Okay. I'm a big Iowa wrestling fan and it was great to see the Hawkeyes win the NCAA wrestling championship again, their first since 2000.
The Hawkeyes got back to the top of the wrestling world for this year with a lot of help from some ex-Virginia Tech Hokies. First there was Tom Brands who returned to Iowa last year as head coach. He came back to Iowa City from Blacksburg where he'd gone to coach the Virginia Tech wrestling team. He coached the Hawkseyes to an NCAA title in his second year as head man at Iowa.
One of things he did to greatly aid his cause was to recruit five studs to Virginia Tech and then when Iowa called him back to the place where he won 3 NCAA championships under legendary coach Dan Gable, he brought these five studs with him. Four of them were starters for Iowa this year as redshirt sophomores. And three of them became hign echelon All Americans at the NCAAs this year.
Ex-Hokie supersoph (not to jinx this young man) Brent Metcalf won the 149 pound championship, while ex-Hokie, Joey Slaton took second in the NCAA tourney and former Hokie Jay Borschel took third place in the NCAAs as the Hawkeyes ran away with the tournament with seven All Americans including Mark Perry, champion at 165 pounds for the second straight year, Perry being the nephew of Oklahoma State coaching great John Smith.
If things go true to form, Brands will use his first title as a spring board to recruit some more blue chip recruits to Iowa City to help keep Iowa at or near the top of the wrestling world for a while. Also, if things go true to form, ex-Hokies Metcalf, Slaton, Borschel, Dan Leclere and T. H. Leet will all improve and keep on doing great things for Iowa wrestling for the next two years and work well with All Americans junior Charlie Falck and sophomore Phil Keddy as well as with Hawkeyes that we've not heard a lot from yet including sophs Ryan Morningstar and Chad Beatty.
It'll be fun to watch Iowa wrestling under Tom Brands, especially if he's able to continue to corral talent like the Blacksburg Five and keep it flowing through Iowa City.
He'll need to since John Smith, J Robinson and Cael Sanderson, to name some of his main coaching competitors, sure aren't going to be standing still.
By the way, if you want to read a great book about amateur wrestling, get the one I'm reading for the second time now, "Cowboy Up" by Kim Parrish which is about John Smith and the Oklahoma State wrestling program. It's as good as Nolan Zavoral's great book about Dan Gable and the Iowa wrestling program, "A Season on the Mat".
Take care. :)
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Monday, January 28, 2008
Ron Pifer's Leg Wrestling Video
Ron Pifer was a great wrestler at Penn State from 1960 to 1962 as you'll find out in several of my other blogs. I attended PSU at the same time he did and saw him wrestle a great deal while I was a student there.
He forte was leg wrestling and quickness and for those who want to learn more about leg wrestling from an expert, Ron has put together a four hour tutorial on two CDs called "Ron Pifer's Leg Wrestling Techniques".
It can be obtained by contacting Ron at rvp12@scasd.org or by writing to him at:
Ron Pifer
2360 West Branch Road
State College, PA 16801
The video set costs $49.99 including shipping and handling. If you're interested, I'm sure you won't be disappointed.
Enjoy. :)
He forte was leg wrestling and quickness and for those who want to learn more about leg wrestling from an expert, Ron has put together a four hour tutorial on two CDs called "Ron Pifer's Leg Wrestling Techniques".
It can be obtained by contacting Ron at rvp12@scasd.org or by writing to him at:
Ron Pifer
2360 West Branch Road
State College, PA 16801
The video set costs $49.99 including shipping and handling. If you're interested, I'm sure you won't be disappointed.
Enjoy. :)
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Penn State Wrestling - Circa 1960
I first became interested in freestyle wrestling when I was a junior at Mount Lebanon High School in suburban Pittsburgh, PA. This was in the fall of 1956. Our coach was a great guy named George Lamprinakos (Lampy, to all of us who had him as a Phys Ed instructor). Lampy would go on to coach Kurt Angle to a PIAA state championship in 1987 and is mentioned in Angle's autobiography in glowing terms.
But he was a young coach with a first year team in Mount Lebanon in the fall of 1956. How do you take a bunch of guys who have never wrestled before and win with them? But Lampy had to start somewhere and the gaggle of guys who turned out for team tryouts were oh so inexperienced, save one guy by the name of Turney Duff who had just transferred to Mount Lebanon that fall from I believe it was Pennsbury High School in Eastern Pennsylvania, just north of Philly. Turney was pretty good and for that year acted as an assistant caoch and generally whipped anyone who he went up against in the wrestling room, even the heavyweight aspirants. He just knew that much more than the rest of us. Interestingly enough, my freshman year room mate at Penn State, two years later, Bill Blackmon, was a graduate of Pennsbury High also. And Bill had a good friend from high school, Pete Hunt, who he introduced me to and who turned out to be on the same wrestling squad at Pennsbury as Turney Duff. Small world, indeed.
Anyhow, while Turney was chewing up just about all the new Mount Lebanon wrestlers, Lampy had gotten us into pretty good shape and was starting to conduct wrestleoffs. He put me up against George Schein, a terrific athlete and a guy who seemed much bigger than me, at 145 pounds (if I remember correctly). George proceeded to quickly dispatch me with a lightening fast pin. This wasn't the most devastating thing in the world but it gave me an idea where I stood, from a wrestling talent standpoint. It wasn't long until I got a nasty knee infection that kept me out of the wrestling room for several weeks and I soon quit the team, but my interest in the wrestling bloosomed even though it didn't seem a sport that I was cut out for, physically or, more important, mentally.
Fast forward two years and I'm now a freshman at Penn State studying electrical engineering but still incredibly interested in all sports. One day I'm having a conversation about the Penn State wrestling team with a guy in my dorm by the name of Ed Bradley, and he's telling me about a guy who'll be wrestling for the Nittany Lions starting in the fall of 1959 by the name of Ron Pifer. "Pifer", Bradley says, "is a two time PIAA (Pensylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association) champ from nearby Bellfonte, PA and is really going to excite Penn State wrestling fans." I store this information away for future reference.
