One time NHL player and former Washington Capital’s coach Jim Schoenfeld recorded several albums of folk music in early 1970’s. They were long forgotten until Numer Group dug them out for their release Wayfaring Strangers: Lonesome Heroes. Check out Schoenfeld’s ‘Before’, which leads off the comp.
Herb Washington of the Oakland Athletics is known as the only “Designated Runner” in Baseball history. As a world class sprinter who broke various sprinting records while in College at Michigan State University he caught the attention of Oakland’s free spirited owner Charlie Finley. He was able to convince Washington to take the role of Designated Runner even though he had no Baseball prior experience. He spent the entire 1974 season and 1 month of the 1975 season with the A’s where he had zero at-bats or time playing the field in the 105 games he appeared in. With that said, Washington still accomplished to steal 31 bases, score 33 runs, and win a World Series ring in his short career. After being released by the A’s he remained in professional sports for 2 additional years as a competitive sprinter in Track & Field.
Steelers Defensive Coordinator and recently inducted Hall of Famer, Dick LeBeau, horses around with teammates during his playing day with the Detroit Lions.
BLACK MAGIC which originally aired on ESPN in 2008 is finally available on DVD. It’s the story of basketball at historically black colleges, the coaches who lead these programs, and the players who played for them. Some, such as Winston Salem State star Earl “The Pearl” Monroe and Grambling’s Willis Reed would find fame in the NBA, but most languished in obscurity, largly ignored my mainstream historians and sportswriters.
Black players weren’t allowed to play in the NBA until 1950, when Earl Lloyd became the first player to play in an NBA game, and even in the years after there were unspoken quotas that mandated that no team could have more than a few African-Americans on their roster.
The film begins with details of a secret basketball game played in Durham, N.C. on a Sunday morning in 1944. Held in a locked gym with no fans to witness it. Pionerring African-American coach John McLendon (who was in many ways the father of black college basketball), one of the games great innovators, led his fast-breaking team from the North Carolina College for Negroes iagainst an intramural squad from Duke University’s medical school. The game was illegal and unsanctioned. McLendon’s team ran Duke off the court 88-44.
McLendon is one of the most important figures in BLACK MAGIC, not only because of his many innovations and accomplishments, but because he served as mentor and role model for so many of the players and coaches profiled. Clarence “Big House” Gaines, the iconic coach won won more than 800 games, and coached Monroe and Cleo Hill, the first player from a historically black college to be chosen in the first round of the NBA Draft, who was one of the best, if not the best players of his era, but who was blackballed from the NBA because of resentment from white players.Ben Jobe one of the most compelling figures in the film, a star at Fisk University, and a coach Southern Unversity and an assistant at Georgia Tech and the University of South Carolina, who was denied the opportunity to coach at a major college because of his race. Perry Wallace, the Vanderbilt star who was the first black player in the SEC.
Harold Hunter the first African American to sign an NBA contract and McClendon’s assistant. Bob “Butterbean Love, the Southern University star, and legendary rival of Willis Reed, who achieved All-NBA status with the Chicago Bulls, but who was unable to find work after he retired because of his severe speech impediment.
John Chaney, known by many as the long time coach of the Temple Owls, who starred at Bethune Cookman college, but was forced to play in the Eastern League because there were so few spots for African Americans in the NBA. He later turned to coaching because of the lack of playing opportunities and led Divison II Cheyney State to a Nation Championship, before ascending to his post at Temple.
The film interweaves historical events such as the “Orangeburg Massacre”, the shooting three students on the campus of South Carolina State by the National Guard during a peaceful civil right protest, an event, which preceded the shooting at Kent State, that was under reported and largley forgotten because it took place at a historically black college.
Normally I find talking head oriented documentaries to be dull and uninspired. However BLACK MAGIC is blessed with some amazing interview subjects, particularly Ben Jobe and Bob Love, who’s stories are especially moving, even if you have no interest in basketball. As a result the film feels very much like an oral history, effortlessly weaving together the stories of more than a dozen of these coaches and athletes who came of age at historically black colleges with some amazing archival footage.
Via ESPN:
Pete Carroll has reached agreement with the Seahawks on a deal to be their next head coach, multiple NFL sources confirmed early Saturday morning.
Carroll was fully expected to be introduced by the Seahawks as early as Monday, assuming they comply with the Rooney Rule this weekend.
The hangup could be locating a candidate to interview that would put the Seahawks in compliance with the rule, which requires teams to interview a minority candidate for head-coaching hires
The Seattle Seahawks, doing their part to promote diversity. But really, why bother flying in a minority candidate like Leslie Frazier, all the way from Minneapolis? Surely there’s a janitor at Qwest Field that they could pull in for an interview?
(via billsportsmaps.com)
2009 regular season attendance map.
Woot for us! That Phillies hat is mighty big!
The Reds at 27 breaks my heart. Too much history there for that. And the A’s at 30? Sheesh.
I’m perplexed that the Astros rank as high as 13th.
Some context for why Gilbert Arenas would leave unloaded guns in front of Javaris Crittenton’s locker as a joke.
To say Arenas enjoys a good practical joke is like saying Timothy Leary enjoyed the occasional recreational drug. He responded to the veterans’ orders to bring doughnuts to practice by buying plain ones and sprinkling baby powder on them—that is, when he wasn’t buying frosted ones, licking each one and putting it back in the box. He also took great joy in stealing his teammates’ keys and hiding them in, say, a bottle of water. Then there was the time Arenas showed up on the team charter wearing a Fran Tarkenton jersey—make that forward Chris Mills’s Fran Tarkenton jersey, a specially ordered throwback that Mills had been talking about for months. Arenas had sneaked into Mills’s house the night before and pilfered the prized shirt. Once on the charter, he opened his jacket to unveil what he loudly proclaimed “the best jersey in the world!” and proceeded to attack the lunch spread, making sure to wipe his hands all over Fran. “Talk about someone getting choked. I got choked for like five minutes,” Arenas says, then nods appreciatively as if remembering a particularly good Merlot. “It was funny, though.”(via TrueHoop)
I’ve jotted down a few thoughts about the Kansas City Royals organization, usually as point of comparison to the Pirates, as they both had a rough decade for similar reasons. As columnist for the Kansas City Star Joe Posnanski has seen this all up close, and pens this 9,000 word post on the past ten years in Royals baseball. What’s most striking is how promising the team looked at the beginning of the decade, at least superficially, with one of the best young outfields in baseball: Johnny Damon, Carlos Beltran, and Jermaine Dye***. It’s sobering for someone like myself who hopes the Pirates may finally be turning the corner.
*** Apologies for the watermark, but this photo seemed too appropriate to pass up.
