Cleaning out the Inbox

      We clean out the inbox with some interesting articles from around the world.

We begin with the Athletic's piece on former ABA players who are still trying to receive some pension payments from the NBA, fifty years after the NBA absorbed four ABA franchises.

The current list of twenty-three former ABA players who don't qualify for the "recognition payments" that ABA players agreed to four years ago includes Artis Gilmore, Julius Erving, Rick Barry, and Dan Issel, and they won't get the extra payments because the NBA says they already receive an NBA pension.

The four players I mentioned likely don't need the money, but I'd bet some of the others could certainly use the supplemental help.

The Smithsonian writes of an attempt to help the Eastern Box Turtle by radio telemetry.

The strategy is to track, capture, and release turtles to see how far they travel, and what are some of the issues they face in the wild, to try to figure out a strategy to stop the population decline.

I remember as a child seeing box turtles all the time, but I haven't seen one in the wild for years.

My favorite potato chips in the world used to be Jones Potato Chips, located in Mansfield, Ohio, but a 2017 regulation change forced the company to stop using partially hydrogenated oil, and it changed the flavor.

When I visited Ohio after the change, the chip that catered to Jones's fans was Ballreich's, but in recent years, Ballreich's disappeared from the shelves when I visited and was replaced by Conn's from Zanesville, Ohio, which I thought was even closer to the old Jones flavor.

I buy plenty of Conn's to bring home (Original Wavy for the Boss, Salt and Vinegar for me) on trips, but a Facebook post about an article from the Richland Source grabbed my interest.

Commenters on the article said the old taste was back with Jones (as referenced in the article), and I'm anxious to buy some to see if the former champion has a chance of reclaiming their crown as the best chip in the world!

Our next note comes from the Athletic, which discusses the future of the Seattle Kraken as the NBA expands to the Emerald City in the coming years.

The Kraken have missed the playoffs in four of their five seasons and haven't managed a foothold as an organization, as the Las Vegas Golden Knights have done in their existence.

Seattle is a basketball city first, and the Kraken's best chance was to grab success before the NBA returned.

Cleaning out the Inbox

     It's time for an inbox cleaning, and we start with a presenter who is about to pull a rare doubleheader in 2026.

Richard Deitsch (who does an excellent podcast) writes for Sports Business Journal about the excellent Premier League host, Rebecca Lowe.

Lowe, who covers the Premier League for NBC Sports, will also be working their Olympic coverage, but the special part comes with Lowe being loaned to Fox Sports for Fox's World Cup broadcasts.

The article covers Lowe's entire career and how she was months away from leaving the profession before being hired by NBC.

Your Mileage May Vary writes of the continuing drop-off in business for the South Carolina tourist attraction, South of the Border.

South of the Border is selling a portion of the facility, so if you have a spare 2.85 million lying around (and if you do, why haven't you offered some to us to go mainstream), you can help revive South of the Border!

MSN.com writes of an unexpected problem at the Winter Olympics- the medals are breaking!

Not the actual medal itself, but the small connector to the medal that allows fabric to go through a loop, allowing it to be worn.

The company that manufactured the medals for the games has offered to fix all medals with this issue.

The legend of Elvis Presley continues to survive, even almost forty-nine years after his death.

The recent release of "Epic- Elvis Presley in Concert" showcases fifty-nine new hours of live footage found stored in a Kansas salt mine.

The article digs deep into Elvis's past, especially how his image has consistently evolved with the times.

The recent ABA documentary on Amazon Prime (which I haven't seen yet) has returned the league to public attention, but what about the small Indiana company that sells the ABA ball?

Lana Sports is a father/son-owned business, and the documentary has caused the sales of the ABA ball to boom.

A percentage of the sales goes to the Dropping Dimes foundation, an organization that helps former ABA players who don't qualify for an NBA pension.

And yes, I own one of these- a mini ball that I won in a Twitter contest from Lana Sports! 

Cleaning out the inbox

    It's time to clean out the inbox and a few things have caught my eye recently.

The Athletic writes about Division II basketball coach Jim Crutchfield and his innovations at Nova Southeastern, resulting in a phenomenal record at the Florida school.  

Crutchfield's system looks on the surface similar to the analytics-driven systems used by many programs but in actuality is far different.

