Before all the holier-than-thou folks got upset about some folks kneeling during the National Anthem (No, i don’t like it, or even approve of it, but i spent 22 years defending their right to do that), i decided i wasn’t going to watch pro football except for the Chargers and the Titans.

This seems rather ridiculous because neither team had more than one or two players from the city they represented, but they were teams i had watched because i identified with their location, and in the Chargers case, identified with some of the players. When the Chargers left San Diego because the Spanos owners and the NFL wanted more money and with very few Titan games shown in the Southwest corner, i pretty much quit watching, not because of the pre-game controversy, but because the game has morphed from a sports event into money-making to the absurd point with an entertainment extravaganza complete with absolutely stupid replays and sideline, aka coaches, not coaching but running the game and because the NFL owners, management, coaches and players should be taking at least two-thirds of their income for “trickling down” to help folks in need or toward making this country better.

But that’s my rant. i also think the half-time entertainment is over the top and way, way over rated, and i don’t like smoke and mirrors and bangs and baubles and bobbing derrieres and half-dressed suggestive dancing — If i wanted that, i would go to a strip club in San Diego (one of the few things open in the Southwest corner) — and i sure as hell don’t like any sports events that have more commercials than playing time, regardless whether they are entertaining or not, which will not, will not have any influence on my purchasing the advertised product regardless of what the statistical marketeers have convinced the CEO of the company being advertised, and i don’t enjoy watching any sports event that lasts five to six hours as i have better things to do: hell, i could play a round of golf and still spend an hour or so on home projects unless i started writing a sentence like this and not being able to stop because i want to make ole Willie Faulkner proud.

Whew!

But yesterday, i changed my mind. i do want to converse about the game with my son-in-law and a couple of Friday Morning Golfers with roots in Kansas who root for the Chiefs.

But the real reason i changed my mind was because of basketball.

Yesterday, the San Diego Union-Tribune ran a front-page story with a photo of a young man in a San Diego State Aztec basketball uniform. The headline read “Former SDSU basketball player named honorary game captain.” i was intrigued: a Southwest corner tie-in with a basketball twist.

i read the entire story, a rarity since i rarely read more than the headlines of the national, local, and business sections before critiquing the sports section as a short-lived sports editor should and ending my morning read with the comics section.

Mark Zeigler, the Aztec basketball beat writer for the U-T, wrote the story. Mark also writes stories on the Padres and Chargers, along with sports commentaries, and he has covered soccer in 16 Olympics and seven World Cups. In my opinion, he writes sports the way sports should be written.

This one is at the top in my book. i choked back tears several times. The “honorary captain” Trimaine Davis is a real hero, much more so than anyone who will be on that gridiron playing today.

This is a story that shows there is goodness, humanity, real sportsmanship in college athletics. It’s often difficult to find amongst all the stories about greed and physical prowess and money and self-centeredness and statistics.

It is also a story about Trimaine’s college coach, Steve Fisher. It makes me feel good i watch Aztec basketball. It even makes me feel better about a lot of college coaches with the hope they might, in some small way, emulate Fisher.

i won’t elaborate here as Mark Ziegler nailed it: https://enewspaper.sandiegouniontribune.com/desktop/sdut/default.aspx?&edid=6cf43dce-8f47-4d0e-b9e0-62628ca5840f

So, i’ll be watching the coin toss at the Super Bowl today. i’ll stay around and watch the game until my rear end gets sore from sitting or the game gets boring.

But i won’t be watching the half-time show.

Early summer 1970, the three chiefs of Military Sealift Command Transport Unit One invited their officers to have Sunday brunch with them at the Chiefs Club at the U.S. Fleet Activities, Sasebo, Japan.

We agreed.

When we arrived, we took the only available table for eight near the front of the large dining room, where they had set up a very large motion picture screen. The chiefs club was known for its ramen, and that is what we all ordered, along with Kirin beer, of course. The Japanese waitress cracked the raw egg on our bowls of ramen, and it cooked in the broth. Kirin was true to its slogan, “Ichiban.”

