Merry Christmas!

 Happy Holidays from myself and my hard-working staff here at TRS!

Hope the holidays are safe and happy ones!

Cleaning out the Inbox

    Time to clean the inbox with various articles of note.

Most people who know me know how much I love "The Office" and while I did know that Steve Carell had played hockey (watching him skate on the show, you knew he had to have played hockey at some time!) I didn't know and learned from the Athletic that Carell actually played college hockey!

Carell was the netminder for Denison College in Ohio. While Denison was considered club level, it's still college hockey, and Carell is still listed on hockey's Elite Prospects website with his own page! 

Carell didn't comment on the story but several of his teammates did and the article covers his years at Denison both on and off the ice.

The Athletic is next with two articles from the Great Britain side of the Atlantic with the first one writing about Kenilworth Road, home of the recently promoted to the Premier League Luton Town, and a stadium so quaint that Luton had to spend millions of dollars to bring it up to the bare minimum of Premier League standards for television.

The home of Luton Town was built in 1905 and is located in a residential section of Luton that you wouldn't expect to see a stadium.

The article also talks to the neighborhood residents about the pros and cons of such a unique stadium.

Luton is building a new home for their team but due to their Premier League promotion were forced to spend money to upgrade Kenilworth Road.

The other offering from the Athletic also concerns an English stadium, this time in Rotherham with Millmoor. This stadium has been unused for soccer since 2008 and is next door to the home of Rotherham United, yet has no plans for renovation or removal.

It's strange to have a stadium stand that long and have no future plans at all.

ESPN.com takes over with two articles of note with the first dealing with the futures of Oregon State and Washington State without the Pac 12 but digs deeper into how the loss of Power Five conference sports will affect the homes of the two schools, Corvallis Oregon and Pullman Washington.

The article also mentions the possible end games for the pair and legal measures that the two schools working together are attempting to try to secure their futures.

The second article from ESPN concerns the planned move of the Oakland Athletics to Las Vegas.

It covers the city of Oakland's attempts to build a stadium, why Athletics owner John Fisher decided to move the team, how things became so bad for the team and the city, and what Oakland may want in return for allowing the team to continue to play there while their new home in Las Vegas is built.

I'm torn on this because I do think that the Bay Area is a bit small to have two teams and both are healthy financially.

History has shown it is very rare that both the Giants and Athletics are doing well at the gate and I can see why the Athletics want to leave.

I do wonder about Las Vegas though as it's actually a smaller market than Oakland, although growing and more affluent, and there won't be a sweetheart expansion deal to turn a bad baseball team around as the city received from the NHL with the Golden Knights.

We wrap with a stop at SABR  BaseballGaming with a writer's look at a game from the seventies- Sports Illustrated's All-Time All-Star baseball.

The author writes of how he discovered the game in a toy store, how the game wasn't his first choice,  how the game played, and why he moved on from it to another baseball dice game three years after purchasing it.

Road Trip: Ernie Davis and The Office

   The trip ended with another blustery wind blowing all morning and afternoon and it was colder still as we departed Batavia with our plans for the day for lunch on the way home set for a must-stop for any fan of "The Office".

However, fate threw an interesting turn when Cherie needed to stop and the next exit was Elmira, New York.

I couldn't seem to find any place to stop in Elmira.

No fast food stops, no convenience stores, no gas stations- Nothing.

However, as I toured Elmira, I saw a sign that read Ernie Davis Statue.

I instantly became intrigued as Ernie Davis was the 1961 Heisman Trophy winner from Syracuse, was the top pick in the 1962 draft by Washington before being traded to Cleveland for future Hall of Famer Bobby Mitchell but would never play a game for the Browns as he would die of Leukemia in 1963.

Davis was also the subject of the 2008 film "The Express". which starred Rob Brown and Dennis Quaid.

Cherie wasn't totally familiar with Davis but I had to keep looking for a place for her and finally found her a Mcdonalds', which bought me some time to Google "Ernie Davis Statue".

