As you are watching the March Madness NCAA basketball games, you might think back to watching the games a long time ago and how the shoes have changed over the years. If so, Sean Williams will take you through that history in a short video from Slate.
In the video Williams briefly recounts the evolution from the Chuck Taylor shoes to the shoes of today. If you have been around awhile, you will remember a lot of these shoes. Check it out.
On November 23 in 1984, as the clock ticked down in the Orange Bowl, quarterback Doug Flutie of the trailing Boston College Eagles hurled the football 64 yards against the University of Miami Hurricanes to win the game 47-45. BC receiver Gerard Phelan, who also was Flutie’s roommate, caught the ball amidst a pack of players, thus elevating the exciting game to legendary status and inspiring underdogs everywhere.
The win resulted in Boston College being ranked fourth in the country. As for the quarterback, Flutie became the first college football quarterback to throw for more than 10,000 yards in his career, and he won the Heisman Trophy.
NFL scouts were skeptical of how the 5’9″ Flutie would do in that league, so Flutie ended up becoming a star quarterback in the Canadian Football League. He eventually played in the NFL, retiring in 2005.
Regarding the amazing 1984 Orange Bowl game, the losing University of Miami quarterback was Bernie Kosar. He also went onto an NFL career, playing well for the Cleveland Browns and other teams.
In the video below, watch the live coverage of the “Miracle in Miami.”
This video features players reflecting back on the game and the pass. Also, Flutie explains how colleges did not think he could be a starting quarterback because of his size.
Where were you when Doug Flutie completed the famous pass? Leave your two cents in the comments.
The great baseball player George Herman “Babe” Ruth, Jr. passed away on August 16, 1948 at the age of 53. Ruth, who was born in Baltimore on February 6, 1895, died from cancer, which had been diagnosed two years before his death.
Ruth’s Funeral
After Ruth’s death, his body lay in state at the entrance of Yankee Stadium (“The House That Ruth Built“) for two days. During that time, fans lined up to pay their last respects.
This video shows people lined up outside Yankee Stadium to Ruth one last time. It also includes scenes from Babe Ruth’s funeral, as well as some archival footage of the Sultan of Swat. Check it out.
Ruth Movies
In the month before Ruth’s death, Allied Artists released a bio-pic about the slugger, The Babe Ruth Story (1948), starring William Bendix as Ruth. Many critics have called the film, which includes scenes of Ruth healing sick children (a legend parodied by John Candy on SCTV), one of the worst movies of all time.
Regarding The Babe Ruth Story, people also note that the film could not even get little things right. For example, Bendix plays baseball as a right hander. Ruth was a lefty.
But if you watch The Babe Ruth Story with the right attitude and do not expect a realistic biography, you might have some fun. You can check out the trailer below.
Perhaps Ruth was so larger than life and so well known that it is difficult to make a good film about him. Like The Babe Ruth Story, 1992’s The Babe — with John Goodman in the title role — generally received poor reviews.
One of my favorite Babe Ruth movies was not really about Babe Ruth. Pride of the Yankees (1942) tells the story of Lou Gehrig’s career through the discovery that he had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), what became known as “Lou Gehrig’s Disease.”
In Pride of the Yankees, Gary Cooper pays Gehrig and Ruth plays himself. What I always admired about Ruth’s self-portrayal is that he took part in a scene that makes Gehrig look much better than he does.
In the scene, Ruth visits a sick kid surrounded by reporters covering his visit. Then Gehrig visits the kid in private, showing his sincere concern and promising to hit two home runs for the child during the 1928 World Series. Reportedly, the Gehrig incident never took place and is loosely based on when Ruth promised a home run during the 1926 World Series to a hospitalized boy.
The movie’s version of the story makes Ruth look bad in comparison to Gehrig. But his generosity in playing the scene in tribute to his former teammate says a lot about the The Bambino as a person. Unfortunately, that scene is not available on Youtube (although another scene featuring Ruth is available on the Turner Classic Movies website).
Baseball would not be the same had Babe Ruth not come along, and there will never be another one like him. Thanks Babe.
What is your favorite Babe Ruth story? Leave your two cents in the comments.
The federal trial of Barry Bonds began in March 2022 in San Francisco. Part of the trial focused on Greg Anderson, who started being Bonds’s trainer in 2000 and who allegedly supplied Bonds with steroids and then refused to testify against Bonds. Like Pres. Bill Clinton before him, Bonds had legal troubles that centered not on his actions but on the issue of whether he lied about them. The case examined whether Bonds lied to a grand jury when he said that he thought the substances Anderson gave him were legal. (UPDATE: Following the trial, the jury did not reach a verdict on the perjury accounts but found Bonds guilty of obstruction of justice and he was sentenced to probation.)