Now it's late in the fall or early in the winter of 1959 and Penn State has it's first wrestling match of the season. It's at home in the friendly confines of Rec Hall and it's against Michigan. Ronnie Pifer is starting for the Nittany Lions and a bunch of the Nittany 33 dorm gang are in our seats, anxiously awaiting the start of the match. As we're waiting, I see a Michigan wrestler walk out onto the floor to look things over. The guy looks big and tough and I wonder what weight class he's going to wrestle. Then the Michigan wrestler goes back to his locker room and the match soon begins. I don't remember if Penn State beat Michigan that night but I sure do remember seeing Ron Pifer wrestle in his first match for the Lions. It turns out that he wrestles at 167 and goes up against the Michigan bruiser that I saw walk onto the floor before the match. I think it was late in the first period of the 167 pound match that Ron threw what appeared to be a "grapevine" onto the guy from Michigan and pinned him. Rec Hall went crazy and the Lion fans knew that they had a special athete on the wrestling team in Ron Pifer, our new sophomore sensation.
Ron continued to do extremely well for the Lions as his career progressed, much of it wrestled at 157 pounds with an occasional match wrestled at 147 or 167 pounds. He didn't lose very often and was a great leg wrestler who pinned a fair number of his opponents. He won All American honors three times at the NCAA wrestling tournaments of 1960 - 1962, finishing fourth and third at the NCAA's in 1960 and 1962 and took second in the nation in 1961 losing at 147 pounds to Larry Hayes of Iowa State in the tournament finals. Hayes was a senior that year and won his third NCAA championship when he beat Ron 4-0.
I recently had the need to gather some information about Ron's career that I am using in a book that I'm writing and found Ron's E-mail address online. He was very gracious in supplying me with that information just recently and it's something that makes a budding journalist's life so much more easy. Many thanks go out from me to Ron for giving a PSU classmate that he'd never met some information that I'd have had a great deal of trouble locating otherwise.
Ron is now retired from coaching and from his high school principal's job but still works part of the year as an assistant wrestling coach at State College High in State College, PA, the home of the Penn State Nittany Lions. And for you real wrestling fans, the ones who really know the intricacies of wrestling techniques, you might be interested in Ron's two CD four hour wrestling video titled "Ron Pifer's Leg Wrestling Techniques". It's $ 49.99 including shipping and can be gotten by contacting Ron at rvp12@scasd.org or writing to him at Ron Pifer, 2360 West Branch Road, State College, PA 16801.
While at Penn State I was not only fortunate enough to see Ron wrestle numerous times but was also able to see some other really good wrestlers such as Jerry Seckler who, rumor had it, wrestled at 167 and did very well at that spot for the Lions but had to wrestle there since he couldn't beat Pifer out in the 157 pound Lion wrestle offs. I also got to see some good wrestling from a former neighbor of mine in Canonsburg, PA, Bob Haney, who wrestled for Penn State and graduated in 1963, a year behind me.
In the process of seeing most of the wrestling matches that the Nittany Lions wrestled at Rec Hall I got to see two time NCAA champions Dave Auble of Cornell and Mike Natvig of Army, and one time NCAA winners Larry Lauchle of Pitt and Kirk Pendleton of Lehigh when they wrestled Penn State as well as some other really good wrestlers such as Dick Martin and Darryl Kelvington of Pitt and Thad Turner, Dave Angell and Billy Merriman of Lehigh.
I can still hear the PA announcer, when I daydream about those long ago evenings spent at Rec Hall, intoning, " .....and now at 157 pounds Mr. Makarainnen of Cornell versus Mr. Pifer of Penn State." Great memories. :)
But he was a young coach with a first year team in Mount Lebanon in the fall of 1956. How do you take a bunch of guys who have never wrestled before and win with them? But Lampy had to start somewhere and the gaggle of guys who turned out for team tryouts were oh so inexperienced, save one guy by the name of Turney Duff who had just transferred to Mount Lebanon that fall from I believe it was Pennsbury High School in Eastern Pennsylvania, just north of Philly. Turney was pretty good and for that year acted as an assistant caoch and generally whipped anyone who he went up against in the wrestling room, even the heavyweight aspirants. He just knew that much more than the rest of us. Interestingly enough, my freshman year room mate at Penn State, two years later, Bill Blackmon, was a graduate of Pennsbury High also. And Bill had a good friend from high school, Pete Hunt, who he introduced me to and who turned out to be on the same wrestling squad at Pennsbury as Turney Duff. Small world, indeed.
Anyhow, while Turney was chewing up just about all the new Mount Lebanon wrestlers, Lampy had gotten us into pretty good shape and was starting to conduct wrestleoffs. He put me up against George Schein, a terrific athlete and a guy who seemed much bigger than me, at 145 pounds (if I remember correctly). George proceeded to quickly dispatch me with a lightening fast pin. This wasn't the most devastating thing in the world but it gave me an idea where I stood, from a wrestling talent standpoint. It wasn't long until I got a nasty knee infection that kept me out of the wrestling room for several weeks and I soon quit the team, but my interest in the wrestling bloosomed even though it didn't seem a sport that I was cut out for, physically or, more important, mentally.
Fast forward two years and I'm now a freshman at Penn State studying electrical engineering but still incredibly interested in all sports. One day I'm having a conversation about the Penn State wrestling team with a guy in my dorm by the name of Ed Bradley, and he's telling me about a guy who'll be wrestling for the Nittany Lions starting in the fall of 1959 by the name of Ron Pifer. "Pifer", Bradley says, "is a two time PIAA (Pensylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association) champ from nearby Bellfonte, PA and is really going to excite Penn State wrestling fans." I store this information away for future reference.
Now it's late in the fall or early in the winter of 1959 and Penn State has it's first wrestling match of the season. It's at home in the friendly confines of Rec Hall and it's against Michigan. Ronnie Pifer is starting for the Nittany Lions and a bunch of the Nittany 33 dorm gang are in our seats, anxiously awaiting the start of the match. As we're waiting, I see a Michigan wrestler walk out onto the floor to look things over. The guy looks big and tough and I wonder what weight class he's going to wrestle. Then the Michigan wrestler goes back to his locker room and the match soon begins. I don't remember if Penn State beat Michigan that night but I sure do remember seeing Ron Pifer wrestle in his first match for the Lions. It turns out that he wrestles at 167 and goes up against the Michigan bruiser that I saw walk onto the floor before the match. I think it was late in the first period of the 167 pound match that Ron threw what appeared to be a "grapevine" onto the guy from Michigan and pinned him. Rec Hall went crazy and the Lion fans knew that they had a special athete on the wrestling team in Ron Pifer, our new sophomore sensation.