Back on the road, armed with what I thought was the address, I traveled to the statue's presumed location and found what looked like a business located in a former school.

And no Ernie Davis statue.

So, I begin retracing my steps to try to remember where I saw the sign.

And after about ten long minutes, I saw the sign and wondered why there weren't any other signs.

Answer? 

The statue was in front of the Ernie Davis Academy that we had passed earlier but in the rush to find Cherie a place to stop, it didn't register that the statue was in front of the school!

So I felt like an idiot as I exited the car to snap a few pictures and it truly is a wonderful tribute to Davis with several granite blocks around the statue, two of them listing Davis's achievements and the rest each giving a portion of Davis's character to a block.

It's extremely well done and while I didn't know it existed until a chance encounter, I'm really glad that that was the exit that we needed to stop.

And that led us to Scranton and our planned lunch at Cooper's Seafood House.

 Fans of "The Office" know how authentic the show is about its connections to the city used as its TV home with its various items, mentions, and visits to Scranton, Pennsylvania.

Cooper's Seafood House is often mentioned on the program and on occasion, characters have eaten there (on the show, not the actual restaurant), and when I looked up Cooper's on the web, they have a very extensive gift shop of items from "The Office", which made it a natural stop for us as huge fans of the show.

The wind was cutting through the air sharply and it kept us moving quickly inside Cooper's!

The building has a wide base and it stretches out quite far from the dining room to the bar and the gift shop.

I loved the decor with lots of news clippings from the area, board games from the 70s and 80s hanging from the wall, and lots of items from The Office and Gilligan's Island!

I'm really not sure what the Gilligan's Island connection is but there was a small model of display for the show and its characters and plenty of pictures of Tina Louise and Dawn Wells.

After we checked the gift shop out to have an idea of what we would purchase after our meal, we walked to the other end of the restaurant to actually order.

The place was pretty busy but our food came out quickly under the circumstances with my order of a lobster roll sandwich and Cherie's crab version of the same proving to be quite good.

It wasn't the biggest sandwich that I have ever seen and it sure wasn't the cheapest but it was very good in its own right.

Cherie and I split a piece of Key Lime pie, which was quite large and the slice was more than enough for each of us to share.

I wouldn't rate it as good as the gold standard at Cootie Brown's but worth the order in any case.

We then returned to the gift shop, buying several gifts for others and each other for Christmas before heading down the road to return home.

Scranton is roughly three hours from home, so the drive was uneventful to finish the trip and I had a great time all told.

I'd definitely make this trip again, maybe a little earlier in the year to take better advantage of Antique World but I certainly would return.

A very enjoyable few days away from home and some nice items found for the collection made this trip a memorable one 

Cleaning out the Inbox

   Time to clean out the inbox before it gets too full and this time it will be a mixed bag between sports and non-sports to fill the outgoing tray.

We start with Chefbot.

Chefbot, who besides reminding me of the claymation characters of the 60s and 70s, is a new feature from the Kroger grocery chain on Twitter.

Chefbot is a product of a program to help with food waste by giving you recipes for three food items that you tweet a picture showing those items.

My attempt with Chefbot didn't go well

as Chefbot "saw" my picture of a potato, cheese, and sausage and "saw" it as "chicken, bread, and nut".

Oh, well.

The Atlantic's Megan Garber writes of almost everyone's favorite character from the television show "The Office" Dwight Schrute with a comprehensive breakdown of the character and how he relates to just about anything in the country today.

I cannot really do it justice except to say, if you are a fan of the show, this is a must-read.

The Athletic glances back at the Sam Wyche-Jerry Glanville feud of the 1980s when the head coaches of the Bengals and Oilers despised each other in the manner that you don't see anymore in football.

Wyche was a backup quarterback with the Lions with Glanville as the special teams coach and blamed Glanville for having a key role in his release.

Fast forward to 1989 and Wyche's Bengals relentlessly ran the score up on Glanville's Oilers with the Bengals using an onside kick leading 45-0, throwing the ball all through the fourth quarter, running a fake reverse, and finally with seconds remaining- calling a timeout so kicker Jim Breech could kick a field goal for a 61-7 final score.

