Give it all you got, take your very best shot, and may the best team win. The time is now. The name of the game is action! ...
ABC's Wide World of Sports is carrying the Rebel 400 NASCAR Grand National Race from Darlington, S.C.
I don't know what this college-basketball game is that CBS is scheduled to be showing tonight, but, per the Kentucky New Era TV grid, it will apparently be pre-empting my My Three Sons rerun and might push me over to Lawerence Welk.
I don't often watch Lawrence Welk, but the old boy did have a winning appearance on Here's Lucy this season.
It's only Game 4 of the Stanley Cup playoffs, but it appears the NHL also might be wrapping up its 1969-70 season this weekend.
Game 7 from Madison Square Garden ...
ReplyDeleteOK, the Laker starters are Elgin Baylor and Keith Erickson at the forwards, Wilt Chamberlain at center and Dick Garrett and Jerry West at the guards. The ABC color commentator, Jack Twyman, says Erickson during this series has played stalwart defense against the Knicks' Bill Bradley.
ReplyDeleteBack on March 30, 1970, Maurice Stokes died. He was 36. While with the Cincinnati Royals in 1958, he was injured in a fall on the court. Here's David Whitley in The Sporting News in 2012:
DeleteIn the last game of the regular season, Stokes went skyward and fell backward over another player. The back of his head slammed the court, knocking him cold. These days, Stokes would have been immobilized and rushed to the hospital. In 1958, he was given smelling salts and sent back in.
Stokes did his duty that night. He played the first game of playoffs three days later. On the flight back from Detroit, the big man started shaking and sweating. He had a seizure and went into a coma.
An ambulance was waiting at the Cincinnati airport. Stokes had suffered post-traumatic encephalopathy. The blow had damaged the part of his brain that controls motor function.
He would never walk again. At first, all he could do was blink.
Almost totally paralyzed for the next 12 years, Stokes's constant companion and legal guardian during this period was one of his former Cincinnati teammates, Jack Twyman.
New York counters with Dave DeBusschere and Bradley at the forwards, Willis Reed at center (giant ovation for the injured Knick captain) and Walt Frazier and Dick Barnett at the guards.
ReplyDeleteThis is the first NBA Finals series to be televised nationally from beginning to end.
ReplyDeleteSo Reed doesn't even get off the floor for the center jump against Chamberlain to open the game. Baylor airballs the first shot of the game, and then Frazier passes to Reed for a jump shot near the free-throw line to put the Knicks up, 2-0. Chris Schenkel is ecstatic.
ReplyDeleteAnd Reed scores again, and Schenkel is so beside himself that he just called the Lakers, the "Los Angeles Rams." Knicks, 5-2.
ReplyDelete9-2, New York, and the Lakers call timeout.
ReplyDelete2:19 to go in the first quarter, and the Knicks are ahead, 30-19. Reed appears as though he might be done. He can barely walk, much less run up and down the floor with Chamberlain. Reed scored those two outside buckets, and that has definitely influenced the early going--Chamberlain has had to stick with Reed on the perimeter, leaving the area near the basketball ring more open for the smaller Knicks to drive and shoot.
ReplyDeleteThe Knicks are outshooting the Lakers, 67 percent to 42 percent, from the field. Now 34-23.
ReplyDeleteSchenkel tells us that the Rebel 400 half of tomorrow's Wide World of Sports will be blacked out in North and South Carolina. The other half of the show will be the PGA Tour event in Houston, and, presumably, the folks around Darlington will get to see the golf.
ReplyDelete46-27, and this game just isn't very good at all.
ReplyDelete56-33, 6:08 to play in the half.
ReplyDelete63-38, 2:25 to go in the first half ... Chamberlain has made one of his eight free-throw tries.
ReplyDeleteOK, that's the half: 69-42, Knicks. I am thrilled for Walt Frazier of Southern Illinois University. He hit eight of 11 field goals and seven of seven free throws for 23 points, to go along with nine assists.