Ron continued to do extremely well for the Lions as his career progressed, much of it wrestled at 157 pounds with an occasional match wrestled at 147 or 167 pounds. He didn't lose very often and was a great leg wrestler who pinned a fair number of his opponents. He won All American honors three times at the NCAA wrestling tournaments of 1960 - 1962, finishing fourth and third at the NCAA's in 1960 and 1962 and took second in the nation in 1961 losing at 147 pounds to Larry Hayes of Iowa State in the tournament finals. Hayes was a senior that year and won his third NCAA championship when he beat Ron 4-0.
I recently had the need to gather some information about Ron's career that I am using in a book that I'm writing and found Ron's E-mail address online. He was very gracious in supplying me with that information just recently and it's something that makes a budding journalist's life so much more easy. Many thanks go out from me to Ron for giving a PSU classmate that he'd never met some information that I'd have had a great deal of trouble locating otherwise.
Ron is now retired from coaching and from his high school principal's job but still works part of the year as an assistant wrestling coach at State College High in State College, PA, the home of the Penn State Nittany Lions. And for you real wrestling fans, the ones who really know the intricacies of wrestling techniques, you might be interested in Ron's two CD four hour wrestling video titled "Ron Pifer's Leg Wrestling Techniques". It's $ 49.99 including shipping and can be gotten by contacting Ron at rvp12@scasd.org or writing to him at Ron Pifer, 2360 West Branch Road, State College, PA 16801.
While at Penn State I was not only fortunate enough to see Ron wrestle numerous times but was also able to see some other really good wrestlers such as Jerry Seckler who, rumor had it, wrestled at 167 and did very well at that spot for the Lions but had to wrestle there since he couldn't beat Pifer out in the 157 pound Lion wrestle offs. I also got to see some good wrestling from a former neighbor of mine in Canonsburg, PA, Bob Haney, who wrestled for Penn State and graduated in 1963, a year behind me.
In the process of seeing most of the wrestling matches that the Nittany Lions wrestled at Rec Hall I got to see two time NCAA champions Dave Auble of Cornell and Mike Natvig of Army, and one time NCAA winners Larry Lauchle of Pitt and Kirk Pendleton of Lehigh when they wrestled Penn State as well as some other really good wrestlers such as Dick Martin and Darryl Kelvington of Pitt and Thad Turner, Dave Angell and Billy Merriman of Lehigh.
I can still hear the PA announcer, when I daydream about those long ago evenings spent at Rec Hall, intoning, " .....and now at 157 pounds Mr. Makarainnen of Cornell versus Mr. Pifer of Penn State." Great memories. :)
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
The Patriots
I've seen some great pro football teams since I became interested in the sport in the late 1940's. And the New England Patriots certainly look like the belong right up there with the teams that I've considered to be dynasties over the years. Their 16-0 record so far this year and the way they have always been coached to really focus on playing football the right way demands that the world give them incredible respect.
Bill Belichick seems to have the ability to have all his players buy into the almost Zen concept that no one's really a star; that each guy, even Tom Brady, is just a cog in a well oiled machine. Belichick appears to be the modern day paradigm for the position of head coach.
Of course, the Patriots will look even better to historians if they win this year's Super Bowl but if they stumble, then the taking of their place in my pantheon of really great football teams will have to be put on hold.
The teams that the Pats look like they're going to join in Pro Football Valhalla are the Green Bay Packers of Vince Lombardi (who by the way, could, in my opinion, be winning Super Bowls if he were coaching today, instead of in the 1960's), the great 1970's Pittsburgh Steelers of Chuck Noll and the wonderfully talented 1980's San Francisco Forty Niner teams led by Bill Walsh.
I think the Pats will do it this year even though my heart is with the Steelers of the town where I was born. And if they don't do it this year, I can't imagine them them not doing it next year. It seems that as long as the Pats have Belichick and Brady they are capable of almost anything.
The next five weeks will tell us if the Pats will march to the Vince Lombardi Trophy and join my three Super Teams in Kurt's Hall of Pro Football Dynasties.
Go Steeler's, but you probably won't beat the Pats. They're too good this year for anyone to beat. Even Peyton Manning and his wonderful Colts. :)
Bill Belichick seems to have the ability to have all his players buy into the almost Zen concept that no one's really a star; that each guy, even Tom Brady, is just a cog in a well oiled machine. Belichick appears to be the modern day paradigm for the position of head coach.
Of course, the Patriots will look even better to historians if they win this year's Super Bowl but if they stumble, then the taking of their place in my pantheon of really great football teams will have to be put on hold.
The teams that the Pats look like they're going to join in Pro Football Valhalla are the Green Bay Packers of Vince Lombardi (who by the way, could, in my opinion, be winning Super Bowls if he were coaching today, instead of in the 1960's), the great 1970's Pittsburgh Steelers of Chuck Noll and the wonderfully talented 1980's San Francisco Forty Niner teams led by Bill Walsh.
I think the Pats will do it this year even though my heart is with the Steelers of the town where I was born. And if they don't do it this year, I can't imagine them them not doing it next year. It seems that as long as the Pats have Belichick and Brady they are capable of almost anything.
The next five weeks will tell us if the Pats will march to the Vince Lombardi Trophy and join my three Super Teams in Kurt's Hall of Pro Football Dynasties.
Go Steeler's, but you probably won't beat the Pats. They're too good this year for anyone to beat. Even Peyton Manning and his wonderful Colts. :)
Monday, December 31, 2007
Good Books to Read
If you want to read some good books about sports, here's a shopping list of books that I've liked and that have been written within the last fifty years. I'll group them by sport category and let you choose what interests you.