The article writes about the other AFC Central (At the time) coaches in Cleveland's Marty Schottenheimer and Pittsburgh's Chuck Noll with their various divisional spats.

It's a terrific read if you enjoy looking back at a fun time in football.

I found an older article from Long Island's "Newsday" in 2018, which looks at the two seasons that the New York Giants spent playing away from the New York/New Jersey area at the Yale Bowl in New Haven, Connecticut in 1973 and 1974. 

The "football" Giants had always shared Yankee Stadium, but when Yankee Stadium was closed for two years for its first renovation and the first Giants Stadium was starting to be in the works of being built, the Giants needed a place to play.

Shea Stadium wasn't offered as an option until 1975, which the Giants grabbed for their final season before Giants Stadium was competed, so it was off to the Yale Bowl with all the problems that come with a sixty year old facility ( and this was for 1973 standards) complete bathrooms outside the stadium, tremendous traffic jams, two locker rooms for each team because they weren't large enough to fit the entire team and more.

We wrap with a link from the Bobblist, a blog that covers bobbleheads and the people that collect them.

Recently, the blog noted the collection of my friend Brad Adams.

The article talks to Brad about his personal collection, how he started collecting, what he continues to collect, and the measures that he can go to add to his collection.

I really laughed when I read Brad's comparison to hunting from a conversation with his dad because I've compared it to hunting myself in a different context!

Fred's Day

We start something different for the next few days and with the Covid-19 pandemic, there certainly is plenty of time available to do something different.

I reached out to my family and friends and asked them to come up with something from each of them that they would like me to write about for Friends and Family week.
I haven't heard back from all of them, but I do have a few requests returned and I'm looking forward to working on these this week.

We'll start Friends and Family week with Fred Landucci.
Fred's been a great friend and fan of both the blog and the defunct podcast, so it was an easy choice for Fred to participate in this week.
Fred decided to ask five questions of me to answer and hopefully you'll find my answers as interesting in his questions!

Fred: What is your favorite sitcom since 1980?

TRS; This is difficult as I'm sure there will be a few shows that when Cherie reads this that she'll say "I can't believe you forgot X, you love that show'!
And we delete a bunch of shows that I love from the 60s that I grew up watching in reruns and some 70s shows that I grew up with but are outside Fred's timeline
But when I looked at the lists by decade, I was surprised to see that I didn't like a lot of these shows!
I'm also not a huge fan of what many consider classic sitcoms from the period.
I like Cheers, especially the Shelley Long years, but Seinfeld has always been a meh show and I cannot stand either of two Nielsen giants in Friends and Everybody Loves Raymond.
Before I go with my choice, which narrowly nipped their toughest opponent, here are a few that make me laugh.
ALF is just one of those silly 60s style sitcoms that just makes me howl, Coach is very funny with the Craig T.Nelson-Jerry Van Dyke pairing and they have longtime TRS favorite, Shelley Fabares, as well, I love King of the Hill via animation and two shows that didn't have a long run and are seldom remembered that I really like are Buffalo Bill and Unhappily Ever After.
Wings and Newsradio were terrific shows that should have been bigger hits than they were, but the winner is The Office in a photo finish over Parks and Recreation.
The Office put together seven great years, a lousy eighth, and finished well in the ninth and final year.
Parks is very close, but despite my love for the show, I'm not a huge Amy Poehler fan.
That makes the difference.


Fred: Who do you consider the best pound for pound fighter in boxing history?

