Ever stare at a radio? You have? But for 2½ hours?
A lot of us did just that, 50 years ago this Friday.
In 1970, Marv Albert was not yet quite Marv Albert. From 1967, when he became the kid radio voice of Knicks and Rangers home games over 1050-AM WHN, he was a rising figure hustling whatever breaks came his way. But he wasn’t yet there.
And perhaps because we had not yet developed a sense of TV entitlement, it didn’t seem like the worst thing in the world that while the rest of the country could watch Game 7 of the Lakers-Knicks Finals on ABC, the home-team market — the hamlet of New York City — under antiquated regional restrictions, could only access the game live via local radio, a game called by a kid barely out of his radio go-fer overalls.
Ah, but the telecast, called by Chris Schenkel and Jack Twyman, would not appear until 11 p.m. Eastern Time via tape delay. The game began here at 7:30.
“Things,” Albert said Friday, “were very different then.”
So Gotham anxiously hovered over radios, listening to a young man who worked alone and apparently didn’t miss a thing — starting with Willis Reed’s delayed, badly hobbled, leg-dragging appearance during warm-ups.
“As injured as he was, Willis was still the pregame guest,” Albert said Friday. “He’d just had a cortisone shot and was in terrible pain. Yet, he said, ‘No doubt, I’m going to play.’
“But players say that all the time. If you looked at the way he was walking — or trying to walk — you’d have said, ‘Forget it. He may sit on the bench, but there’s no way he’s going to play.’ He hadn’t played in Game 6 [a 22-point loss in L.A.]. He sat on the bench.
“I remember it was 7:27, the teams were warming up and the Garden was chanting, ‘We want Willis!’ And then there he comes, limping out. Everything stopped. I recall the Lakers, especially Wilt Chamberlain, looking over. They were astonished. Still, they didn’t know if he’d play.”
Reed started and hit the Knicks’ first two shots — flat-footed fall-away “jumpers” — his only points of the game, but plenty.
“Even with headsets on, I couldn’t hear myself,” Albert said. “That was the loudest crowd, before or since, I ever heard in the Garden.”
That was the night the Knicks — the best basketball team to ever represent New York — won their first NBA championship, 113-99, the night Marv Albert irrevocably became — come Jim Dolan or high water — the Voice of Madison Square Garden.
That 1969-70 Knicks team and Albert seemed a celestial blend. Albert put the game first, and the Knicks played the game best. In fact, though — or because — it had, at 60-22, the NBA’s best record, none of its players were among the leaders in offensive stats save Frazier, who finished second to Seattle’s Lenny Wilkens — in assists.
Albert’s call remains in my head. And I’m hardly alone. Walt Frazier on the give-go-and-get to drive Chamberlain dizzy and to shoot 12-for-17 with 19 assists and seven boards while Dave DeBusschere had 17 rebounds — keeping the ball unclaimed by Lakers until he elbowed rebounding position. And Albert seemed to know exactly when to build to the climax of each play, “Kept alive by DeBusschere, back outside to Frazier …”
“You know, it became more extraordinary as the weeks went by and then the years went by. You began to realize that this team was a national story. The appreciation of it all set in.
“But 7:27, when Willis limped out just below where I was, that’s the moment. That will always be the moment.”
ESPN doesn’t need more MNF innovation
ESPN has named TV vet Phil Dean its new producer of “Monday Night Football.” And good luck and games to him.
But there was one thing in ESPN’s announcement that read like an “Uh-oh.” It was, “Phil is an innovative and creative an event producer as we have at ESPN,” according to ESPN VP Conner Schell.
Gulp. That’s the last thing football fans need: more in-game innovation and creativity. More than ever, genuine football fans want to get back to sensible, practical coverage, which means staying on the field — and residually the game — as long and as often as possible.
ESPN’s MNF version specifically has become the carp-in-a-barrel target of discriminate viewers for its logic-defying desires to impede the view and ensnarl the good senses with any and all forms of extraneous, irrelevant jetsam and flotsam.
It’s long past time that live TV sports returned to doing what it used to do best: Provide the best seat in the house — your house, my house — by showing what we were promised — the game.
After all, what sports fan would avoid a network that vows, as a matter of deed and duty, to show games in their most uncluttered form?
Antisocial Distancing. If only Rob Manfred were a real commissioner, the kind who last ruled in 1992 as Fay Vincent, this wouldn’t have been hard.
Full refunds for virus-canceled April games would have been issued in the form of credit card give-backs or refunds as of May 1. Same for May’s canceled games as of June 1. And those make-goods would have included those dubious, “convenience fee” tack-on charges.
Manfred could have — should have — demanded an ASAP credit or refund on those tickets as a matter of good faith, fair play and good business, especially during a health crisis. But, predictably, MLB will allow the clubs to toy with and stall and financially benefit from that simple, fair-play process.
Triple threat is gone
Once people are left to rationalizations, such as “It’s no worse than this” or “No worse than that” — but what’s it better than? — the debate begins to take on water.
For example, my recent lament here that MLB triples are way down from their 1980 totals has been met with the same wishful rationalization: “The ballparks are different now, they’re much smaller.”
Stop. Triples are most often the residual of running hard out of the box on impact. Consider that in 1980 few home run hitters were able to high-five or slap-hands with the first-base coach because he was well on his way to second.
Now, it’s rare when the first-base coach doesn’t await that “runner.”
And as long as baseballs continue to bounce off walls and back toward the infield, triples should not be nearing extinction.