As is often the case, when we’re young, we absolutely hate the thought of getting old? But when we reach a certain number…it’s different for every one of us…we begin to feel that age is a badge to be worn, if not proudly, then with resignation.
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So much of what I write for these sports pages involves young people. Just thought I’d give the "old folks" something to think about.
With that in mind, you certainly are past the half way point on your journey if:
• you’ve seen at least one varsity basketball game in the old Gallatin High School gym. It was definitely a crackerbox, but there are still many gyms just like it still around.
• you attended a Friday night of professional wrestling at St. Joseph City Auditorium, site of Civic Arena, or you remember Gust Karras’s gravelly voice from Channel 2 wrestling on Saturday nights.
• like, wrestling, you thought roller derby was a sport to be taken seriously.
• you still hold it against your mom for throwing out all your baseball cards after a closet-cleaning session, including that 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle worth about $50,000.
• you tuned in to ABC’s Wide World of Sports to watch the world barrel jumping championships (on skates). It was more fun when competitors bruised their butts trying to clear the last barrel. I looked it up. The record was 17 barrels.
• you remember the give and take between Dizzie Dean and Pee Wee Reese during broadcasts of CBS Saturday afternoon baseball. "Pop the top on another Falstaff Pee Wee!"
• you remember that the radio was once the only way to keep track of Cassius Clay (Ali) title fights.
• you were there the night Gallatin’s boys scored 36 points in the first quarter on their way to a record 113-89 basketball victory over Polo. Rich Reynolds, Howard Weldon, Phil Gooding and Dennis Morrissey combined for 86 points for the Bulldogs.
• you followed Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris in 1961 as they chased Babe Ruth’s single-season home run record. Many Yankee fans never forgave Maris for breaking the record. If anyone was to get it, they thought Mantle should have been the one.
• you marveled as UCLA dominated the NCAA basketball for 12 straight seasons under Coach John Wooden.
• you jumped up and down when Ken Boyer hit a grand slam home run against the Yankees in Game 4 of the 1964 World Series. That series featured Ken vs. his brother, Clete. The Boyer boys were first cousins of the wife of the Methodist minister in Hamilton at that time.
• you were shocked that Arab terrorists could successfully kidnap Israeli athletes at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. Kidnappers killed 11 Israeli athletes and coaches but Israeli intelligence later tracked down and killed many believed to be involved in planning or carrying out the incident.
• you may have done what I did and fought the blackout of the 1971 AFC Divisional Championship game between Kansas City and Miami. Though blacked out in our area, I remember climbing up on the roof of my uncle’s house and turning the TV antenna toward Omaha in order to watch the end of the game.
• you remember that before there was Bird vs. Magic, there was Russell vs. Chamberlain, which provided the greatest sub-plot in the National Basketball Association throughout the 1960s.
• you watched as Cale Yarborough sailed over the highway style guard rail and over the wall at the 1965 Southern 500. He later said "I felt like an astronaut."
If you remember all of these, you’re a true child of the ‘60s!