TRS: This is a lot easier- it's the welterweight Sugar Ray Robinson.
If Robinson had never moved to middleweight, where he won the championship several times and was an all-time middleweight but not the greatest ever, and spent his entire career at welterweight, I think he would have rolled up a record that would be talked about to this day.
The welterweight Robinson had explosive power and dazzling speed that as a complete fighter cannot be matched.
As a boxer, Robinson couldn't be surpassed even by greats like Ray Leonard or Floyd Mayweather and while as a pure puncher he wouldn't be ranked at the top of punchers at 147 such as Thomas Hearns, Pipino Cuevas, or Felix Trinidad, he would fit comfortably in the group of well above average bangers such as Sugar Ray Leonard.
In many sports, you watch old films and ask questions like would Willie Mays be as great against the stars of today, would Jerry West be an all-time great guarding the athletes in today's NBA and would Jim Brown be the best running back ever?  (Answers: Leaning towards yes, would be very good, but maybe not all-time great, and definitely)
Some of the great boxers of all-time would suffer under the same glass- Rocky Marciano would have little chance against Tyson Fury or Anthony Joshua, but there are a few that clearly would have been great against anyone of any time.
Sugar Ray Robinson is that fighter.


Fred: Do you believe the "cheaters" belong in the baseball Hall of Fame?
This includes the game-fixers, gamblers, and the steroid players, both accused and confirmed.

TRS: This subject comes up a lot and I really don't have a firm opinion, but I suppose I'm OK with Joe Jackson and Pete Rose being voted in- as long as the HOF makes sure that the scandals involved with the two are mentioned on their plaque and as part of anything involving the two in the facility.
I give Jackson a break because if he took money in the Black Sox scandal, it didn't seem to affect his play and for Rose, his gambling as a manager shouldn't outweigh his play as a player.
The steroid players are a different matter as some of those players wouldn't have posted the statistics
needed to get to Cooperstown without them, so my stance on this is as follows- Take the line of when the use was suspected and/or confirmed.
Was the player in question a Hall of Fame level player before that timeline?
If so, I'm Ok with induction-if the steroid links are notated as with the foibles of Jackson and Rose above.
Under this rule- Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens would receive my vote while Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire, and Rafael Palmeiro would not.

Fred: What is your favorite book?

TRS: Almost all of my reading is non-fiction and most of the reading is either sports, history, or political history, but the winner is clear- Jim Bouton's 1970 Ball Four.
From childhood to the present day. I've read that book well into three digits.
I have my original battered copy somewhere, I have the book in its final edition with updates on Bouton's life, have the ebook, the book on CD, and I have it on Audible with Jim Bouton reading it.
One of the most fun things that I do with Ryan is swap lines from the book and we each know just where it is in the book and who said various quotes.
I'm not sure you can be a true baseball fan and reader without reading Ball Four as a snapshot of the game just before the free agency period's arrival, but as players were beginning to challenge authority.
Honorable mention to Terry Pluto's "Loose Balls" a hilarious oral history of the ABA and outside the world of sports, I'm a big fan of the Robert Caro written series on the life of Lyndon Johnson.


Fred: Who is the best "heel" in the history of Pro Wrestling?

TRS: I'm not quite sure how to answer this one.
The best heel could be who consistently put on the best matches, who drew the most money to see them wrestle or it could be just who my favorite heel could be.
I'm going to answer it as my favorite heel and there are a few that I'm a huge fan of.
Very few could anger a crowd like Roddy Piper, but as time passed too many fans started liking Piper and the promotion felt that they were forced to turn him "babyface".
Piper wasn't nearly as effective or likable in that role but remained a huge star.
I always was a fan of Ken Patera as an arrogant heel that due to his world-class strength looked down on the inferior fans in a role that didn't seem to take very much acting!
Tully Blanchard was a tremendous heel that not only was excellent in the ring but his ability to express disdain as the 'Chicken' heel that kept the Four Horsemen as a hated group despite fans wanting to cheer Ric Flair and to a lesser extent, Arn Anderson.
However, there is one that ranks as my favorite above all, the Magnificent Muraco.
I've written before about Muraco as a major influence growing up and when Muraco was motivated as he was in his two WWF runs with the Inter-Continental title- he ranked with the top wrestlers in the world as an all-around performer both in the ring and verbally.
Muraco's promo work could be tremendous and his work in the first half of the 1980s made him the best wrestler in the WWF and arguably (especially in 82-84) the best in the country.