When you start thinking about baseball books, the first two that come to mind are the two great books by relief pitcher Jim Brosnan who pitched for the St. Louis Cards and the Cincinnati Reds as well as at least one other team. Brosnan's books were the first sports books written by a pro player during his active playing days. His first book "The Long Season" chronicles the 1959 baseball season in which he toils for the Cards until mid season and then gets traded to the Cincinnati Reds. The book is still astonishing in that it goes behind the scenes of major league baseball and takes you into the bullpens of the clubs that Brosnan plays for, a gambit never used before in such a successful way. His second book, "The Pennant Race" covers Brosnan's year of pitching relief for the 1961 Cincinnati Reds, a year in which they won the NL pennant. Both these books are great fare for the serious baseball fan. Three other baseball books that are excellent reading are the biographies of Babe Ruth by Robert W. Creamer and Ty Cobb by Al Stump and Charles C. Alexander, Stump and Alexander's books being completely separate entities. Roger Angell's books about major league baseball beginning in 1962 and each covering five years in time make you feel like you're walking into Pittsburgh's Forbes Field, the Baseball Hall of Fame and W.P. Kinsella's Field of Dreams all at the same time. Angell's books are (and this list is nearly all inclusive) "The Summer Game", "Five Seasons","Late Innings" and "Season Ticket". Also there is Jim Bouton's "Ball Four", a zany trip through major league baseball as seen by one of baseball's more literate and certainly more irreverant pitchers. And finally there's Bill Jenkinson's "The Year Babe Ruth Hit 104 Home Runs" in which Jenkinson, in a well researched book puts forward the premise that if The Babe had played baseball in the 1980s, 1990s and in the early 2000s that he'd have hit over 1050 career home runs.
If football's your game, may I suggest Roy Blount, Jr.'s "Three Bricks Shy of a Load". This is an inside look at the 1973 Pittsburgh Steelers, the year before they won their first Super Bowl, but were nonetheless had a wonderfully entertaining group of guys on the brink of football greatness. I'd also recommend "Paper Lion" by George Plimpton, a chronicle of Plimpton's time spent as the prospective fourth string quarterback with the Detriot Lions during their 1963 preseason training camp. This one's a classic and does for football much of what Brosnan's books do for baseball. W.C. Heinz's book "Run to Daylight" is a very entertaining and illuminating book about Vince Lombardi and a week in his life as a coach of the Packers leading up to a big game with the Detroit Lions in 1962. Lombardi allowed Heinz to literally capture his every waking thought about football during this one week slice of time. Then there's Jerry Kramer's "Instant Replay" that describes, as seen through Kramer's eyes, what it's like to spend a year playing for Lombardi. That year was 1967, the last year that Lombardi ever coached the Packers.
Going on, every football fan should read H.G.Bissinger's "Friday Night Lights" to get a sense of how important high school football is the the fabric of Texas society. This gem chronicles the 1988 season of the Odessa, Texas Permian Panthers and their attempt to win the AAAAA Texas football championship, a feat that the Panthers had accomplished four times previously starting in1964. I come from the high school football hot bed of Western Pennsylvania and I have to say that Texas takes high school football fanaticism to a new level. There is also the great book by Jim Dent, "The Junction Boys" which covers the events surrounding Bear Bryant's first encounter with his new Texas A and M football team in the late summer of 1954. This one's a must read. You'll see what Bryant thought he had to do and did, arguably to the point of excess, in seeking to find which of his new players had the right stuff. You'll meet John David Crow and the "Sugerland Express", Ken Hall, who as freshmen in the fall of 1954 were not varsity eligible for the Bear's August hell camp in "dry as a bone" Junction, Texas, and you'll meet Junction survivors Gene Stallings, the successful coaching disciple of Bryant, and Jack Pardee, who had a very successful pro career for the LA Rams and Washington Redskins after playing for A and M and being one of Bryant's favorite players and who was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame in 1986. Also on my list of football books to read are "Out of Bounds" by Jim Brown and Steve Delsohn and "One More July" by George Plimpton and Bill Curry. The Brown autobiography is great reading whether or not your a fan of the Cleveland Brown superstar and gives the reader some of Brown's interesting insights into the abilities of some past and present pro football stars. "One More July" chronicles Curry's trip to his last training camp, this one with the Packers in 1975 and gives Curry's unique and humorous outlook on what it was like to play pro football from 1965 to 1975. Plimpton and Curry really do a great job on this one.
I basketball's your sport then you really ought to read John Feinstein's book "Let Me Tell You a Story" in which he relates so many of the stories that the great Red Auerbach had to tell about his career in basketball. Also by Feinstein is his great book "A Season On The Brink". Bob Knight fans and detesters should all read this one. It tells an interesting story about Knight and the Indiana University basketball program and looks at a slice of time comprised by the 1985-1986 college basketball season. This is one of the best sports books I've ever read. And I'm a big Bob Knight fan, warts and all. Then there's "Drive" by Larry Bird, a book which gives lots of insight into the great Indiana State and Celtic superstars life and basketball career.
And then, with all due respect to all other sports such as professional tennis, soccer and ice hockey, there's high school and collegiate wrestling. This starts of course with anything at all written about Dan Gable. And especially Nolan Zavoral's great book "A Season On The Mat". This is an inside look at the Iowa Hawkeye wrestling program and in particular Gable's last year as a head coach in a career that established him as arguably the best college coach ever, in any sport, with 15 national championships in his 21 years as a head coach. To go with this is Mark Kreidler's "Four Days To Glory", a chronicle of the very end of two Iowa high school wrestlers careers in which they are both attempting to reach the lofty goal of four time state champion. The wrestler's names are Jay Borschel and Dan LeClere. They finish their high school careers and then get lured to Virginia Tech along with Iowa high school star Joey Slaton, Michigan high school superstar Brent Metcalf and Georgia star T. J. Leets to wrestle for former Hawkeye star Tom Brands. Suffice it to say that 2 years later Brands and his five super recruits are now at Iowa and are appearing like they might lead the Hawkeyes back to national prominance. A sidebar to this great book is that four of the five recruits just recently played a big role in leading Iowa to a big win over then top ranked Iowa State and then this last weekend led the Hawkeye wrestlers to a big team win in the prestigious Midlands wrestling tournament held yearly at Northwestern University. "Four Days to Glory" is a very good book about wrestling that's turning into an incredibly interesting reality session.