I found the article very intriguing and hope to have time to watch a Nova game on the conference website soon to gain a better understanding.

LinkedIn isn't usually a site where I find items for the inbox but this article written by James Bafaro is worth the addition as Bafaro writes of himself and his best friend in grade school's experience at free ABA basketball night in St.Louis.

Bafaro goes through the giveaway, the basketball (he still has his), the stolen basketball from his friend, and how the story had a happy ending!

ESPN writes of the behind-the-scenes decisions and problems that led to the Cleveland Browns putrid 3-14 season.

Obviously, the quarterback chaos is the main focus but it also discusses the decision to replace Alex Van Pelt before the season with Ken Dorsey, the decisions that need to be made in this off-season, and of course, Jimmy Haslam.

Yes, there is a chance of Earth being struck by an asteroid in 2032 and the latest calculations by NASA  have doubled those chances.

Before you start panicking too much, the chances of a hit have moved from 1.2 percent to 2.3 percent, so the chances have doubled but still unlikely.

Asteroid 2024 YR4 will tracked by the James Webb Telescope in March but contact will be lost as the asteroid's trajectory moves it out of visual range until June 2028 when it will begin its trip towards Earth.

The European Space Agency stated, " An object this size (likely larger than 50 kilometers wide) hits Earth once every few thousand years and could cause severe damage to a local region".

The chances of an impact are likely to increase by the 2028 approach and even a doubling of the current chance to be between 4.5 and five percent isn't likely but possible.

NBA lotteries have been won by teams with smaller percentages and imagine if you knew there was a five percent chance you could be hit crossing the street at a particular time, you would likely wait until a better chance of crossing the street came along.

Pay attention to this over the next months and then sock it away for a few years but this could be the story of our time if that few percentile chance connects and if it is projected to land in a major population area.

With this look at Bertman's Ballpark Mustard, Cleveland Magazine writes of the initial year of one of the two combatants in the Cleveland Mustard Wars.

The Bertman's (Indians/Guardians) and Stadium (Browns) battle has been referenced often here at TRS with both products having their place in my pantry!

Cleaning out the Inbox:Basketball Passings Plus One

   The tributes continue with recent passings from the basketball world and a plus one to try to narrow the total number down a bit.

Goodbye to Bird Averitt at the age of 68.

Averitt led college basketball in scoring when he averaged 33.9 points per game in the 1972-73 season for the Pepperdine Waves, but Averitt's best success as a pro came with his second team when he averaged 13 points a game as part of Hubie Brown's guard rotation with the 1974-75 ABA champion Kentucky Colonels.

Averitt would top that the following season when averaging 17 points per game for the Colonels in the final season of the ABA. 

Averitt would be drafted by the Buffalo Braves in the dispersal draft in 1975-76, would spend the season with Buffalo before moving to the New York Nets to start the following year.

Averitt split the season between New York and a return to Buffalo for his final year as a player at only 25.

Goodbye to Tom Heinsohn at the age of 86.

Heinsohn did about all that you could do in a career that saw him reach the Hall of Fame.

Heinsohn made six All-Star teams, won eight NBA championships in nine seasons as a player, won the rookie of the year award, coached the Celtics to two more titles in 1973-74 and 1975-76, and after being fired in 1978 as Boston's coach, Heinsohn would spend over three decades announcing Celtics games becoming a franchise icon as arguably the biggest homer in local basketball!

That's one great resume' and I'm not sure anyone in basketball can match that kind of success at all three levels of hoops with only one franchise.

Heinsohn's playing career ended due to a foot injury and had he not been forced into retirement at age 30, Heinsohn would have likely added the other three Celtic titles to his list, which would have been eleven titles in thirteen seasons.

Goodbye to Billy Tubbs at the age of 85.

The fast-talking and fast-break offense-running Tubbs won 641 games with Lamar (in two stints), Oklahoma, and TCU in a head coaching career that stretched over parts of four decades.

Tubbs coached teams that won more than 20 games on sixteen different occasions and his 1987-88 team with Oklahoma finished 31-4 before losing to underdog and fellow conference rival at the time, Kansas in the national championship in the Danny Manning and "the miracles" season for the Jayhawks.

