Wildfires, Hockey and World Series TV Memories

AMAZING IMAGES OUT OF CALIFORNIA: You can’t help but be amazed watching the news, or in my case delivering the news, about the situation in Southern California.  Imagine trying to clear out Williams-Brice stadium 11 times.  It’s estimated now that 900,000 people have been forced or asked to evacuate around the San Diego and LA metro areas.

THIS SITUATION PROVIDES A GOOD BACK-UP PLAN: No one wants to have to deal with a house fire, but perhaps this situation across the country gives a good reminder to us all to make sure our smoke detectors work and copies are made of important documents.

MY SKATE WITH THE COLUMBIA INFERNO: hit the airwaves in the full version Wednesday morning.  And unfortunately my tryout ended with just one skate. It was a little unfair since most of the Inferno players are 18-20 years old, while this journalist is beyond the 30 mark already.  The amazing thing about the sport is how fast it goes when being on the ice.   I would say that both hockey and NASCAR and great sports in person but don’t seem to translate nearly as well on TV.  Still, while being in a full hour practice was a bit humbling, I hopefully didn’t embarrass myself too much.

In fact, the team and “my people” had an intense round of negotiations to add me to the club.  But the Inferno was unable to meet my demands for a private dressing room, chauffeured limo to all games, sparkling water in properly iced bottles, personal assistant and monogrammed silk robe for post game lounging!  (Ok, folks, I’m kidding here…really, the robe could have been terry cloth and we could have sealed the deal!)

WORLD SERIES IS TONIGHT, DO YOU CARE? This is my question to you folks today, please respond in the comments section below.  Maybe it was just being a kid that big time sporting events on TV were a big deal.  Somehow baseball seemed larger than the world when the weather cooled down and you had the legendary Vin Scully doing the playoff games on NBC.  So, with the fall tradition upon us and I am waxing nostalgic, how about we take a look at some old school NBC baseball clips, thanks to youtube.com  My favorite is this first clip, which indicates that the 1982 World Series on NBC is sponsored by “Colecovision.”  Wow, that’s really turning the clock back!   Apparently Major League Baseball has forced Youtube to pull the famous Kirk Gibson homerun from the 1988 World Series that Vin Scully so wonderfully called.  But here are some interesting gems from NBC baseball nonetheless.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7EZbfq9oTY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fG1tNO0_Pk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8oWvBZEBnI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7-oDfjIBvw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7-oDfjIBvw

MY FAVORITE BASEBALL CALL OF ALL TIME: belongs to the late and great Jack Buck (father of FOX's Joe Buck)  During game 6 of the 1991 World Series, with the game in the 9th inning and the Minnesota Twins down, Kirby Pucket came to the plate and hit a game winning homerun to win the game.  Buck's call was simply, "and we'll see you tomorrow night!" Sorry folks, couldn't find it on youtube.