ReplyDeleteFor my money, this hasn't been much of an NBA season.
ReplyDeleteBill Russell retired, and the Celtics disappeared (34-48, sixth of sevenh in the Eastern Division and out of the playoffs) after winning everything in the 1960s--including the 1968-69 championship when it was clear that the team was way past its prime.
ReplyDeleteThe Knicks won 60 games, and everybody has been going nuts about them all season long.
ReplyDeleteHere's Frank Deford in Sports Illustrated a couple of weeks ago: "The thousand words were the New York Knicks, darlings of the national media, the all-purpose shield with which the nation's book publishing business is planning to protect itself against economic depression. Authors shadow the Knicks like groupies. The team, the scene, the coach and several of the players all will soon be between covers. At least five biographers stand panting in line for the chance to do Willis Reed."
New York is a good, young team; only Dick Barnett among the Knicks is older than 30. But watching the team's best player, Reed, even though he's only 27, hobble around in this game after getting multiple cortisone shots that makes me think the Knicks are probably not going to be the next Celtics.
ReplyDeleteI do like the Bucks, with Lew Alcindor and WKU's Greg Smith, and there's the Bullets, with Louisville's Wes Unseld.
ReplyDeleteOver in the West, Deford had me excited about the Hawks a couple of weeks ago, and I was getting excited about the Bulls with WKU's Clem Haskins and Evansville's Jerry Sloan. But then Chicago traded Haskins to Phoenix, so I'm mad at the Bulls.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, this whole NBA season feels a little half-baked.
ReplyDeleteAnd now we have the damaged/never-going-to-be Knicks blitzing the never-exactly-were Lakers at half of Game 7.
ReplyDeleteNate Bowman lines up to tip against Wilt Chamberlain to start the second half, but Willis Reed hustles out late from the locker room after another round of cortisone shots to take Bowman's spot.
ReplyDeleteRest in peace, "Nate the Snake" Bowman, who has a very interesting Wikipedia entry: "In his NBA/ABA career, he committed more personal fouls than he scored field goals. Bowman was one of several players involved in a November 20, 1968 brawl between the Knicks and Atlanta Hawks at Atlanta's Alexander Memorial Coliseum. The fight eventually spilled into the stands, where fans grabbed Bowman so that Atlanta's Bill Bridges could land a punch.[1] None of the participants were fined more than $25.[2]"
Twyman recalls that the Lakers came way back to close to within two points in last year's Game 7.
ReplyDeleteKnicks 92, Lakers 65 ...
ReplyDeleteAnd that's over. Los Angeles did not close to within two points. Final: 113-99.
ReplyDeleteHere's Howard Cosell interviewing Dick Barnett, and he's asking him about rumors that he might be made available in the upcoming expansion draft. That goes over really well.
Chris Schenkel urges ABC's viewers to stay tuned for a President Nixon press conference following the game. A 10 p.m. Eastern Friday press conference from the president of a nation at war ... that doesn't sound any too happy.
We missed a Brady Bunch rerun to watch this thing tonight.
ReplyDeletePer the University of California-Santa Barbara "Presidency Project:"
ReplyDeletePresident Nixon's tenth news conference was held at 10 p.m. on Friday, May 8, 1970, in the East Room at the White House. The news conference was broadcast live on television and radio.
In his news conference at 9:04 a.m. on Saturday, May 9, 1970, Press Secretary Ronald L. Ziegler told reporters that the President had made a sunrise visit to the Lincoln Memorial, accompanied by his valet, Manolo Sanchez. At the Memorial he found a number of students who had come to Washington to participate in the demonstrations for peace and talked with them at some length. The President later described the discussion to Garnett D. (Jack) Homer of the Washington Star, one of the first reporters to arrive at the White House that day.