Tubbs took all four universities that he coached to the NCAA tournament with an elite eight and three sweet sixteen trips besides the title game loss.

Goodbye to Jimmy Collins at the age of 74.

Collins was the captain of the 1970 New Mexico State Aggie team that reached the final four under coach Lou Henson and was then selected in the first round by the Chicago Bulls.

After that season, Collins was selected by the Chicago Bulls in the first round of the 1970 draft.

Collins disappointed in his two seasons as a Bull in averaging less than four points a game.
Collins was selected by the Bulls over two future Hall of Famers that were taken in the second round in Nate Archibald and Calvin Murphy.

Collins returned to the side of Lou Henson, first at New Mexico State and then to Illinois where Collins earned a reputation as one of the nation's top recruiting assistants and it was Collins that was the point man in bringing in the talent that built Henson's 1989 Final Four team.

Collins took over at Illinois-Chicago as head coach and took the Flames to three NCAA appearances in fourteen seasons as head coach.

Goodbye to Rafer Johnson at the age of 88.

Johnson won the 1960 Olympic Gold at the Rome Olympics in the decathlon in the final event of his athletic career.

Johnson also played basketball for UCLA under John Wooden before the Rome games with Wooden stating that the slowdown game that Wooden preferred at that time didn't play to the strengths of Johnson's abilities.

Johnson's brother, Jimmy, spent a long career as a cornerback with the 49ers and is a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Johnson, along with Rosey Grier, apprehended Sirhan Sirhan in the Ambassador Hotel following Sirhan's assassination of Robert Kennedy in 1968.

In the film/audio that exists of the assassination, a newsman's voice can clearly be heard "Rafer, hold him down"!.

Johnson also acted in several films that included an Elvis Presley film, "Wild in the Country".

And a sad last-minute addition from Ryan.

Goodbye to K.C.Jones at the age of 88.

Jones is one of seven players to have won a Olympic gold medal, NCAA national championship and an NBA title, won eight championships as a player and two more as the head coach of the Celtics.

Jones could have won even more titles as a coach, but lost one NBA final series with Washington and two others with Boston.

Known for his defense as a player, Jones likely owns the lowest career scoring average for a Hall of Fame inductee as Jones averaged only seven points a game in his career.

Along with the Bullets and Celtics, Jones also served as head coach for the ABA San Diego Conquistadors and the Seattle Super Sonics.

Cleaning out the Inbox:

A long-overdue cleaning of the inbox with two items having languished near the bottom for almost six weeks!

We start with the Athletic with the first of a few links from their site and their story about the home of the Buffalo Bisons, which is being used by the Toronto Blue Jays for this season.

Sahlen Field was built for Buffalo's attempt to be one of the teams chosen when baseball expanded in 1993 (the selected teams were the Rockies and Marlins) and even today, Sahlen Field is the largest stadium in AAA and even though it is now 32 years old, it is the only stadium in the minors that could be expanded to meet major league standards.
The article discusses the stadium's past and the present as the Blue Jays attempt to retrofit Sahlen Field to the needs of television and the spacing needed for the reasons of the pandemic.

I'm fortunate enough to have the two teams that I pull for in the National League play in the best two parks in baseball.
Unless you are a ridiculously biased homer, your rankings for the best park in baseball must have Pittsburgh's PNC Park and San Francisco's Oracle Park at either 1-2 or 2-1.
If you don't, well you are wrong.

The Athletic writes of the rejected designs for PNC Park that might have ruined such a terrific stadium and takes a glance at the past to the stadium hat was so awful that Oracle Park was needed in order to keep the Giants in San Francisco.
A few of the designs for PNC Park that didn't make the cut included using red brick as the material, trying to give the exterior an appearance of a neighborhood with rowhouses painted around the stadium, and another bought fully into the Pirate motif with a huge pirate ship in the right-field concourse.
In San Francisco, the article searches for the point in time that the city and the Giants discovered that building Candlestick Park in the location that was decided led to disastrous conditions such as constant heavy wind conditions.
Candlestick was also baffled with several issues in building the stadium as the architect and contractor couldn't get along, a heating system that was planned turned out to be a flop, and did I mention the wind??