I've only scratched the surface with my sports book recommendations, but enjoy the ones that I've mentioned that sound interesting to you and have a Happy New Year. :)
When you start thinking about baseball books, the first two that come to mind are the two great books by relief pitcher Jim Brosnan who pitched for the St. Louis Cards and the Cincinnati Reds as well as at least one other team. Brosnan's books were the first sports books written by a pro player during his active playing days. His first book "The Long Season" chronicles the 1959 baseball season in which he toils for the Cards until mid season and then gets traded to the Cincinnati Reds. The book is still astonishing in that it goes behind the scenes of major league baseball and takes you into the bullpens of the clubs that Brosnan plays for, a gambit never used before in such a successful way. His second book, "The Pennant Race" covers Brosnan's year of pitching relief for the 1961 Cincinnati Reds, a year in which they won the NL pennant. Both these books are great fare for the serious baseball fan. Three other baseball books that are excellent reading are the biographies of Babe Ruth by Robert W. Creamer and Ty Cobb by Al Stump and Charles C. Alexander, Stump and Alexander's books being completely separate entities. Roger Angell's books about major league baseball beginning in 1962 and each covering five years in time make you feel like you're walking into Pittsburgh's Forbes Field, the Baseball Hall of Fame and W.P. Kinsella's Field of Dreams all at the same time. Angell's books are (and this list is nearly all inclusive) "The Summer Game", "Five Seasons","Late Innings" and "Season Ticket". Also there is Jim Bouton's "Ball Four", a zany trip through major league baseball as seen by one of baseball's more literate and certainly more irreverant pitchers. And finally there's Bill Jenkinson's "The Year Babe Ruth Hit 104 Home Runs" in which Jenkinson, in a well researched book puts forward the premise that if The Babe had played baseball in the 1980s, 1990s and in the early 2000s that he'd have hit over 1050 career home runs.
If football's your game, may I suggest Roy Blount, Jr.'s "Three Bricks Shy of a Load". This is an inside look at the 1973 Pittsburgh Steelers, the year before they won their first Super Bowl, but were nonetheless had a wonderfully entertaining group of guys on the brink of football greatness. I'd also recommend "Paper Lion" by George Plimpton, a chronicle of Plimpton's time spent as the prospective fourth string quarterback with the Detriot Lions during their 1963 preseason training camp. This one's a classic and does for football much of what Brosnan's books do for baseball. W.C. Heinz's book "Run to Daylight" is a very entertaining and illuminating book about Vince Lombardi and a week in his life as a coach of the Packers leading up to a big game with the Detroit Lions in 1962. Lombardi allowed Heinz to literally capture his every waking thought about football during this one week slice of time. Then there's Jerry Kramer's "Instant Replay" that describes, as seen through Kramer's eyes, what it's like to spend a year playing for Lombardi. That year was 1967, the last year that Lombardi ever coached the Packers.
Going on, every football fan should read H.G.Bissinger's "Friday Night Lights" to get a sense of how important high school football is the the fabric of Texas society. This gem chronicles the 1988 season of the Odessa, Texas Permian Panthers and their attempt to win the AAAAA Texas football championship, a feat that the Panthers had accomplished four times previously starting in1964. I come from the high school football hot bed of Western Pennsylvania and I have to say that Texas takes high school football fanaticism to a new level. There is also the great book by Jim Dent, "The Junction Boys" which covers the events surrounding Bear Bryant's first encounter with his new Texas A and M football team in the late summer of 1954. This one's a must read. You'll see what Bryant thought he had to do and did, arguably to the point of excess, in seeking to find which of his new players had the right stuff. You'll meet John David Crow and the "Sugerland Express", Ken Hall, who as freshmen in the fall of 1954 were not varsity eligible for the Bear's August hell camp in "dry as a bone" Junction, Texas, and you'll meet Junction survivors Gene Stallings, the successful coaching disciple of Bryant, and Jack Pardee, who had a very successful pro career for the LA Rams and Washington Redskins after playing for A and M and being one of Bryant's favorite players and who was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame in 1986. Also on my list of football books to read are "Out of Bounds" by Jim Brown and Steve Delsohn and "One More July" by George Plimpton and Bill Curry. The Brown autobiography is great reading whether or not your a fan of the Cleveland Brown superstar and gives the reader some of Brown's interesting insights into the abilities of some past and present pro football stars. "One More July" chronicles Curry's trip to his last training camp, this one with the Packers in 1975 and gives Curry's unique and humorous outlook on what it was like to play pro football from 1965 to 1975. Plimpton and Curry really do a great job on this one.
I basketball's your sport then you really ought to read John Feinstein's book "Let Me Tell You a Story" in which he relates so many of the stories that the great Red Auerbach had to tell about his career in basketball. Also by Feinstein is his great book "A Season On The Brink". Bob Knight fans and detesters should all read this one. It tells an interesting story about Knight and the Indiana University basketball program and looks at a slice of time comprised by the 1985-1986 college basketball season. This is one of the best sports books I've ever read. And I'm a big Bob Knight fan, warts and all. Then there's "Drive" by Larry Bird, a book which gives lots of insight into the great Indiana State and Celtic superstars life and basketball career.
And then, with all due respect to all other sports such as professional tennis, soccer and ice hockey, there's high school and collegiate wrestling. This starts of course with anything at all written about Dan Gable. And especially Nolan Zavoral's great book "A Season On The Mat". This is an inside look at the Iowa Hawkeye wrestling program and in particular Gable's last year as a head coach in a career that established him as arguably the best college coach ever, in any sport, with 15 national championships in his 21 years as a head coach. To go with this is Mark Kreidler's "Four Days To Glory", a chronicle of the very end of two Iowa high school wrestlers careers in which they are both attempting to reach the lofty goal of four time state champion. The wrestler's names are Jay Borschel and Dan LeClere. They finish their high school careers and then get lured to Virginia Tech along with Iowa high school star Joey Slaton, Michigan high school superstar Brent Metcalf and Georgia star T. J. Leets to wrestle for former Hawkeye star Tom Brands. Suffice it to say that 2 years later Brands and his five super recruits are now at Iowa and are appearing like they might lead the Hawkeyes back to national prominance. A sidebar to this great book is that four of the five recruits just recently played a big role in leading Iowa to a big win over then top ranked Iowa State and then this last weekend led the Hawkeye wrestlers to a big team win in the prestigious Midlands wrestling tournament held yearly at Northwestern University. "Four Days to Glory" is a very good book about wrestling that's turning into an incredibly interesting reality session.
