Sports

Pandemic Diary 7: Below Par

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

I golfed for about two decades, and all of that time spent in frustration yielded perhaps a total of two anecdotes. That’s my only low score in relation to that fiendish and addicting game.

(I am no one’s father, but the “dad jokes” are growing stronger as I age. Perhaps they are better thought of as “Jokes When You’re Fifty.”)

Golf is a frustration because it is perhaps the one human endeavor which a person whose expertise consists of watching quite successful professional golfers ply their trade on television plunk a ball on a tee, swing a club, hit the ball any distance, and grow angry when the results are not the same as what he or she has seen on television. And I shared in that frustration.

I do not watch tennis and think I can play like tennis players do. I know that if and when I ever perform at a karaoke night (this happened most recently about twenty-five years ago) that I will sound like what I am: a person who does not sing in a way that makes any one want to hear me sing again. But golf? Anyone can swing a golf club, and I’m anyone, aren’t I?
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Today in History: Nov. 17

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

The “Heidi Game” was played on this date in 1968.

A late afternoon football game, New York Jets at Oakland Raiders, was on NBC. That network had been advertising the television debut of a new TV movie, Heidi, based on the children’s story, all week. It was an expensive movie, with one sponsor, Timex, footing the entire bill. A football game with interested viewers on both coasts was a great venue for advertising the movie.

The announcements about the movie continued all game long. But so did the game. At 7:00 p.m. EST, with the Jets in the lead 32-29 and very little time left on the clock, NBC started the broadcast of the movie, as advertised. The game was as good as over, as far as NBC executives were concerned.
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Fly the W

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

When I moved to the Midwest in the summer of 2000, I learned that Phil Rizzuto was not the baseball announcer who had coined the phrase, “Holy cow!” I also learned that there was a controversy about this, and that, as a fan of the New York Yankees and a native New Yorker—and worse, someone unaware of any controversy—I was on the wrong side of said dispute. Born wrong.

No, I was informed, the recently departed Harry Caray was the first to use the phrase on-air and was the announcer with whom “Holy Cow!” should always be associated. Not the beloved Yankees announcer.
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