We remember those special players who wore the “Birds on the Bat” and played significant roles in making the St. Louis Cardinals—winners of 19 pennants and 11 world championships—the National League’s premier franchise. Those players who led their teams to championships remain indelibly etched in our local culture as a baseball town. James Timothy McCarver […]
Category: sports
Categories
Harry & Jack with Mr. Cub
Hell-o again, everybody. Harry Caray here along with Jack Buck before the start of the Cardinal/Cub doubleheader. Jack, I hardly recognized Wrigley Field last night, what with Rizzo, Baez and Bryant run out of town and ex-Red Bird Heyward taking a powder in the Cub house. The only thing that seemed like normal was still […]
Categories
Hockey Broadcasting 101
Hockey ices the fastest game in Sports, combining speed with physicality and finesse. As such, hockey provides sportscasters the most challenging assignment—keeping pace with game itself. But all too often, those who call the action miss the mark as they lack an understanding of the basics of a good broadcast: A play-by-play man with good […]
After years of riding the high tide of burgeoning revenues, the feudal lords of baseball find themselves at loggerheads with the serfs, their grandee ball playing field hands. After Covid, internal political turmoil and now inflation and the war in Ukraine, their timing could not be worse. Major League Baseball’s battle over the Game’s immense […]
Categories
The St. Louis Arena
The St. Louis Arena hosted its’ final feature on this day in 1999: Her own destruction. A series of rapid explosions, and the edifice collapsed. Afterwards, a dejected crowd who came to watch the dynamited demolition dispersed as though they had just witnessed the home team’s heartbreaking defeat. Only quieter. For several days afterwards, a […]
Kyle Beach’s sexual assault and harassment charges for events that occurred 11 years ago led to the axe for Joel Quenneville, the second winningest coach in the history of the National Hockey League. Beach—a then 20 year-old professional hockey player—was called up from the minor leagues to serve on the Chicago Blackhawks hockey team’s ‘taxi […]
Categories
1968 World Series
Baseball evolves at such a languid pace that a retrospective look at the sport 50 years later reveals a strikingly different game. In 1968, major league baseball consisted of only ten teams in both the American and National League vying for the pennant, with the team with the best record over 162 games earning […]
Categories
Sweet Sixteen
Hell-o again, everybody. Harry Caray here floating above Wrigley Field waiting for my old pal, Jack Buck. Ah, here he comes now, and he’s singing a song. “Oh what a Beautiful Ballgame, Oh what a beautiful day, I have a wonderful feeling, everything’s going our way.” Jack, you sound as chipper as a Red Bird […]
In December, the “Golden Days Committee” will vote to add former players who performed between 1950 to 1969 to the Hall of Fame. The late Curt Flood, a perennial all-star on three pennant winning St. Louis Cardinal teams, should top the list. At a time when true heroes remain hard to find, Flood’s selfless fight […]
Categories
Singing the St. Louis Blues For Bobby Blue
Singing the St. Louis Blues for Bobby Blue Robert Bryant Plager did not bleed blue; he embodied the Blues. Bob Plager suited up for the club in Season One, Game One in 1967, and remained continuously with the Blues until his death nearly 54 years later. An original Blue, Bob Plager was also a bona […]