Sports
Watching,
Reporting, Televising, etc.
T.
Buckingham Thomas physics Oberlin WOBC Richwood Tom Thomas Chyron
Infinit Pittsburgh
I
never participated in sports (except as the navigator in road
rallies), but I've been around them all my life. Here are most
of the relevant articles.
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To
search for specific names or events that might be listed elsewhere,
click the icon to bring up a Google search box. Replace ql
in the search box with the word or words you seek.
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1900 |
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An augmented eyewitness account of the big auto race on the roads of Long Island, held from 1904 to 1910. |
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1930 |
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My mother's career in the basketball-crazed Class of 1931 at BHS. |
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1940 |
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My
father won $22 at Churchill Downs in 1942. Twenty years later,
the telecast featured the band playing "My Old Kentucky
Home." |
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1950 |
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As a boy, I watch modified stock cars race at the local fairgrounds and make my own set of flags. |
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1960 |
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Scoreboards, from the huge one at the L.A. Coliseum to the antiquated one at the Richwood gym, inspire my playful experimentation. |
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Watching basketball, Ohio math teachers invent the Offensive Efficiency Rating and (later) the Elam Ending. |
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A freshman manager's brief report on what football players do while the bands perform. |
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Half an inning with the legendary broadcaster. |
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Introductions
and imaginative commercials for my mock radio broadcasts of
basketball. |
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The long trip home in January 1964; also, later trips with the L.A. Lakers. |
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Playing fields for football, track, etc., plus a downhill racer. |
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High-school fans don't like to hear their kids criticized. |
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The gym's too small; try on the wall! |
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The annual track and field event as I remember it from 1965. |
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A movie being filmed at a nearby NFL game features Walter Matthau and "Stop Action" instant replay. |
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Starting with a basketball broadcast on December 1, 1965, I soon become WOBC's sports director. |
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Correspondence and scripts for our new weekly radio feature. |
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Planning the 1966 college-football broadcast season. |
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This Volkswagen ran unopposed in our Richwood Prep Rally and still had trouble winning. |
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As predicted a year earlier by the Craven, the Oberlin men's swim team makes history with an upset win. |
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When Penn State's football team visited Syracuse in 1969, I was there in Archbold Stadium. |
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1970 |
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A
motor sport for nerds: driving down a road, navigating to the
nearest 0.01 minute. |
An ancient Roman mosaic features action pictures of gladiatorial games.
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From home movies: country roads in Kentucky, and a 1972 visit to a baseball game at the Astrodome. |
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I take my movie camera to the start of a Scioto Sports Car Club rally and to a checkpoint. 85 images. |
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If gasoline rationing keeps us from driving our cars in rallies, maybe we could rally on foot. |
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Our local cable channel televises the 1974 international baseball tournament. |
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WJM-TV's fictional newscaster invents a method for betting on football that actually works. |
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Cable TV-3 travels to Penn State to tape the annual high school wrestling championships. |
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Collaborating with a radio reporter and attempting to interview a hockey coach. |
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1980 |
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Falling
asleep to the 1981 Pirates on radio. |
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Hanging out at the Pan Am Games, occasionally running off to work telecasts elsewhere. |
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The 1988 Summer Olympics in Korea. |
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More than two dozen video frames from 1989-90 Pirates baseball telecasts, including commercials. |
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1990 |
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Correlating baseball statistics with winning. |
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I never posed with the Stanley Cup, but I did receive a visitation. |
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The 1996 Olympics, followed by baseball and C-USA football on Fox Sports Net, long travel days, and more. |
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A "quiet" week on Lake Pontchartrain. |
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2000 |
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I work in sports television, but not as an announcer. |
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Miscellany from the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics. |
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Reshuffling the majors gives small-market teams a chance in the new Saturn League. |
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A graphical representation of one season's race in a baseball division. |
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When sports figures speak, not all reporters write down their words the same way. |
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The statistic doesn't actually have to be relevant; it just needs to seem that way. |
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Baseball pitchers threw a pitch every 20 seconds in 1956. Are they significantly slower today? |
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When toddlers play baseball, they're never charged with errors or passed balls. Are the majors headed that way? |
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2010 |
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An improved way to bet on underdogs; however, the 2017 NFL underdogs stop winning against the spread. |
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Basketball janitor Roscoe encounters a strange new sport from the North. Goaltending is allowed! |
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Oberlin's athletic teams acquire a bushy-tailed mascot. |
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Pitt's radio crew doesn't go to games during COVID-19; they describe what I'm watching on TV. |
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2020 |
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"Points" and "ties" have more than one meaning in hockey. You can get a point for losing a tie. |
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A racetrack logo at Daytona directs me to an Ohio university of which I was unaware. |
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Or
at least the diagram of the bases.
This
website's home page often features shorter notes about sports.
Click the boxes for lists of links in the following categories:
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Baseball |
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Football |
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Media |
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Basketball |
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Hockey |
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Other |
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GREAT MOMENTS IN SPORTS HISTORY On August 7, 1963, while playing shuffleboard against myself in the basement, I scored a net 41 points on a single shot!
I knocked Red out of the 7-point zone, with my Black disk stopping in the zone. That's a 14-point gain for Black. The Red disk continued on, ricocheted off the nearby basement wall (which was in play according to my ground rules), and knocked Black out of the "10 OFF," stopping in that zone itself. That's another 20 points. Finally, the Black disk slid into the 7-point zone for another 7 points for Black. |
There
were two disks already in scoring position: a Red in the 7-point
zone, and a Black in the "10 OFF"
zone (minus 10 points). It was Black's turn to shoot, and I
wanted to knock both of those disks away.