Outside the legal debate about perjury, though, an ongoing debate continues about Bonds’s baseball legacy. One of his biggest defenders has been Giants fan and singer-songwriter Dan Bern. In addition to writing some articles about Bonds, Bern has written at least four songs about the slugger: “73,” “Asterisk Nation,” “Rincon,” and “Year By Year Home Run Totals Of The Great Barry Bonds.”
Dan Bern’s Songs About Barry Bonds
My two favorites of these songs are “Rincon” and “Asterisk Nation.” “Rincon” is about a journey to a town to see where Bonds may or may not have a contact for buying steroids, or at least that is how I interpret the beautiful song.
“Rincon” paints the most complicated portrait of Bonds among Bern’s songs. It is a more personal story, more about the narrator than about Bonds, and its ambiguity also makes it one of Bern’s most human and best songs. Like all great songs, it is about something deeper than what you might hear upon the first listen.
“Asterisk Nation” is a much more pointed commentary, where Dan Bern tells us that if we want to point the finger at Bonds, then maybe we should also be pointing it at ourselves. “Asterisk doctors, Asterisk patients, Asterisk erections, Asterisk elections, Asterisk wars. . . Telling Asterisk truths to an Asterisk nation.” Don’t many of us take pills, caffeine, alcohol, medication, etc. to alter the way we exist? And, if so, is it so wrong that Bonds may have used a drug that was not illegal at the time to make him better at his job, like you having that afternoon cup of coffee?
Dan Bern’s song also evokes a new movie released just a few days before the trial of Barry Bonds begins. The movie Limitless (2011), starring Bradley Cooper and Robert De Niro, is about a man who is given a drug that lets him use 100% of his mind. If you could take a drug that would give you super-human abilities, would you?
There is not a video for “Asterisk Nation” on YouTube. But you may listen to the song from a Dan Bern live performance from 2006 below.
Finally, Dan Bern’s “Year by Year Home Run Totals of Barry Bonds” is brilliant for how simple it is. The song recounts exactly what the title suggests, listing those home run totals. While the 73 home runs in 2001 does stand out, the list illustrates that Bonds was smashing a lot of home runs even before the era where we suspect he was using performance-enhancing drugs.
In the video below, Bern performs “Year by Year Home Run Totals of Barry Bonds” as a sing-a-long at a school. (His lesson to the kids is how they may use a song to help them remember pieces of information, like a list of numbers.)
Defending Barry Bonds?
I do not completely buy Dan Bern’s defense of Barry Bonds. One must wonder whether or not it is fair for some players to use steroids against the rules when there is a limited number of spots for major league baseball players. If some use steroids, other potential major league players may lose their jobs to cheaters. And is it fair if someone who holds a record does not get credit because someone else did not play by the rules?
Still, Dan Bern does make me see Barry Bonds in a different light. I now see Barry Bonds as a tragic human being. During his run at perhaps the greatest record in baseball, he must have anticipated for years the glory of the moment. Instead, as the time approached and left, he was treated like a pariah, perhaps partly deserved, perhaps partly not.
Then, when he wanted to continue playing after the 2007 season, no team would hire him when he was still playing great baseball. And why is he so hated while Lance Armstrong is so loved? I am sure racial biases are at work, but there are other complex factors too.
Sure Bonds did whatever he did for himself, but we all gained the entertainment, both from his incredible playing and from later having fun debating about steroids. Ever since he was a kid with a professional baseball-playing father, Bonds learned that society would pay him large amounts of money to run around on a field and hit a ball with a stick. If society is set up so we pay millions of dollars to people who play games, while social workers and teachers barely scrape by and other people are homeless, is it such a great sin by comparison that he took some medicine to play better? Is his sin worse than ours for creating such a society?
Barry Bonds was always there for our entertainment, and like the rest of us, he is a flawed human being. His steroids helped entertain you, and I received a topic for a blog post today. And we do not even have to suffer the health consequences from taking the drug.
While I enjoy discussing the morality issues involved because I love baseball and debates about morals, what it ultimately comes down to for me is one question: Who am I to judge him? And perhaps the most interesting part for me is wondering whether he has any regrets and whether or not he would do everything the same if starting all over again. Maybe some day we will get answers to these and other questions from him, but probably not for a long time, if ever.
I am going to try to cleanse my mind of thoughts about tainted baseball records by watching a video from the 1996 Home Run Derby before Barry Bonds allegedly started using steroids, back when we were all much more innocent. Man, he was good against. . . Mark McGuire.
What do you think of Barry Bonds? What should be done with his home run record? Leave a comment.
(1948), starring William Bendix as Ruth. Many critics have called the film, which includes scenes of Ruth healing sick children (a legend parodied by John Candy on 