I've only scratched the surface with my sports book recommendations, but enjoy the ones that I've mentioned that sound interesting to you and have a Happy New Year. :)
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Real March Madness
Real March Madness for me is the NCAA college wrestling tournament. It's held about the same time each year as the NCAA basketball tournament. But for some people like me it's much better. Just a matter of preference of course.
Ever since I was a student at Penn State from 1958 through 1962 I was fascinated by their varsity wrestling teams. Our main stud on the Penn State wrestling teams was a guy by the name of Ron Pifer. Pifer was a flashy wrestler who was a good pinner. He was to win All American honors at the hallowed NCAA wrestling tournament which seemed to always be conducted "out west somewhere". "Out west somehwere" was usually in wrestling country; that being Oklahoma or Iowa or someplace nearby. While I was growing up in Pittsburgh, Pitt was coached by three time NCAA titleist Rex Peery, from Oklahoma A&M (now Oklahoma State) and up until the time he retired he had a number of champions who hailed from the Pittsburgh area, but the Nittany Lions never had an NCAA champ when I was attendng there.
I always wondered why, Pifer, our big star, could only finish fourth, second and third in his three trips to the Nationals, when Ron was so darned good, and became fascinated with the whole concept of the NCAA Wrestling Tournament. And why eastern wrestlers never did as well as western wrestlers.
Actually, as the internet became such a useful information tool I found out that in reality, as opposed to my late 1950's impressions, that the NCAA tournament was actually held as much back east as it was out west. But western wrestlers always seemed to do much better than eastern wrestlers.
This fascination with the NCAA Wrestling Tournament went into abeyance for a while after I graduated from Penn State and started working and met my lovely wife and started a family.
Of course everyone had heard just a bit about the fabulous Dan Hodge, from Oklahoma University, who never lost a match in college in his three years of varsity competition and furthermore was never even taken down from a standing position in his entire college career. And of course all wrestling fans knew that Oklahoma State had won many more tournaments than any other team up to the time when I was at Penn State.
Adding to the mystique of the NCAA wrestling tournment was the fact that Penn State, Pitt, Lehigh or any of the good eastern wrestling teams never, at least in the late 1950's, wrestled the Oklahomas, Oklahoma States or Iowa States back then. Probably because of travel difficulties and expenses that more severe, on a relative basis, than they are now.
But then Dan Gable came along, with his incredible work ethic and his great pinning ability, to really start putting college and later free style wrestling on the map of national sports consciousness and soon everyone who knows wrestling became aware of what Dan did at Iowa State and later in the 1972 Olympic Games.
At that point in time I really began to want to see what the national wrestling scene was all about. It took a few years, but in 1978 the NCAA Wrestling championship came to Cole Field House at the University of Maryland, a distance of 30 miles from my house in the western Baltimore, MD suburbs. So off I went to get tickets to the big event. I got tickets for the big event's semi finals and finals. The semis had too much action for a tyro like myself to keep track of what was was going on but I did learn later that a match that was wrestled during the semifinals was one one in which the great Dave Scultz, then a true freshman at Oklahoma State, almost pinned, in what would have been the upset of the tournament, the great junior wrestler from Michigan, Mark Churella, who would go on to become a three time NCAA champ. Churella beat Shultz that night 13-11 but was in danger of being pinned at the conclusion of the second period of their match and was in trouble again just at the conclusion of the exciting match.
The finals though, occurred on Saturday night, and as each pair of wrestlers at the ten weight classes squared off, there was palpable electricity in the air. Especially when Churella flattened a very good Iowa wrestler, Bruce Kinseth with a spectacular split scissors move. (Kinseth would pin his way through the following years tournament and become that tournament's outstanding wrestler while Churella moved up two weight classes to win his third national championship). This was followed by the great Lee Kemp winning his third straight national championship against a real good Iowa State wrestler, Kelly Ward. (Kemp came close to being the first four time NCAA champion losing only to Iowa's Chuck Yagla in Kemp's freshman year in overtime by referee's criteria).
But what really mad this night so great for a sports fan enjoying his first NCAA Wrestling Championship was the fact that Dan Gable won the first of his NCAA team championships as the Iowa Hawkeyes edged out the Iowa State Cyclones by 1/2 a point. This was the start of nine straight NCAA team wrestling titles for Gable's Hawkeyes.
Great fare indeed for a wrestling fan to witness on his first trip to collegiate sports Real March Madness. :)
Ever since I was a student at Penn State from 1958 through 1962 I was fascinated by their varsity wrestling teams. Our main stud on the Penn State wrestling teams was a guy by the name of Ron Pifer. Pifer was a flashy wrestler who was a good pinner. He was to win All American honors at the hallowed NCAA wrestling tournament which seemed to always be conducted "out west somewhere". "Out west somehwere" was usually in wrestling country; that being Oklahoma or Iowa or someplace nearby. While I was growing up in Pittsburgh, Pitt was coached by three time NCAA titleist Rex Peery, from Oklahoma A&M (now Oklahoma State) and up until the time he retired he had a number of champions who hailed from the Pittsburgh area, but the Nittany Lions never had an NCAA champ when I was attendng there.
I always wondered why, Pifer, our big star, could only finish fourth, second and third in his three trips to the Nationals, when Ron was so darned good, and became fascinated with the whole concept of the NCAA Wrestling Tournament. And why eastern wrestlers never did as well as western wrestlers.
Actually, as the internet became such a useful information tool I found out that in reality, as opposed to my late 1950's impressions, that the NCAA tournament was actually held as much back east as it was out west. But western wrestlers always seemed to do much better than eastern wrestlers.
This fascination with the NCAA Wrestling Tournament went into abeyance for a while after I graduated from Penn State and started working and met my lovely wife and started a family.
Of course everyone had heard just a bit about the fabulous Dan Hodge, from Oklahoma University, who never lost a match in college in his three years of varsity competition and furthermore was never even taken down from a standing position in his entire college career. And of course all wrestling fans knew that Oklahoma State had won many more tournaments than any other team up to the time when I was at Penn State.
Adding to the mystique of the NCAA wrestling tournment was the fact that Penn State, Pitt, Lehigh or any of the good eastern wrestling teams never, at least in the late 1950's, wrestled the Oklahomas, Oklahoma States or Iowa States back then. Probably because of travel difficulties and expenses that more severe, on a relative basis, than they are now.