I hope these answers for Fred were interesting enough and I'll be back next time with the next installment of Friends and Family Week.

Cleaning out the inbox-Non-Sports Edition

We continue to work on that inbox and we move now to an all non-sports inbox, which is pretty popular from what I have been told!

We start with 13th Dimension's article on the 1970's comic- Batman Family, which was a favorite of mine then as a child.
The post talks a little bit about Batman Family and then a brief interview with Bob Rozakis, who did some of the writing for the book.
The comic was generally double-sized, so you received a great day for your fifty cents in mid-70's currency and it had stories from the various members of the Batman Family even down to the gimmick characters-like Bat-Mite!
I even had as a kid, the issue to the left, although it isn't in my collection today.
I also have a fond memory of a Superman Family comic that was a favorite of mine, before going away in a story that I'll tell one day IF three people would ask me to (that'll tell you who's reading this!), but I was a much bigger Batman fan than Superman even to this day.

Marc Maron's WTF podcast had a recent guest from "The Office" days as Jenna Fischer (Pam) did his show.
Fischer has a new book out (The Actor's Life), so she is doing lots of media work promoting the book.
Fischer's Pam Beesley Halpert was named the greatest female character in television history by my Fightheads partner Ramon Malpica on a recent episode which is extremely high praise!

Two goodbyes from the inbox.

Goodbye to astronaut Dick Gordon at the age of 88.
Gordon was a Gemini and Apollo astronaut and was the module pilot on Apollo 10, which is most widely thought of as the fun mission among the crews.
Gordon would have walked on the moon on Apollo 18, had the final two missions not been canceled by budget cuts to NASA.
Gordon also was involved in one of the strangest stories in sports as after his resignation from NASA, Gordon was hired as the general manager of the New Orleans Saints despite never having worked in football at any level.
I know fans under 30 have a hard time realizing this, but for the 70's and mid 80's the Saints were looked at in a very similar manner as fans look at the Browns today as they never had a winning record for the first twenty years of their existence and much of it was for reasons like hiring an astronaut to run football personnel operations.
Almost like hiring a beancounter without experience to do the same today.
The Saints would never win more than five games when Gordon was running the franchise.

Goodbye to the "Fight Doctor" Ferdie Pacheco at the age of 89.
Pacheco was part of the well-known team around Muhammad Ali as his doctor, but might be even better known as the color commentator on NBC boxing telecasts.
Pacheco also was the person in charge of making fights and buying them for NBC, which at the time of weekend boxing was known for having the smallest budget of the three networks.

Editor's Note: I have plans for posts soon on two more passings that happened in the last two days-Former Ohio State wide receiver Terry Glenn and David Cassidy of Partridge Family fame.

CNN writes of what it is like to visit Lenin's Mausoleum in Moscow.
The former Soviet leader has been embalmed since his death in 1924 and it has been one of the tourist stops in Red Square ever since.
On occasion, it comes up to bury Lenin and it usually goes away after time.
I've always wondered just how much work that it takes to keep the corpse from deteriorating.

Esquire writes "You'll never love your E-Reader" and why records and books still have that advantage over the digital version.
The article is right about the loving the physical version and I still love having the physical copy, but I must admit to liking my Kindle and the ease of bringing so many books in one small container.
It's OK to like both.

As I read about E-Readers, Esquire had another article on the up's and down's of Vans Shoes, their history and why they are currently thriving.
My favorite pair of shoes ever were Vans and I only had the model once.

We had a Vans at the local outlet for a while and when they went out of business they were blowing out the inventory.
Ryan was at this store with our friend Joe Plum and saw these shoes.
They decided to take a chance and buy them for me and I loved them!
I still even have them still battered at the house and even though the lack of support that Vans have for us older folks-The Duke Kahanamoku Surf Shoe isn't made anymore, but if I was ever able to find a pair in size 13, I would jump on them-price permitting of course
My favorite shoe of all time-Thanks to Ryan and Joe!
I think I'll go cry now...

Confessions...