It seemed every chief stationed in Sasebo had brought his entire family to the brunch event. There were a large contingent of Japanese dependents and children all over the place. The huge dining room probably set well over 100, and the place was buzzing in English, Japanese, and the Navy mix of the two languages.

Then all became quiet as dining room lights dimmed and those on the screen flickered, signaling the movie was about to begin.

The five officers, the commanding officer, the two lieutenant doctors, the chaplain, and myself as the executive officer, were unaware a movie was in the offing when we agreed to the brunch. None of us and possibly everyone in the dining room, if not all, had seen the movie, released in the US in late 1968.

The very Italian dramatic music score began to play. The three main characters were introduced one by one with the dramatic, slow…er, drawn out introduction. Eli Wallach’s “Tuco” opens it up by killing  three bounty hunters and “The Ugly” flashes across the screen. Our table chuckled (Well, we all had downed two beers by then). Then, “Angel Eyes” Lee Van Cleef unmercifully murders a guy and Angel Eyes’ closeup is emblazoned with “The Bad.” Our table en masse was now laughing hysterically. Finally, Clint Eastwood’s “Blondie” shoots apart the rope with the noose around “Tuco’s” neck to split the bounty on “Tuco,” and “The Good” is declared. We all lost it.

We were rolling on the floor, pounding on the table, hysterical, howling in glee.

Managers come over and inform us we are disturbing the other good folks in the room, and if we didn’t quiet down, we would be asked to leave.

We quieted down, but i still laugh every time i watch the opening scene, the  middle, the closing scene, and pretty much everything in between. i like the movie in an amusing sort of way.

Yesterday, Friday not the 13th, had its share of the good, the bad, and the ugly.

That will be posted here later.

It was a good day up until the end.

We played golf with Pete and Nancy Toennies, a great matchup and with the rain last week and assorted obligations, it had been a while. Nancy and Maureen were in a cart. Pete and i walked, our preference. i began terrible and ended pretty good, much better than the other way around. This foursome has fun together and that is most important.

And then, we had a late lunch, early dinner at the Brigantine, the Coronado original. Covid and California had stopped such a treat before Christmas and dining, although outside, began again last week.

The Brig has been one of my go-top places since…oh hell, i lost track. i do remember Wednesday nights. The legendary JD Waits and i shared a condo in the Coronado Cays with a boat slip below our patio where JD’s 25-foot Cal was moored. Wednesday’s JD and i would hit the Brig, have a Manhattan…or two, and then dine on their salmon with hollandaise sauce with a nice wine, finishing with a Courvoisier and a cup of coffee. Their margaritas were the best in town.

It changed of course. Went upscale, opened up a couple of more. The original expanded, got modern, prices went up. But the Brig is still my Brig. Had a couple of oysters on the half shell, still wishing i had ordered the half-dozen, and then a waygu beef burger with fries. As Bob Seger sang Brigantine, “You’re Still the Same.”

So we get home. i’m feeling cocky, and with my recent exchanges with Bill Hager about “Red Ryder,” i was ready for an oater. The news with its bleakness and it’s yanking our chain, and it’s selling stuff was what i put on briefly. Then, i quietly asked Maureen if she would mind my watching a western, adding if she did, i would go to the front room and watch one there. She said no, put in her ear buds, and began reading a book on her Kindle (i think: i’m still too stubborn to read anything that doesn’t have paper pages i can turn).

i turned to the Starz app, scrolled down to the “western category” and scrolled to the right, after a dozen or so, there it is: Bob Steele in “Ambush Trail.” Now i loved all of the western movies, even after they turned violent and bloody and gory and in technicolor or whatever they call it now. But the old oaters remain my favorite. And Bob Steele was my favorite. Oh there were about twenty or thirty western  heroes and certainly Roy Rogers, Hopalong Cassidy, and Gene Autry were the most famous. My favorite was Bob Steele. Lash Larue would have been right up there with Bob, but Lash with his 18-foot bullwhip for disarming villains, was mostly in the Saturday serials by the time i got to watch him. Bob Steele was in movies. AND he didn’t sing. He just rode his beautiful horse, fought for justice, the American way, and against the villains, always fighting fair, and only winging the bad guys.