The final Athletic note discusses the fall of pro basketball in Pittsburgh after the ABA Pipers and Condors ended their run in the Steel City with pro basketball never to return.
Quite a few stories about the ABA and a theory on how the final blow was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who never played in Pittsburgh.
My favorite is the oft-told story of the Condors giving away 1,000 cupcakes to a fan and when the fan was asked about the cupcakes, he responded that he was diabetic and the few members of the crowd predictably booed.

Sports Illustrated remembers the 1984-85 Cavaliers as the NBA playoffs begin.
Those Cavaliers were coming off the Ted Stepien years that endangered the franchise on the court with terrible teams and off the court with threats from Stepien that he would move the team to Toronto or a bizarre idea that would change the name to the Ohio Cavaliers and split home games between Cleveland, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, and Toronto- the final two not residing in Ohio (And skipping the largest Ohio city in Columbus).
With rookie coach George Karl running an offense that didn't accentuate the positive of the team's best scorer, World B. Free, the Cavaliers stumbled to a 2-19 start before finishing 34-25 to earn the final spot in the Eastern Conference and giving top-seeded Boston all they wanted in losing three games to one.
The three Boston wins were by a combined seven points which shows how close to beating Boston the Cavaliers were to what would have been the biggest upset in NBA playoff history.

The New York Post finishes with an article on former 1980 American hockey star Mark Pavelich and his recent troubles.
Pavelich was part of the Miracle on Ice team that stunned the world with their gold medal run and his NHL seven-year career was solid, spent mostly with the Rangers.
Pavelich scored over thirty goals twice with his career-high 37 goals in 1982-83, but had a few tragedies in his post-NHL career and may have brain issues from concussions suffered during career.
Pavelich has spent the last year in a psychiatric facility after beating a neighbor with a pipe but was recently moved from a high-security facility to a lower-level facility for his continued treatment.

A little of this, A little of that

Well, since the manager of Mikkel LesPierre couldn't bother to stay Covid-Clean while entering the Top Rank bubble, the main event of the card and the only boxing challenge bout of the evening was canceled, I'll try to add a few notes on some various topics.


My frustration with baseball grows and deepens as the owners continue to shove a shortened and gimmicky season at players and fans as one of many things that cause me to feel like the game is eating itself on the way to disinterest.
Forcing the universal DH for the 2020 season is one thing, it's another to keep it for 2021.
When you work any job or deal with a government, you realize one general rule- Something added is seldom to be taken away.

There is almost a one hundred percent chance that we have seen the last game played under the original player lineup with the nine players on the field all in the batting lineup and I think that is sad.
I know there is a place for the designated hitter and I'm not really a DH hater, but I do prefer the National League game.
There is more than one flavor or style of anything, and there could be room for both versions of the game, and if it shortchanges a few teams (from both leagues) during interleague play, so be it.

Take this, the changes that have been sampled in the minors (but not installed), the looming destruction of the minors, and the other ridiculous ideas that Rob Manfred's office has considered and you have a recipe for a game that I don't recognize.
Rob Manfred continues to chase a fan that baseball will never catch as he snatches the game that long-time fans love away as Lucy moves the football from Charlie Brown.

Ohio State signed an agreement to play Alabama in football for the 2027 and 2028 seasons as the best programs of their conferences will battle in the regular season for only the second time and for the first ever at their school site.
The two played in the now-defunct Kickoff Classic at Giants Stadium in 1986 with Alabama winning.
The 2027 game will be in Columbus with the return engagement in Tuscaloosa in the following season.
I always like these games as it's good for the best to try to play the best, but the best part is the campus sites as often these are the dreaded neutral site games that take away from the grandeur of the game.

The Athletic ranked the various local broadcasting crews for baseball and the folks that I like fared well in the rankings.
The Giants team of Mike Krukow, Duane Kuiper, and Amy Gutierrez ranked a very close second to the Mets team of Gary Cohen, Ron Darling, and Keith Hernandez as the two were only 0.03 apart for the win at 4.91 to 4.88.

Other favorites- Brewers play-by-play man Brian Anderson helped the Milwaukee team to a sixth-place finish, Cubs analyst Jim Deshaies and his unit ranked in seventh, Tampa's extremely underrated group of Dewayne Staats, former Indian (the other)  Brian Anderson, and Tricia Whitaker landed in the eighth spot overall.

