Hawaii commented in It kind of got us ready for World War II, or whatever:
On Friday my local sports station interviewed Padre announcer/commentator Jerry Coleman becasue his budding baseball career was temporarily halted by the bombing of Pearl Harbor. He gave a wonderful (and occassionally even funny) account of how it affected him, baseball, the country, and so on. He became a Navy flier, flying missions at 19 with an 18 year old gunner. It was facinating.
I wish Dan Patrick would do stuff like that. In fairness I did not hear all of his show, so maybe I missed something like that. There must be a handful of guys still out there that can talk about the effect WWII had on sports at the time. Even a younger guy who knows sports history could do it (someone like Keith Olbermann if he were available to the show), if DP couldn’t get any actually athletes from the time.
It’s been hard keeping up with the show. I still listen to it in bits and pieces, but with the holiday season in full swing I am often not able to catch up with what I miss. One show pretty much blurs into the next. Nothing really stands out. I can’t even remember if I heard Friday’s show.
Also, since it’s not baseball season I don’t get to hear much about my favorite sport. And whenever DP does bring up baseball it’s just the run-of-the-mill/story-of-the-day deal: something on the Yankees or the Red Sox or Barry Bonds. I enjoy hearing from his two SI baseball regulars, Jon Heyman and Tom Verducci, but they’re not Peter Gammons.
Agreed, KO could have brought an interesting perspective on the intersection of sports and history on Pearl Harbor Day. It would have been a perfect time to have a discussion with Doris Kearns Goodwin. The interview with Jerry Coleman sounds like a winner. Is there a podcast/download of that show for us non-San Diegans to hear?
Tom Seaver was in the Mets broadcast booth this past season on the night the team honored the late Gil Hodges (former Met and Mets manager) for his induction into the U.S. Marine Corps Sports Hall of Fame. He talked about Hodges’ skill as a manager, and how his no-nonsense approach was influenced by his time in the military. I had no idea that Hodges had served in the Marines and discovered that Seaver, too, had served. I’ve only been a Mets fan for the past five years and it was interesting for me to hear these details. I’d heard that Hodges once marched out to left field to remove a player who had loafed when fetching a ball; it makes sense that a former military man wouldn’t put up with such behavior.
521. I sometimes think of that whenever Barry Bonds and the career home run record are mentioned. Ted Williams ended his career with 521 homers, and I’ve read and heard comments that he could have challenged Babe Ruth’s record had he not lost several years of playing time when he served as a pilot in the Marine Corps during World War II and the Korean War.
How would fans today react if David Wright or Kevin Durant were drafted into military service and sent overseas to fight in Iraq or Afghanistan? Tim Tebow won the Heisman Trophy on Saturday. What if he was drafted? I’m not up on my Heisman history and the military service of the various winners, but I do know that Nile Kinnick won the award and died during a training mission during WWII. The stadium at the University of Iowa is named after him. (And not after a bank or a telephone company or an orange juice.)
Nick Saban on Friday’s DP Show would have been great. Dan could have wished him a Happy Pearl Harbor Day.