I quite enjoyed Confessionals when I first wrote about this back in July and I thought it was time to revisit now.

Keep in mind some of these are things I haven't written/told about and others are general knowledge...

1) I'll be doing a Ric Flair piece this week on his 30 for 30, but here's a sneak peek- I was a little disappointed in it...

2) If anyone comes to town to visit me and wants to go out to eat at a place that they can't visit at home-I only have two non-chain staples.
Washington Chicken and Vince's Pizza.
Vince's isn't for the pizza (I know you have to be tired of hearing me rave about Ohio pizza) it's for the terrific burgers that they sell...

3) I go back and forth over the last 10-15 years on my favorite comedy (non-premium channel) between The Office and Parks and Recreation.
Love them both and seem to give one a hairline edge over the other-When I am watching that particular one.

4) If we are in one of those "pick to save the world" scenarios- I'll take Parks for just one reason.
They didn't have a bad season as the Office did in the next to last season when they force-fed James Spader in as the new CEO as "Robert California".
The season is fine when Spader isn't in it, but when he is- not so swift.

5) If you follow me on Twitter, you probably see me follow lots of different people from lots of different areas, but I'd guess if I had to guess on what the most "liked" topic was (in amount of liking other people's non-sports posts on my timeline), I'd wager it's actress Amy Acker.
This is because of the people that follow me from the days of "Person of Interest" television and their Acker pics on the timeline are always showing up.

6) As much as I like Acker, her new show "The Gifted" isn't doing much for me so far.
It's not bad, it's just not catching my interest in the way that a first-year show should.
It's too bad because I was really hoping to love it.

7) I know that you know that my favorite football conference is the Big 10 and you likely know that I see a lot of Boise State and Houston along with rooting for Bowling Green, but this year, I've really enjoyed the Pac 12.
I know their champion won't be in the title chase this year, but the games are generally fun to watch and almost anyone has a chance of beating anyone else.

8) It's been at least 15 years since I cared enough even to be mildly interested in pro wrestling, but my YouTube guilty pleasure is wrestling from the NWA in the 1980's.
Other than music and odd TV clips, the Crockett promotion is my YT winner for most often viewed.

9) I know I've been quoted as saying that the next big female star in sports television is going to be Olivia Harlan and she may very well be, but I've changed my mind- it's Laura Rutledge.
Rutledge sits in on Monday's and Tuesday's on the Paul Finebaum Show (I know what's a Big Ten guy watching an SEC show for, but it's entertaining and the BTN attempts at this type of show have been dreadful) and she's incredibly knowledgeable.
Rutledge is going to be a huge star in the football television game and she's so good that I wouldn't mind seeing her give play by play a shot someday,

10) I'm stretching my stadium radius farther than I ever thought possible (25 + new stadiums between 2016 & 2017) and it's to the point that there won't be too much more that I'll add in a given year.
So when I'm asked these questions- Which new place (within possibility) do you want to see most in 2018 and which place would I like to go back to most, I have to think about it.

Here goes;
I'm going to go with one place that is most realistic for 2018 and one that I want to do but is unlikely.
Kingsport, Tennessee is the most realistic as it can be done in a day (Albeit a very long day) and would complete the Appalachian League for me.
My most wanted and unlikely stop is a tie between Myrtle Beach South Carolina (I've visited the stadium, but not for a game) and Dayton, Ohio.
Myrtle Beach would complete the Carolina League for me, while Dayton would finish the state of Ohio, so both have appeal.

For the place that I liked so much that I would like to return to again, it's a three-way tie.
I really liked Buies Creek North Carolina, the autographing was great and it's only going to be used for one more season before the new stadium in Fayetteville North Carolina is up and ready for 2019.
I also really liked BB&T Ballpark in Winston-Salem North Carolina.
I didn't get to spend as much time there because we had to hit Danville VA that night, but I liked it enough that I'd like to spend more time there.
The main AAA field was Louisville, I just loved the stadium and even though I didn't get one card signed, the ballpark was great and I really liked the city.