Two TRS favorites that received excellent reviews despite their team finishing deep in the pack were Bob Carpenter of Washington (23rd), Emily Jones of Texas (25th), and Dan Shulman of Toronto (26th), all were mentioned fondly by their fans voters.
The Indians team of Matt Underwood, Rick Manning, and Andre Knott finished in the middle of the league in the 18th position.

As for me and what I've been doing since baseball isn't around and despite the easing of some of the Covid restrictions, I still don't really want to test the other people right now.
I don't see where wearing a mask hurts anyone and it seems like it is more of a "don't tell me what to do" thing than it is a real issue in wearing it.
Feel free to take your chances, just stay away from me (within reason).

I've messed around with the metal detector once, working on clearing the yard of brush that has accumulated for years and nuisance trees that weaken and fall during winter ice and snow and summer thunderstorms, and believe it or not- I did get a reading of something metal under the brush!
I figured that for just a dirt patch, and I haven't been able to access the area directly, but I am excited to test that area when everything is moved out!

As for television, I'm still watching the same shows as I mentioned last time out- Once Upon A Time (Just started season six), Without A Trace (middle of season two), and the Spanish with sub-titled Monzon (episode three).
I have to really have time to concentrate when watching Monzon as I have to read the subtitles, so I usually watch alone and not when doing anything else.

In the gaming world. I've been stuck in the basketball world with the ABA and the Kentucky Colonels.
The Colonels had to win their last game to finish in a tie for second in the Eastern Division with St.Louis and hold homecourt advantage in their first-round playoff matchup against those Spirits.
They did so and grabbed the second seed clinching a winning record at 43-41.
Considering in real life, those same Colonels won 58 games (losing only 26) and won the division over the New York Nets (the division winners by six games over the Colonels and Spirits in this replay) by winning a one-game tiebreaker against the Nets.
The coaching by your humble author likely contributed far more to the sixteen extra losses than the luck of the game, but as the season moved on, I improved in my in-game coaching.
I'm interested to see the results of my next basketball project to evaluate my coaching.
Anyway, I have been playing the entire playoffs and of this writing, I finished the Western semi-finals earlier tonight at the road office.
Here are the playoff results

Eastern Division
Semi-Finals-Best of Five
New York (1) over Memphis (4) 3 games to 2
Kentucky (2) over St.Louis (3) 3 games to 0

Finals-Best of Seven
Kentucky (2) over New York (1) 4 games to 2

Western Division
Semi-Finals-Best of Five
Indiana (1) over Utah (4) 3 games to 1
Denver (3) over San Antonio (2) 3 games to 2

Finals-Best of Seven
Indiana (1) over Denver (3) 4 games to 3.

This places Kentucky against Indiana in the ABA Finals- the exact matchup that the real finals saw.
The real fun was in the Western regular season where Indiana and San Antonio finished with the exact same record (52-32) with Denver only one game behind.
All three would have easily won the Eastern Division.

I've played two hockey games with the 1974-75 Kansas City Scouts since the last update, losing to the Chicago Blackhawks 3-2 in Chicago and stunning the eventual Stanley Cup champion Philadelphia Flyers with three goals in the first ten minutes and holding on desperately for a 3-2 win at home.
The Scouts are 6-18-1 for 13 points and last in the Smythe Division, trailing the next team above them, the St.Louis Blues by nine points.
The Scouts and fellow expansion team Washington have the fewest points in the league with the California Golden Seals one point ahead, but Washington has played two more games and California three more at this writing.

I haven't played baseball, but I've been working on adding players, logos, and ballpark pictures as a gentleman that helps at a site for Action fans made "homebrews" of all the 2019 minor leagues.
I've never seen those before, so I downloaded the South Atlantic League, Carolina League, and Eastern League to be able to play those leagues!
I'm really looking forward to giving those a shot, particularly since it looks like it will be the last year of the Hagerstown Suns.

Connie Hawkins

Sad news from the basketball world as former NBA and ABA star Connie Hawkins passed away at the age of 75.
Hawkins had been in bad health recently and was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2007.