But then Dan Gable came along, with his incredible work ethic and his great pinning ability, to really start putting college and later free style wrestling on the map of national sports consciousness and soon everyone who knows wrestling became aware of what Dan did at Iowa State and later in the 1972 Olympic Games.
At that point in time I really began to want to see what the national wrestling scene was all about. It took a few years, but in 1978 the NCAA Wrestling championship came to Cole Field House at the University of Maryland, a distance of 30 miles from my house in the western Baltimore, MD suburbs. So off I went to get tickets to the big event. I got tickets for the big event's semi finals and finals. The semis had too much action for a tyro like myself to keep track of what was was going on but I did learn later that a match that was wrestled during the semifinals was one one in which the great Dave Scultz, then a true freshman at Oklahoma State, almost pinned, in what would have been the upset of the tournament, the great junior wrestler from Michigan, Mark Churella, who would go on to become a three time NCAA champ. Churella beat Shultz that night 13-11 but was in danger of being pinned at the conclusion of the second period of their match and was in trouble again just at the conclusion of the exciting match.
The finals though, occurred on Saturday night, and as each pair of wrestlers at the ten weight classes squared off, there was palpable electricity in the air. Especially when Churella flattened a very good Iowa wrestler, Bruce Kinseth with a spectacular split scissors move. (Kinseth would pin his way through the following years tournament and become that tournament's outstanding wrestler while Churella moved up two weight classes to win his third national championship). This was followed by the great Lee Kemp winning his third straight national championship against a real good Iowa State wrestler, Kelly Ward. (Kemp came close to being the first four time NCAA champion losing only to Iowa's Chuck Yagla in Kemp's freshman year in overtime by referee's criteria).
But what really mad this night so great for a sports fan enjoying his first NCAA Wrestling Championship was the fact that Dan Gable won the first of his NCAA team championships as the Iowa Hawkeyes edged out the Iowa State Cyclones by 1/2 a point. This was the start of nine straight NCAA team wrestling titles for Gable's Hawkeyes.
Great fare indeed for a wrestling fan to witness on his first trip to collegiate sports Real March Madness. :)
Sunday, November 11, 2007
The Big E
I just saw the video of my favorite hockey player of all time announcing his retirement. And it's time for Eric Lindros to move on to other things, I think. His effectiveness as a dominating offensive force had finally diminished to a mere shadow of its former "self".
But I remember the early part of his career so well. First was the buildup leading to him playing for someone other than the Quebec Nordiques. Everyone wondered whether he was crazy for sitting out a year after he was drafted and whether or not he'd be picked again the next year by the Nords. When would his NHL career begin.
Thankfully for his fans it began the next fall after he'd been traded to the Philadelphia Flyers. My son and I travelled to the Spectrum, in Philly, from Baltimore, to sit in the worst nosebleed seats in the place to watch him play in what I think was his first home game. He scored a goal that night in a 7-6 donnybrook againt Le Habs but we didn't get much of a look at it, being seated where we were. But Matt and I had a great time in Philly and on the drive home. We had a Philly Cheese Steak on Broad Street before the game and mingled with the Philadelphia faithful before the Spectrum doors opened since we got to Philadelphia about 2and 1/2 hours before game time.
But that was just the beginning. For the first four or five years of his career I went to see Eric play at the Cap Center in Landover as many times as I could. I was lucky enough to see him score his first hat trick one night in his rookie year. The third goal came on a penalty shot and I can still see him skating in on goal somewhat to the right of the goalie and deftly snapping the puck past the Cap's goalie with that wonderful wrist shot of his. He scored a lot when I saw him play in the early years. I tried to see him play as much as I could back then, either when he came to play the Caps or when the Flyers were on TV.
There was just something about his style of play and his demeanor that made me say to myself, "This is the Man. He's not Gretzky or Lemieux but he's the future of hockey."
And for five or six years he was. Gretzky and Super Mario were winding down and the Big E was right there at the top of the NHL with Jagr, Bure and several others. At one point, after he'd been playing for four or five years he was third all time in points scored per game at just below 1.5 ppg. Only Gretzky and Lemieux were ahead of him. And Bossy was sitting there waitng for him to drop just a bit.
He was marvelous to watch, but it was not fun to see him injure his knee, as he did in his first two years, limiting him to playing 61 and 64 games out of 80 for those seasons. And you knew he was asking for trouble with his incredibly rough style of play. The issue of payback was looming in the background as he served as his own enforcer. I'm not sure Bob Clarke could have convinced him to back off on the rough stlyle of play. Eric was probably too macho to accept that, to prolong his career, he needed a Dave Scultz to protect him. But since the Big E was 6'5" tall and weighed 235 pounds he probably felt embarrassed to accept help when it came to the rough stuff. I can still see, in my mind's eye, Lindros' epic battles with Scott Stevens during Eric's first trip to the playoffs. In particular, it was one night when he'd been giving more than he'd gotten from Stevens, that after Stevens had gone in low on John LeClair along the boards and caused LeClair to somersault and land very painfully on the ice, that just a moment later, Eric spotted Stevens near the boards and drew a bead on him. Lindros went after Stevens with the intent to drive him right through the glass with a 235 pound body check. Stevens saw him coming andand and the last second grabbed the top of the glass and swung himself out of Lindros' way while Eric shook the arena with his crash into the boards. It seemed to be the start of a long rivalry between the two big men, one that Lindros would eventually pay for in his final game with the Flyers when Stevens caught him looking down as he brought the puck into Stevens' territory. Scott let Eric have it right in the side of the head with a shoulder check that gave Eric one of his worst concussions just after he'd returned from a lengthy recovery from another concussion. Eric was in this respect his worst enemy. He'd roughed up a lot of people and some of them got him back. If only he'd accepted an enforcer, as Gretzky did, when he ruled the ice. No one ever whacked Wayne because there was always a Dave Semenko to crush him if they even thought about it.
But while he was with the Flyers and in his first year with the Rangers he was wonderful to root for. I just had to know how how many points he had scored in every game he played. I'd check the Baltimore Sun every day after the Flyer schedule that I had on my dresser indicated that the Flyers had played the night before. Or if I was on vacation I'd pick up the local paper as soon as I could to see how the Big Kid had done.