So i watched Bob Steele once again be instrumental in fighting and fighting and fighting (i think there were at least eight fistfights) for western justice ending up triumphant, with no singing.  He had a sidekick, Sam Hawkins, who was really Syd Saylor, who made bad jokes. The plot was twisted and not all that terrific, but it didn’t matter. i mean there were two people actually killed by the bad guys and there was not one drop of blood anywhere near that black and white screen. Nobody was bludgeoned to death or cut into pieces and the good ranchers were saved from the nefarious freight supplier (with horse and wagons of course)

i was in oater heaven.

Maureen would occasionally look up from her kindle and shake her head. i think she was wishing she had taken me up on going to the front room. i mean this lady, along with her younger daughter, watch all movies, especially hen flicks i have mentioned, classics, period pieces, English stodgy stuff, all Academy Award movies. i think i noticed her nose was turned up when i praised Bob Steele.

i went to Wikipedia. i found Bob’s story and his filmography. The guy was amazing. His first movie was silent in 1920. His last was in 1974. In between he appeared in more than 200 movies, most of them westerns. And he could sing, but he didn’t in the westerns.

So i brought out my computer and showed Steele’s filmography to Maureen. She was unimpressed. Looking for someone to understand, i showed the filmography to Sarah. She scrolled through about twenty and said “yeh.”

So the night didn’t end all that well. But then i got to thinking:

Okay, okay, the realism was lacking. i figure i’ve got enough stupid realism around me i don’t need it in movies. Yeh, the acting wasn’t academy award quality, but there are a whole bunch of academy awards for stuff i found…unenjoyable and that is just me being nice.

And you know what? Bob and his good guys won. He made me feel good about the world.

So i’m planning on watching more oaters. But it will be in the front room. By myself.

Sometimes, it feels like it was a thousand years ago.

It was 1971, May, late May. i had dreams. There are about a million things i could include here about me, but that’s not what this is about.

This is about Jack Case.

Jack Case was my boss. He was not Grantland Rice. He was not Red Smith, Jim Murray, or my hero Fred Russell. Jack was from a different world from the one i knew. He was an upstate New York old time sports writer. The world was different. The times were different, and Jack…Jack certainly was different.

My job was to take his place.

Jack was retiring at the turn of the year. John Johnson, my Vanderbilt fraternity brother, was in line eventually to become the publisher of The Watertown (NY) Daily Times, succeeding his father. John had asked me before i headed to Vietnam if i would like to work for the Times after that year and my release from active duty. While plowing the sea between Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, i assessed that would be the best option for pursuing my goal to become a sports writer, columnist, and author. i jumped at it.

So after our wedding Kathie (nee Lynch) at her parent’s home in Paris, Texas, we drove to Watertown.

That’s when i met Jack Case.

Jack was a portly gentleman with a wry smile, a sincere man devoted to his sports writing with unwavering allegiance to his newspaper and his hometown. He was also old enough to have become what i am now, a curmudgeon. He was a lovable one. We don’t know about me on that point yet.

Jack had been writing sports since the 1920’s. He loved sports language. All coaches were “mentors.” All football fields were “gridirons.”

Jack looked like an old-time sports writer. He wore a suit, white shirt, and tie, every day. He never left the building without his brown fedora, and because of the climate close to the Canadian border, he often sported a thick, worn overcoat.