Connie Hawkins was the bridge to how the game was played from era to era.
It was Hawk that connected to Julius Erving that led to Michael Jordan with the showmanship (as shown in the picture to the right) and the high-wire attack through the air that only Elgin Baylor had a game similar of that to Hawkins at the time.
Sadly, we never saw the true best of Connie Hawkins, who was banned from his commitment to Iowa and the NBA for having his name mentioned in a point-shaving scandal in 1961 despite there being no proof of participation or Hawkins even playing in any of the mentioned games.

Banned from the only pro league at the time, Hawkins played for the Harlem Globetrotters before spending time in the short-lived ABL winning the only league championship with the Pittsburgh Rens.
Hawkins would then be the dominant player in the first three seasons of the ABA with the Pittsburgh/Minnesota Pipers, winning the league title and the MVP in the league's first season.
During this time, Hawkins (and others including Roger Brown, who took the settlement, but chose to stay with the ABA ) sued the NBA for their unfair ban and before the case could get to trial, the NBA settled with Hawkins, paying him 1.3 million dollars and assigned him to the Phoenix Suns.
The Suns had won just 16 games before Hawkins in their inaugural season, but with Hawkins in the lineup won 39 games, made the playoffs and pushed the Lakers of Jerry West, Elgin Baylor, and Wilt Chamberlain to a surprising seven-game series before losing.
Hawkins battled knee injuries thereafter and even though he was able to maintain his numbers for the most part in Phoenix, they played a part in Hawkins being traded to the Lakers, where his skills declined before ending his career in 1976 in Atlanta with the Hawks.

I have three personal stories relating to Connie Hawkins.
In the early 70's, Hawkins and author David Wolf, who would later become a boxing manager and agent for Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini worked on his autobiography "FOUL", that ended with some of Hawkins years with the Suns making the book.
I found a used copy of this at a book sale and it was a regular part of my sports book rotation that went to school a lot and tended to satisfy teachers that I was reading (like that was tough to get me to do) much more than magazines did.
I haven't read FOUL in years, but it's in the attic somewhere, battered and beaten, but well loved in its day.

Another Hawkins story was his cameo appearance on early Saturday Night Live, where he "lost" a one on one game to the diminutive singer Paul Simon at a New York schoolyard in a skit for the show.
I must have been seven or eight and hanging out with my dad late night and just was amazed that an NBA player that I watched on tv lost to the little guy that sung "Kodachrome"?
I remember just babbling about this great upset before after a while, Dad explained to me that it wasn't "real" and Hawkins "let" Simon win for the laughs!

A televised one on one game is my final memory of Hawk.
In 1972-73, the NBA's television contract was in its final year with ABC and with ABC being the "third network" in ratings at the time (their time was just a few years away), the NBA often was given prime or at least preferred time games.
At halftime of their games, ABC held a one on one tournament that was taped well before the season and shown during halftime of their games.
I remember faintly seeing Hawkins taking on younger star Spencer Haywood at my old house shortly after moving back here.
As in, I watched it at my old house, they didn't come over play there!
I have never seen that tournament since that day long ago and it's not even on Youtube, which is really amazing to me since about everything is on Youtube it seems!
I don't even remember the winner, I just remember my dad letting me stay up on a school night to watch before trudging up the stairs for bed.

Back tomorrow with Indians-Yankees game five!

The best team that you never saw....

Is it possible to love a team that you NEVER saw play?
Really, not once.

Not the occasional once-a-year or two national game appearance or only when they played a game against your local team -NEVER.

Well, I am here to tell you that it is possible, as I did, and believe it or not, at the ages of seven and eight.

I was a junkie from day one, and my dad started and fed my addiction through the weekend games, to live games when we lived in Ohio, the constant stream of magazines in the era before ESPN and sports radio, and most important of all, trading cards.

I bought them all: baseball, football, hockey, and maybe best of all at that time- basketball.

The rural store in our area sold just about all of them, and I vividly recall even before school age turning down Popsicles and other treats for walking to the store with either my mother or grandmother in favor of the latest pack of cards from whatever sport was available at that time from Topps, as no other company could make cards.

Fleer made these game-action NFL cards with team logo stickers, but they didn't have the NFLPA's approval to use names, so they were generally cool-looking cards that lacked the trading ability of the Topps cards.

