. The state of Alabama has won its fourth straight national title.

          Roll Tide.

          To understand why the SEC is so successful in football, you have to understand the South. You have to understand how hard it is to play in those raucous stadiums, even where the home school has had an unsuccessful season. You have to understand what a rivalry is and how every SEC game is a rivalry game.

          It has always been that way in the SEC, but back when titles were decided by polls, regional prejudice played a part in determining the vote. When college football was televised by one network and the rule was a school could only host one national TV game a season, football fans away from the South did not have an understanding of life in the SEC. I guess they do now.

          But, just as Bryant forced his fellow conference coaches to give up golf all those years ago, Urban Meyer is about to do the same to the coaches in the Big 10 (why they still call it the Big 10, I have no idea). The Big 10 now has a former SEC champ in its midst and college football is about to change.

          Ohio State was undefeated this season, but the Buckeyes were not eligible to play in a bowl game. They’ll be bowl eligible in 2013 and should probably be among the favorites to earn a berth in the national championship game.

          Meyer is a relentless recruiter and a tremendous coach, much like Alabama’s current coach, Nick Saban. Saban is the only coach to have won BCS championships at two schools, having won at LSU before he came to Alabama. Meyer might become the second because he is that good a coach and he’s at a great football school.

          But that’s all in the future. We’ll see what happens.

 

          For now, thanks for reading and Roll Tide!!

ROLL TIDE

ROLL TIDE!!!

THREE NATIONAL TITLES IN FOUR YEARS FOR THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA AND FOUR STRAIGHT NATIONAL TITLES FOR THE STATE OF ALABAMA.

ROLL TIDE!!!

Basketball's finest voice

Most sports fans have a favorite announcer, a play-by-play man or woman who appeals for whatever reason. There are lots more fans than there are announcers, obviously, but it seems that every fan has a different reason for preferring a specific announcer.

          You go back a few years and you remember Lindsey Nelson and Ray Scott calling football games. Curt Gowdy must have called every sport there was, as did the great Keith Jackson.

I recall listening to Dick Enberg call LA Rams football and UCLA basketball games on the radio. One night Enberg promised to sing to the crowd if UCLA clinched the Pacific Eight conference basketball championship and I was in Pauley Pavilion the night he went down on the floor and sang a rendition of Rain Drops Keep Falling on my Head.

Barney Hall and Ken Squire have been amazing at calling auto races, though they have very different approaches. Nice guys, too.

          I once saw a 30-minute interview show with LA Kings announcer Bob Miller, Dodgers play-by-play man Vin Scully and Lakers announcer Chick Hearn and I didn’t want the interview to end.

          If I had to pick a favorite, I’d hem and haw around for a while, but I’d end up choosing Hearn. My goodness, how that man could call a basketball game. We lost Chick a few years back, but it is hard now for me to watch a Lakers game and not hear, in my mind’s ear, Chick calling the action.

          I miss him.

          Hearn and Johnny Most, the Boston Celtics play-by-play legend, called an all-star game on radio one year. Each man took a half. I was a sportswriter back then and I wrote a column declaring Hearn the best. The Lakers ended up getting hold of that column and I got a signed photograph of Hearn, declaring me a super journalist. I still have it.

          There is a rhythm to calling basketball. I’ve called high school, junior college and college games and that rhythm has to be there or the audience won’t know what you’re talking about. Chick Hearn brought that rhythm into every home and automobile his voice could reach and he made the listener feel the flow of the game, the pace of the action. His brilliant, staccato delivery was the best basketball has ever had.

          Hearn wanted the Lakers to win, sure. But he was a great reporter and he’d tell you when the officials were right to call a foul on the Lakers.

          How many times did we hear him say, “What are these idiots booing about? You could’ve called that one in Braille.”

          Hearn called other sports, too. I heard him announce USC football games on television, and he was tremendous. I read somewhere, and I hope it was accurate, that he also called auto racing at a track in the Midwest very early in his career. Wish I could hear a recording of Chick Hearn announcing an auto race! If any announcer was suited for the frenetic pace and unpredictability of an automobile race, it would be Chick Hearn.

          I close with this, using the pentameter from Casey At The Bat:

 

In all parts of this land of sports the fans will have their way,

They’ll press the buttons on remotes and hear some play-by-play.

With cable and the internet, sports fans can make a choice,

 But in the sport of basketball, Chick’s was the brightest voice.

 

          Thanks for reading.

Football, football and more football

Reflections on a long weekend of football:

 

          I knew he enjoyed attending baseball games and horse races, but I had no idea that Chicago’s best-known historic figure was still involved with financial institutions. I guess he still is because I spent four enjoyable hours watching the Capital One Bowl between Georgia and Nebraska.

          Every time ABC showed the score on the screen, the thing was tagged the CAPONE Bowl.

          Ratta tat tat.

 

          It was no surprise when seven NFL head coaches lost their jobs after the final week of the season. But it was a little odd to see Rex Ryan hold on to his job with the Jets.

 

          Although the BCS National Championship game has rendered other college bowl games nearly pointless, the Rose Bowl remains an exciting game every year. The beautiful stadium, with its natural grass field, the California surroundings and the usually close matchups always make for great viewing.

 

          Speaking of the Tournament of Roses, we watched the parade this morning and were happy to discover that our cable provider had the CW Network’s coverage, announced by Stephanie Edwards and Bob Eubanks.

          Edwards and Eubanks remain the best announcing team for the parade and it was a taste of home to hear their voices again.

 

          South Carolina’s victory over Michigan was a thriller, but it is hoped here that someone will explain television to whoever designs Michigan’s uniforms.

          In the bowl game, Michigan wore white shirts with yellow numbers. Although the numbers were outlined in dark blue, the numbers were not readable for television viewers. If fact, the shirts looked to be blank.

          Michigan has one of the best-established programs in all of college football but someone made a dumb mistake with those uniforms.

 

          On each team’s first possession in the Rose Bowl, both Stanford and Wisconsin ran reverse pass plays with the flanker throwing the ball. That’s pretty wide open stuff!

          Decades ago the Big 10 champion came out west each year to play in the Rose Bowl and played a very conservative offense against the Pacific 8 champion’s typically more wide open offense. The difference between the two approaches was always a big part of the game.

          The differences tend to be program to program rather than region to region now. And both Stanford and Wisconsin played somewhat conservatively over the majority of the game. But it was an exciting game, close and hard-hitting.

 

          The announced attendance for the Rose Bowl today was a little more than 93,000. According to Wikipedia, the largest crowd for a Rose Bowl game was for the January 1, 1973 contest between USC and Ohio State, when 106,869 showed up to watch. The largest crowd at the Rose Bowl stadium for a Super Bowl was 103,985 when the Steelers beat the Rams on January 20, 1980.

          I attended both those games.