The Baseball Digest Archive - With A Twist

March 1977

I know what you’re thinking. Wait a minute, this isn’t a cover from an old issue of Baseball Digest! As it turns out my box of old issues of Baseball Digest also contains issues of Auto Racing Digest. So why not dive into one of these?

Similar to the value of Baseball Digest in a pre-cable universe, same with Auto Racing Digest. In the 3 network era, it was very rare to find much in the way of motorsports on TV. ABC aired Indy and Daytona, but Indy was shown in an edited version on tape delay and Daytona was limited to the last couple of hundred miles on Wide World Of Sports. Otherwise, there wasn’t much beyond the random race that could be seen on Wide World. And since I grew up in New York, which wasn’t exactly a hotbed of racing, it’s not as if my local newspapers would devote much space on racing news. So I would depend on ARD for any news.

In 1977 racing was still a notoriously dangerous endeavor. Not that it’s completely safe now, but safety improvements to both the cars and the tracks make serious injury fairly rare these days. That was not the case in the 70’s. Look no further than the last 2 articles in this week’s issue. There is a profile of promising Formula 1 driver Ronnie Peterson, who would lose his life in a racing accident in 1978. It’s followed by an article discussing legendary owner Roger Penske’s decision to step away from Formula 1. This was due to a fatal crash suffered by his driver Mark Donohue the previous year. The Penske organization turned out OK; he’s the most successful owner in motorsports history, and you see his trucks everywhere. I’ll expand on this point a bit further as I dig into additional issues of this magazine, but I’m fairly certain that it would have been impossible for me to remain a fan of the sport if the fatality rate had remained at this level. (It’s been decades since the last on-track fatality in either NASCAR or Formula 1, and the 2 most recent tragedies in IndyCar were both freak accidents.)

The spotlight article in this issue was the magazine’s decision to name David Pearson as the driver of the year for 1976. Even that is a reflection of a different time. He is #2 all-time on the list of career NASCAR victories, even though he rarely ran a full season. Nowadays each of the top drivers runs every race; the ability to be as successful as Pearson was as essentially a part-time driver is unimaginable today.

Finally, there is a feature here that is a sad reflection of the time and culture. Although she didn’t actually qualify for the race for the first time until 1977, Janet Guthrie made her initial attempt to break the gender barrier at Indianapolis in 1976. This issue contained a segment titled “Will Women Ever Be Competitive In Motor Racing?” Keep in mind that this was not only during the era of Bobby Riggs style chauvinism, but race drivers are by nature a macho breed. It should come as no surprise that the responses to that question were not particularly progressive. 12 drivers were surveyed, the answers range from maybe to flat out no, and some of those no’s were phrased in a piggish manner. I won’t embarrass anyone by copying direct quotes; it’s certainly possible that at least some of their attitudes could have evolved as time passed. What I will do is give credit to the one driver who responded with an unequivocal yes - champion road racer Al Holbert.

SNL Recap

I don’t want to criticize Ryan Gosling too much; the guy is awesome. I don’t want to sound like Sam the Eagle either. It’s fine to have fun on a comedy show. And yet… my gosh, was the breaking out of control this week. I never felt as if it was full-on Jimmy Fallon “look at me, aren’t I adorable?” tomfoolery, but there was literally not a single live sketch in which Gosling failed to laugh. Then, since laughter is infectious, the castmembers also continually lost their composure. The first few times, I found it endearing. By the last couple of sketches of the night, it had become exhausting. Which was a shame, because this week contained some of the best writing of the season. It’s just too bad that a lot of was spoiled. Somewhere the ghost of Harvey Korman was watching this and yelling, “keep it together, people!”

The tone started right with the cold open, which brought us the return of the alien abduction sketch. Returning champion Kate McKinnon was back on stage - with Sarah taking Cecily Strong’s place as the 3rd abductee - and once again the writing staff opened up the Big Book O’ Euphemisms to see how many ways they can give gray hairs to the standards & practices department with all sorts of references to a woman’s private parts. Yes, Gosling lost it multiple times.

