Saturdays made special with hours of baseball
Punch and The Heckler got to talking the other day (there’s a shock — we actually upset a lot of people around us with this habit of ours while attending a recent concert with The Police, only to sit there talking aloud about the Tigers bullpen most of the time) when the topic arose about Saturdays of our youth, specificaly, those with baseball. In today’s day in age where anyone with a digital cable system, a satellite dish or a computer literally can have access to each and every televised Major League Baseball game, it is hard for this generation to believe (no doubt) that, at one time, you basically had maybe two games on a week — one from your local team, if you were lucky — and everyone’s favorite: The NBC Game of the Week. Sure, we also had Monday Night Baseball on ABC, but that didn’t have the lead-in that the NBC crew did. Shows like The Baseball Bunch reared us on various fundamentals; Sparky and Al (a local show with former Tigers’ manager Sparky Anderson and sports personality Al Ackerman) showed us simple baseball talk; while finally, Mel Allen’s This Week in Baseball made Ozzie Smith a Hall-of-Famer. But that’s another story. The point is this — Saturdays with all of these programs made us the fans we are today. Sometimes less truly is more. I wonder if today’s environment of having accesss to . . . everything . . . could ever breed the same type of fanaticism. Makes ya wonder. I mean, how do you miss something if it never goes away? For those raised in the 80’s, here’s a flashback and a half: a short clip from the forementioned The Baseball Bunch, with none other than Johnny Bench. Is it just The Heckler, or does Bench look a tad creepy wearing that skin-tight elastic-band pullover Reds uniform from that era amid a locker room full of underage children? Maybe its just me. Not to mention how the little skit ends. Judge for yourself. And did I mention it also features The San Diego Chicken!?! Nostalgic baseball bliss! Enjoy the clip!
- The Heckler