Deford in this week's SI: "This is the seventh time in the last nine years that the Lakers have reached the NBA finals, a prodigious record of consistency that only the most royal of sporting families—people like the Yankees, Canadiens and Celtics—have ever approximated. Of course, any resemblance between them and the Lakers ends there, since the other teams win ..."
ReplyDeleteElgin Baylor, future general manager of the Clippers, is quoted by Deford: "I forget the losses. I'm immune to the past."
DeleteDeford points out in the same story that Jim Murray had been cracking on Louisville in his Kentucky Derby coverage for The Los Angeles Times.
ReplyDeleteI'm so excited about Roberta Flack's second album this 1970 summer. Her first one might 've been Hoptown 1969 me's favorite record of the whole year.
ReplyDeleteHey, the BBC already had this whole idea.
ReplyDeleteRichard Petty's record in the Rebel 400 takes Jim McKay's breath away.
ReplyDelete"Wreck," not "record," of course. Still thinking about Lena Horne and Freddie Hubbard.
DeleteRichard Petty: "At that time, I used to run with a rag in my mouth. Well, those rags started coming out the windows and stuff. It looked terrible. I think the TV cameras said, 'Get away from that. He's coming apart inside that car.'"
DeleteMaurice Petty: "His head's bloody, and his eye's hurt a little bit. He'll be all right, though."
ReplyDeleteMcKay is relieved.
There you go ... David Pearson of Spartanburg, South Carolina, wins in Darlington. He had a near miss at the Daytona 500, and now the 1966, '68 and '69 Grand National Series champ has his first win of 1970.
ReplyDeleteNext Saturday, Jim McKay says he'll have same-day videotape coverage of the Indianapolis 500 time trials, the ABC's Wide World of Sports athlete of year for 1969, Japanese kickboxing (first time for that sport on the show) and the Mexican 1000 cross-country road racing championship.
ReplyDeleteMcKay: "That's next week. This week, Johnny Reb is indicating that David Pearson is the winner of the 1970 Rebel 400. The executive producer of ABC’s Wide World of Sports is Roone Arledge ..."
Wow! What a great show that was.
The guys running along and atop Pearson's car are just fantastic.
DeleteHOORAY FOR TV!
ReplyDeleteBelated happy Mother's Day from Lawrence Welk and Lynn Anderson.
ReplyDeleteLast week 1970 on American Bandstand: Crabby Appleton with "Go Back." And now it's up seven slots to No. 69 in this week's Cash Box Top 100.
ReplyDeleteThis week's Bandstand.
ReplyDeleteBoss General Johnson and the Chairman of the Board just bringing it ... No. 54, "Dangling on a String."
DeleteBelated happy Mother's Day from Elvis Presley, too, with Cash Box No. 65.
ReplyDeleteQuincy Jones's "Killer Joe," which would one day become the theme of the great Little Bill cartoon, is No. 59.
ReplyDeleteNo. 70, incidentally, was Bill Cosby's interesting "Grover Henson Feels Forgotten," still climbing in its fifth week on the Cash Box Top 100.
Meanwhile, on Soul Train: Perfect No. 55 "Band of Gold" by Freda Payne.
ReplyDeleteNo. 48: Never heard this Brook Benton "My Way," and it's my new favorite version of the song.
ReplyDeleteNo. 30: Das Wer, "Der Sucher."
ReplyDeleteExciting! Airport must be out this year! It's rare to find a movie I'm actually interested in seeing.
ReplyDeleteWow ... fantastic. Rest in peace, Terry Alan Kath of Chicago, Illinois.
ReplyDeleteThis is probably going to be the highest-charting song this week 1970 that I don't believe I've ever heard before: No. 11 "What Is Truth?" by Johnny Cash.
ReplyDeleteNo. 1!
ReplyDeleteElton John on Top of the Pops, May 22, 1970.
ReplyDeleteJack Blanchard and Misty Morgan on American Bandstand, May 23.
