Greg's Day

The Friends and Family series continues with what might be my favorite one yet.

Greg Church is my oldest friend and despite not getting to talk to him as much as I used to since Greg's not an internet regular as most of my friends, I knew that I wanted to at least ask him if he wanted to participate in the series.
I was glad to see him respond and I really enjoyed his questions as they made me really think hard about my answers.

You'll see why I chose the "Quantum Leap" picture as you read Greg's questions (And yes, Cherie-I made sure to pick one with Al in it!), and thanks again to all of you that were kind enough to take your time to participate in the series!

Here is what Greg asked for:
                                              You have been given access to a time machine and while you cannot change history, you have free reign to travel to the past for the following things.

1: Top Five sporting events- If part of a series, only one game can be chosen.
2: Top Five historical events.
3: Top Five choices of general time.

Then for the final choice- Five events that I could change history, but consider consequences.

This wasn't an easy group of choices and that, of course, is what makes it fun!
I'll do my best and this post was worked on over a few days as I wanted to give it my best shot.

Top Five Sporting Events in no particular order, but I'm going to add to this with one event from the sports I follow closely or did at one time with the caveat that I am attending these events.

1: Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier I- Boxing
2: 1960 World Series Game Seven Yankees at Pirates- Baseball
3: 2003 Fiesta Bowl- Ohio State-Miami- College Football
4: 1964 NFL Title- Browns vs Colts-NFL
5: 1983 NCAA Final N.C. State-Houston- College Basketball
6: 2016 NBA Finals Game Seven- Cavaliers-Warriors- NBA

Top Five Historical Events-No Particular Order
1: Yalta Conference- Meeting of FDR, Churchill, and Stalin.
2: Moon Landing 1969.
3: Sputnik 1957.
4; Truman defeats Dewey 1948
5: Beatles on Ed Sullivan 1964.
Bonus; I'd go back to my day of birth, just to wander around and see what the world was like on the day I was born..

Choices of general time.
I'm a 20th-century guy and I've never had nearly as much interest in history beyond that, so that will be pretty visible by my choices.
1: 1960s (So much stuff going on that I can't list them all).
2: 1970s ( A chance to be in the time of my childhood)
3: 1915-1921 (The World War I period and after in the age of the "Six Presidents" of 1920.)
4: 1950s (Pretty Good Baseball).
5: 1980s (Not an awful period to return to- if I didn't have to go to school!).

Five Events to change history-with hoped for consequences, I'm going to stick to American history for this one.
1: Gore defeats Bush in Florida in 2000 and wins the Presidency.
2: Stop the Robert Kennedy assassination in 1968.
3: See just what landed in Roswell New Mexico in 1947.
4: Fix the plane that caused the death of Nile Kinnick in 1943.
5: The cocaine to Len Bias' dorm room never arrives.

Reasons Why:
1: I'm a firm believer that this decision by the state of Florida (with their silly ballot that saw people with vision problems that intended to vote for Al Gore to instead vote for far-right candidate Pat Buchanan) and/or the Supreme Court ruling to stop a recount is still causing reverberations today.
Here's my theory: Gore defeats Bush and wins re-election in 2004 ( Very likely, Gore would have been a far better President than a candidate).
That leads us to 2008 and with a motivated GOP coming off four Presidential defeats in a row (that has happened only once in their party history), they run whomever they choose against someone that is unlikely to be Barack Obama and would likely be Joe Lieberman after serving as Gore's V.P.
No matter who wins the election of 2008, there isn't the animosity towards that person as the right-wing had for Barack Obama and the anger that allowed Donald Trump to be elected isn't large enough to even nominate him if he even tried in either the 2012 or 2016 elections.
All of this goes back to that election.

2: The easy choice is the JFK assassination, but since I didn't want to load up on assassinations for this, I decided to make this case.
Robert Kennedy still would have had to outmaneuver Hubert Humphrey for the 1968 Democratic nomination, but let's assume he does and at that time, it would have been tough to deny a Kennedy that wanted the nomination.
Kennedy likely defeats Richard Nixon, which takes Nixon out of national politics, and as a result, Watergate never happens with the beginning of the mistrust and dislike for Washington politicians that are still growing today.
Without Watergate, there is likely not a Jimmy Carter administration, and assuming Kennedy takes the nation out of Vietnam, the United States leaves the Vietnam War in 1969 rather than 1973.