We called him “the dean of sports writers in the north country.” He was.

i had learned sportswriting from JB Leftwich at Castle Heights. i learned how to write sports columns by reading Fred Russell every day except Sunday for twenty-four years. i learned the underbelly of running a sports department and how to make up a “hot type” page from Bill Roberts of The Nashville Banner.

i learned from Jack Case how to do it all for real.

When i took his place, i announced i would not write a daily column. i felt until i had the wide knowledge of sports in Northern New York and access to a number of national sports figures, i would be struggling to come up with something every day, and the column would show that it was just writing for filling space. i didn’t want to disservice the readers.

In retrospect, i wish i could have come up with a way to get Jack to write a column on a regular basis after he retired, perhaps one or two a week. i would have called it, with his permission, “Just in Case.”

i did get his opinion on several crises in national sports crises and quoted him on several occasions, but that idea of a column from him had merit.

Jack had access to many of the sports figures of the time. On the day he retired, December 31, 1971, i ran a full page of photos of Jack with some of the bigger stars of the past.

In one dated 1926, Jack is standing in front of several trees. The tall stocky guy in a sports jacket and bow tie with a pipe in his right hand next to Jack  is Lou Gehrig, one of the noblest of all sports figures and “The Pride of the Yankees.” In another, he is beside a microphone interviewing Walter Hagen on WWNY radio.

In a head-to-calf fur coat standing next to Jack in December 1952 snow is Sonja Henie.

In the middle of that page is (yeh, i saved that page) Jack playfully separating Maxie Rosenbloom, the former light heavyweight champion, from Max Baer, the former heavyweight champion whom you might remember more about his son, the junior Max who was “Jethro” in “The Beverly Hillbillies.” They are promoting a “revue” later staged at the state armory in Watertown (1946).

One photo that took my breath away then and did so again while i gazed at it just now is Jack with Roy Campanella in his wheelchair. After his illustrious career with the Brooklyn Dodgers was ended by an automobile wreck, Roy was often a motivational speaker, this time at a Watertown Elks meeting.

At the bottom, Carmen Basilio is at the microphone with Jack when Carmen after he claimed the welterweight championship. The other photo on the bottom is Jack with four of the Boston College 1941 football team that went undefeated and won the Sugar Bowl.

There is one more photo, taken in 1939. I placed it in the upper left corner, to me even more prestigious than the one to the right of Lou Gehrig. Jack is in the foreground with his ubiquitous cigar. Posing in his boxing shorts and gloves in the center is Ray Robinson. Ray was the first, the real Sugar Ray, Sugar Ray Robinson, regarded by many pugilist experts (yep, “pugilist” is the word Jack would have used) as the best boxer of all time.

Sugar Ray attributed his nickname to Jack Case. After winning an amateur bout in upstate New York in 1939, Ray was visited in his dressing room by Mister Case. As he was leaving, Jack turned around and said, “Ray, you are as sweet as sugar.”

Jack Case was one of a kind in the “Golden Age of Sports.”

It is good to remember him.

i just had this thought wander into this somewhat messed up brain. My following thoughts were 1) i shouldn’t post this, 2) Since i am going to once again forego following a wise thought and post this, i hope Maureen can take a joke.

It has been a good day in the rain. i minimized  the amount of rainfall in a Facebook post earlier. It wasn’t. Maureen has been working on some felting magic project most of the day. Sarah was at work. i continued on the second draft of my book, realizing what a huge undertaking it was to get it right and escaping with another post i will add later. Now, i’m working in my office while Maureen is finishing another gourmet meal.

When she works and cooks, she watches about 4,678 movies on a continual repeat wheel. Her favorites are those movies with Diane Keaton, Meryl Streep, Jack Nicholson, and Alex Baldwin.

Tonight, i got in trouble.

i have watched a number of “chick flicks” with her, enjoyed them. Really.

Tonight, it dawned on me the ones she watched the most were those with the older actors and actresses.

So, being me, i asked her tonight why “chick flicks” with older actors and actresses weren’t  called “hen flicks.’

She hasn’t spoken to me yet.