ReplyDeleteGreat Blanchard/Morgan number, "Bethlehem Steel," that didn't make the American Bandstand cut:
DeleteGoodbye, honey
Goodbye, money
Goodbye, automobile
Goodbye, money
Goodbye, honey
Goodbye, Bethlehem Steel
I better get home now
Meanwhile, on The Johnny Cash Show of late ...
ReplyDeleteAnd it's Tammy Wynette on this week's Hee Haw ...
ReplyDeleteRoy Clark brings back Tammy for another number ...
DeleteNo. 100 on the Cash Box Top 100 for the week ending May 23, 1970: peppy "Primrose Lane" by O.C. Smith of Mansfield, Louisiana.
ReplyDeleteOn Ed Sullivan on May 10, 1970: "The Love You Save" by the Jackson 5, No. 69 on this week's list.
ReplyDeleteStill No. 1: "American Woman" by the Guess Who.
ReplyDelete"I had stolen everything I possibly could from the Beatles."
ReplyDeleteI'm a huge, huge fan of James Taylor; I even like some of his music. Here he is playing on May 16, 1970, maybe in Port Chester, New York.
Part 8 of YouTube's "Brandon Wolf 8mm Movies - 1960's-1970's" series silently flickers:
ReplyDelete* Raquel Welch and Mae West (1970)
* Carol Burnett and Lyle Waganer spoof of Rock Hudson and Doris Day (1970)
* Olivia deHavilland and Dirk Bogarde in 'Libel' (1970)
* Eric Hoffman's white convertible parked in Chatham, Virginia (1970)
* Tour of the White with Tricia Nixon and Harry Reasoner (1970)
* Miss America 1971 - Phyllis George wins (1970)
* The Supremes (1970)
* Alan Ladd and Brandon DeWilde in 'Shane' (1970)
* Dick Cavett, Bill Henson and the Muppets (1970)
* Joanne Woodward in 'Rachel, Rachel' (1970)
For sure, the best record I've heard all 1970 remains Frank Sinatra's Watertown:
ReplyDeletePeople say to me,
'You need company
'When you have
time to spend,
'Drop around
and meet a friend'
They forget
that I'm not over you
for a while
My Lord, that is so beautiful and so perfect.
Speaking of the Warriors (in the most recent NBA Update post), the 1970 Warriors have named Al Attles as their full-time head coach. He served as player-coach for the last 30 games of the season after George Lee was fired, and now he says he plans to retire as a guard to take over the permanent coaching position.
ReplyDeleteWe don't know it yet, but this is very bad news for us Bullets fans.
Here's the March 23, 1970, episode of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, the fantastic "Death of a Goldfish."
ReplyDeleteThe second-best record I've heard in so far in fake 1970 might well be Jimmy McGriff's peppy, NFL Films-ish A Thing to Come By.
ReplyDeleteWikipedia, so interesting: "On March 29, 2008, McGriff was given a last private concert by 'Mr. B3' Bill Dilks and Grant Macavoy in his honor in Voorhees, New Jersey. Dilks brought his B3 and played for McGriff his wife Margaret, their guests, and the folks at Genesis HealthCare. As Dilks said, 'The Hammond reaches its players far beyond where the conscious mind lives'."
Mrs. McGriff, by the way, is on Facebook.
Maybe 1970 Hoptown me will get into soap operas.
ReplyDeleteNo. 1 in the Cash Box rankings for the week ending June 20, 1970: "The Long and Winding Road" by the Beatles.
ReplyDeleteLongest stay in the top 100: The Sandpipers' "Come Saturday Morning," No. 13 in its 16th week in the rankings.
Up from No. 8 three weeks ago, to No. 7 two weeks ago, to No. 3 this week: "Get Ready" by Rare Earth.
Up from No. 6, to No. 5, to No. 2: "Which Way You Going, Billy?" by the Poppy Family.
Seriously, if YouTube was just videos of people opening old packs of baseball, football, basketball or maybe even hockey cards, I would lose my job at least.
ReplyDelete