As much as I loved baseball and football at that age, I think I loved basketball the most.
In 1975, I hadn't truly discovered the Cavaliers yet and watched the NBA as a Kareem fan more than anything.
The NBA had a CBS TV contract (with that neat opening that I post here on YouTube occasionally and Brent Musberger screaming his lungs out), but the ABA had no contract at all.
However, I had a small radio that picked up pretty long distances for such a small radio.
I suppose at the time, with fewer stations, there was less interference and signals (especially AM ones) could travel a long way.

And one of the best signals to my room at that time (we would move across the street in 1978, literally, and the signals that my new room grabbed were different than my old one) was 840 WHAS AM out of Louisville, Kentucky, and a gentleman named Van Vance and the Kentucky Colonels.

Vance was the "voice of the Colonels," and to me, Vance ranks right there behind Joe Tait as the elite of pro basketball radio announcers for the ability to create that "spoken word picture" of the game in the listener's eye.

As I have written before about other things as a child in a rural community (although size-wise calling it a community is a stretch), I always got a huge kick out of feeling like I knew about this secret that few others knew about, and the Colonels were one of those for those two years.

The only thing that I had to connect me to those teams was the basketball cards.
No ABA shirts, hats, etc nothing but those cards and the voice of Van Vance, first next to my bed and then under my pillow after the first radio broke.

Sidenote- the second radio I obtained by selling the most "booster tickets" for my little league team, and a few years back, I was going through an Ohio flea market and found the exact "Spirit of 76" radio in its box with original instructions. I bought and have it here, but haven't had the heart to fire her up...

I would use her for the next few years until my brother and I's first good stereo for better reception.

There was just one other child in the neighborhood who collected basketball cards, with the soon-to-be basketball famous name of Chris Mullin, and for the two years that I was a Colonels fan, I would bet that I completed a Colonels team set for both seasons through packs and trades.

The best part was after the ABA/NBA Merger, when he decided that he didn't want his basketball cards anymore, and I traded for all his cards for doubles of baseball cards.

I also remember quite a few one-on-one games on his backyard hoop between the Colonels and the Capital/Washington Bullets, where Dan Issel took on Elvin Hayes!
Another Colonel's/Cavaliers memory for me was the old game BAS-KET, which used levers to flip a ball through the net.

Amazingly, this simple game is still available!
I cannot remember how many hours Shane and I spent with basketball cards sprawled out around this game, playing it.

The Colonels also had one other thing in their favor for those two seasons-Dan Issel.

Issel (His forgotten superstars' post can be found here) was my favorite Colonel, and one day I wrote his name on a book cover or something, and my gym teacher, Brad Keller (what a great guy and influence on me as a child), saw it and told me about seeing Issel play when he was at Kentucky.

Mr.Keller was cemented in my mind as a great guy then, I mean, my gym teacher SAW Dan Issel play!!
Issel could score with the best of them, as he showed after the merger with Denver.

Artis Gilmore was the dominant ABA post player of the league's existence, and few could shoot with Louie Dampier, who spent the entire nine years of the league with the Colonels.

Hubie Brown, the noted NBA analyst, was the coach of the 74-75 Colonels and he insists that the title winners were the best team that he ever coached, and that includes some pretty decent NBA clubs.

The Colonels were good in the 1975-76 season, but things weren't the same after John Y. Brown (yes, the KFC guy) sold Dan Issel to Baltimore and after the Claws went under to Denver.
John Y. somehow managed to parlay selling the Colonels (and the Colonel) into quite a career that saw him buy the Celtics after selling off the Colonels, become governor of Kentucky, and marry Phyllis George.

The Colonels lacked the second scorer that the team truly needed to keep teams from sagging in on Gilmore and to keep bigger guards from swarming the smaller Dampier on the outside without Issel, and after a seven-game semi-final series loss to ironically Issel and the Nuggets, the Colonels were history.
To this day, I have seen two Colonel's games on NBA TV, and they were quite a treat for this aging fan.

I realize this was more about my memories of the Colonels than the Colonels themselves at times, and maybe down the road, we can write more about the team of my initial youth than about my memories.
They still are the best team that I have never seen..



Photo Credits

Colonels logo-Sportslogos.net
Others-Unknown