3: I don't really have a firm opinion on just what crashed in Roswell, New Mexico, but imagine if it was advanced technology from an alien culture and what could have been learned.
And if it was really a weather balloon as the military announced, I'll have wasted a trip.

4:Nile Kinnick was the 1939 Heisman Trophy winner for Iowa and the more that I read and learn about him, the more that I think that the United States missed out on the type of the leader that comes along once in a generation and that he might have been a leader on the level of a potential President.
Kinnick crashed in an airplane training accident in 1943.

5: As a Maryland basketball fan, I've never seen a better Terrapin than Len Bias, and the loss of Bias affected basketball for years.
Len Bias as a Celtic (although I've never been a Celtics fan) would have prolonged the careers of both Larry Bird and Kevin McHale, who both broke down earlier than they may have with Bias, due to extra minutes and wear and tear, would have given Michael Jordan the Alpha Dog opponent that Jordan never had (Both were born in 1963) throughout his career, and the Bulls six titles would have been at least cut by two and maybe even more.

This post took me quite a while to finish, but it was a lot of fun and I tried to place a lot of thought into it.
I'm positive that there are items for these lists that I'll wince by not including simply because I forgot about them!

Thanks to my oldest friend for participating and to all of you that also took part.
Should things continue to drag in sports over the summer, I may be back for more ideas for the friends and family series.

Len Bias

Every year around this time, I think back to the days of my youth when college basketball meant so much to me.

It's been 28 years since Len Bias overdosed on cocaine and began a ripple that would affect the NBA for years.
However, to me, it was almost yesterday.
I'm going to save the what if's and a look back at the playing career of Len Bias at Maryland for another day to tell the story of me on that day.

In every person's life, there are a few events that you remember where you were and what you were doing when they happened.
For my grandparents, generation-it was Pearl Harbor.
For my parents-the the assassination of President Kennedy and for me, there have been three.
The explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger on national television at a time when such things just didn't happen, of course, 9-11 and if you were on my age and lived in the Mid-Atlantic, it might have been the death of Len Bias.

Living here as a child, ACC basketball was at the top of the sports food chart and as a Maryland fan, I suffered from frequent wins and often heartbreaking losses.
When I was growing up, the boogeyman was Dean Smith and his North Carolina Tar Heels as the Duke Blue Devils were just beginning to move up the standings as I neared graduation, and usually, Duke was of little concern to the Terrapins, that rivalry would mature later.
Len Bias was a hero to me and other Terrapin fans.
Bias was the only Terrapin that not only equaled Tar Heels stars but surpassed them,
Maryland had plenty of great players, but only with Bias, did the Terps have the type of star that could single-handedly take down the Heels.
That's right-Len Bias was better than Michael Jordan in college.
I'm not saying it would have been that way in the NBA, but he was in college.

I had been to a friend's house to watch the NBA draft as my house had cable, but not USA network, which covered the draft then, to see Bias be passed over by the Cavaliers picking first (they took Brad Daugherty, which worked out, but I thought he was so soft from his UNC days) which ticked me off.
I was mowing the grass and came in for a break and as I took a drink, the news broke into my Aunt Edna's soap opera to announce the death of Len Bias.
They interrupted programs in this area. that's how big Len Bias was.

It was the beginning of the war on cocaine.
Before that, people either didn't pay attention to its dangers or put it out of sight out of mind.
After Len Bias, people began paying attention and drug use began to be focused on instead of being blissfully ignorant.

It's funny how things go as time moves on.
The 17-year old that loved basketball has become the 45-year old that is somewhat jaded towards it.
Physical changes and mental changes through the years, I wonder if a similar incident happened today how I would react.
Likely not with nearly as passion, I'm sure.
We deal with these things in the news far more often today and it is numbing, but 28 years ago, the world changed for me.
I never looked at athletes in the same way after Len Bias passed away.
I rooted for them, liked them, but it was changed for good.
For good or bad, they became people that did something well not someone to be put on a pedestal.
Change isn't always for the soft...

Maybe next year, I can write about Len Bias the player and how much fun he was to watch!