On business trips I'd grab the Seattle paper or USA today to get the "Lindros update". I'll never forget, while on one business trip to Seattle walking in to my motel room, turning on the television, and seeing highlights of Lindros getting a a hat trick against the Habs and then the very next night seeing that he'd gotten a second second hat trick against Montreal, the second in two days. Six goals and several assists in two days. Wow.
This "fanatical" following of the exploits of number 88 were taken to real extremes when I had a business trip to Bavaria in 1995. I'd call the Philadelphia Inquirer sports desk from m hotel room in southern Germany at 5:00 AM and ask for the stats on Lindros. It was about midnight back in the states and I'd explain that I was calling because I was out of the country and didn't have easy access to hockey box scores. I always got the same writer who didn't share my enthusiasm for Lindros, but he always gave me what I asked for even if it was a snide, "And guess what. Lindros didn't get any points last night." I'll always wonder who he was and be thankful for the time this newspaper man took to give me the rundown on Eric's scoring when I called across five time zones to get them.
Eric, you are gone but not forgotten. I still have about 30 of your rookie cards that I have to figure out who to leave to when I pass on. :)
But I remember the early part of his career so well. First was the buildup leading to him playing for someone other than the Quebec Nordiques. Everyone wondered whether he was crazy for sitting out a year after he was drafted and whether or not he'd be picked again the next year by the Nords. When would his NHL career begin.
Thankfully for his fans it began the next fall after he'd been traded to the Philadelphia Flyers. My son and I travelled to the Spectrum, in Philly, from Baltimore, to sit in the worst nosebleed seats in the place to watch him play in what I think was his first home game. He scored a goal that night in a 7-6 donnybrook againt Le Habs but we didn't get much of a look at it, being seated where we were. But Matt and I had a great time in Philly and on the drive home. We had a Philly Cheese Steak on Broad Street before the game and mingled with the Philadelphia faithful before the Spectrum doors opened since we got to Philadelphia about 2and 1/2 hours before game time.
But that was just the beginning. For the first four or five years of his career I went to see Eric play at the Cap Center in Landover as many times as I could. I was lucky enough to see him score his first hat trick one night in his rookie year. The third goal came on a penalty shot and I can still see him skating in on goal somewhat to the right of the goalie and deftly snapping the puck past the Cap's goalie with that wonderful wrist shot of his. He scored a lot when I saw him play in the early years. I tried to see him play as much as I could back then, either when he came to play the Caps or when the Flyers were on TV.
There was just something about his style of play and his demeanor that made me say to myself, "This is the Man. He's not Gretzky or Lemieux but he's the future of hockey."
And for five or six years he was. Gretzky and Super Mario were winding down and the Big E was right there at the top of the NHL with Jagr, Bure and several others. At one point, after he'd been playing for four or five years he was third all time in points scored per game at just below 1.5 ppg. Only Gretzky and Lemieux were ahead of him. And Bossy was sitting there waitng for him to drop just a bit.
He was marvelous to watch, but it was not fun to see him injure his knee, as he did in his first two years, limiting him to playing 61 and 64 games out of 80 for those seasons. And you knew he was asking for trouble with his incredibly rough style of play. The issue of payback was looming in the background as he served as his own enforcer. I'm not sure Bob Clarke could have convinced him to back off on the rough stlyle of play. Eric was probably too macho to accept that, to prolong his career, he needed a Dave Scultz to protect him. But since the Big E was 6'5" tall and weighed 235 pounds he probably felt embarrassed to accept help when it came to the rough stuff. I can still see, in my mind's eye, Lindros' epic battles with Scott Stevens during Eric's first trip to the playoffs. In particular, it was one night when he'd been giving more than he'd gotten from Stevens, that after Stevens had gone in low on John LeClair along the boards and caused LeClair to somersault and land very painfully on the ice, that just a moment later, Eric spotted Stevens near the boards and drew a bead on him. Lindros went after Stevens with the intent to drive him right through the glass with a 235 pound body check. Stevens saw him coming andand and the last second grabbed the top of the glass and swung himself out of Lindros' way while Eric shook the arena with his crash into the boards. It seemed to be the start of a long rivalry between the two big men, one that Lindros would eventually pay for in his final game with the Flyers when Stevens caught him looking down as he brought the puck into Stevens' territory. Scott let Eric have it right in the side of the head with a shoulder check that gave Eric one of his worst concussions just after he'd returned from a lengthy recovery from another concussion. Eric was in this respect his worst enemy. He'd roughed up a lot of people and some of them got him back. If only he'd accepted an enforcer, as Gretzky did, when he ruled the ice. No one ever whacked Wayne because there was always a Dave Semenko to crush him if they even thought about it.
But while he was with the Flyers and in his first year with the Rangers he was wonderful to root for. I just had to know how how many points he had scored in every game he played. I'd check the Baltimore Sun every day after the Flyer schedule that I had on my dresser indicated that the Flyers had played the night before. Or if I was on vacation I'd pick up the local paper as soon as I could to see how the Big Kid had done.
On business trips I'd grab the Seattle paper or USA today to get the "Lindros update". I'll never forget, while on one business trip to Seattle walking in to my motel room, turning on the television, and seeing highlights of Lindros getting a a hat trick against the Habs and then the very next night seeing that he'd gotten a second second hat trick against Montreal, the second in two days. Six goals and several assists in two days. Wow.
This "fanatical" following of the exploits of number 88 were taken to real extremes when I had a business trip to Bavaria in 1995. I'd call the Philadelphia Inquirer sports desk from m hotel room in southern Germany at 5:00 AM and ask for the stats on Lindros. It was about midnight back in the states and I'd explain that I was calling because I was out of the country and didn't have easy access to hockey box scores. I always got the same writer who didn't share my enthusiasm for Lindros, but he always gave me what I asked for even if it was a snide, "And guess what. Lindros didn't get any points last night." I'll always wonder who he was and be thankful for the time this newspaper man took to give me the rundown on Eric's scoring when I called across five time zones to get them.
Eric, you are gone but not forgotten. I still have about 30 of your rookie cards that I have to figure out who to leave to when I pass on. :)
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