McKinnon wasn’t the only special guest star this week. In his monologue Gosling mentioned that he was here to promote The Fall Guy and was finally ready to say farewell to Ken, complete with a goodbye song set to the tune of All Too Well. His Fall Guy costar Emily Blunt came on stage to interrupt, claiming that they had planned on doing a stunt-related gag about their upcoming movie. This led to a rehash of the Barbieheimer debate, with each proclaiming that their movie was the better of the two. Blunt sang a few notes herself, and got a chance to perform the promised stunt work, breaking both a bottle and a chair over Gosling’s head.

My choice for sketch of the week is the only one that didn’t involve uncontrollable laughter, and that’s because it was a pre-taped bit. Ego, Chloe, and New Chloe performed a country song about getting back at their no-good men. Ego’s & Chloe’s verses were fairly straightforward, but New Chloe sang about an ever increasingly deranged set of revenge scenarios on her man - played by musical guest Chris Stapleton.

In a normal week, 2 other sketches would be strong contenders were the breaking not so distracting. In one, Gosling & Chloe announced their engagement to friends portrayed by Ego & Andrew. Whenever the women left the room Gosling admitted to Andrew that the proposal was a mistake & he needed Andrew’s help to get out of it even though they barely know each other. It could have been great had Gosling not laughed so much. (Notice a pattern developing?) Then there was the town hall sketch. Heidi’s anchor interviewed Kenan’s professor about the dangers of A.I. A camera cut revealed that directly in Kenan’s line of sight was an audience member portrayed by Gosling who was the spitting image of Beavis. Kenan asked him to be moved, as the sight was too distracting, but his seat replacement was Mikey as a character who looked just like Butt-Head. In this one, Gosling’s contagious laughter really got to Heidi. She was cracking up so hard that I was starting to legitimately get worried about her. It was a nice kicker to the sketch when they kept it in the Mike Judge universe, cutting to 4 cast members dressed as Hank, Dale, Bill, & Boomhauer. (Although I might have gotten just as big of a kick had they dressed up Sarah as Daria and had her sit in the audience.)

Update gave us one more big guest star. After Che made another one of his dumb sexist jokes, joining him at the desk was none other than Caitlin Clark. After Clark called him out for his history of jokes at the expense of women’s sports, Jost was ready with a supercut of some of Che’s old jokes. This was followed with a twist on the bit in which Che & Jost read jokes that each had written for the other. In this case, Clark provided a series of jokes for Che to read, each one making him look bad. Clark also took the time to give a shoutout to the great women’s players who have blazed a trail for her.

Choosing Employee Of the Week wasn’t easy. I was almost tempted to award Heidi combat pay for her giggle fit, or to Kenan for doing the best job of holding himself together. But I loved New Chloe’s performance in the music video, so she wins the honors this week. The show will be off for a couple of weeks and will return on May 4th with the first of the final batch of episodes of the season. Dua Lila will handle dual hosting/musical duties.

The Doctor Was In The House

Emotions ran high in Citi Field yesterday as the Mets retired Dwight Gooden’s #16. There was a nice turnout of some of his former teammates with whom he shared his special day.

It was particularly nice to see Darryl Strawberry be able to attend. Straw suffered a heart attack a few weeks ago, and it was assumed that he would be unable to travel to New York, but his recovery is going well. SNY shared a video on their social media feeds showing the moment when Strawberry surprised Gooden. The 2 of them will always share a connection with each other, and it’s fitting that both will have the respective numbers retired in the same year; Strawberry’s retirement will come in June.

It was just as heartwarming to see that Gooden is looking healthy. His struggles with addiction have been well chronicled; there have been too many public appearances he has made in which he has looked frighteningly gaunt. All indications are that he is in a good place right now. Combating addiction is a lifelong battle; he is an easy guy to root for, so the hope is certainly that he remains strong.

Looking back I wish I had thought to save more old ticket stubs and scorecards than I did. I can’t say for sure how many of Dwight Gooden’s starts that I personally attended, but I did see a lot, and in those first 3 or 4 years of his career it was always a special event. The K Corner, the roars from the crowd every time he got 2 strikes on an opposing hitter, the pregame atmosphere as we all anticipated the thought of witnessing a spectacular performance, there was nothing quite like a peak-era Dwight Gooden start. Seeing that #16 hanging up on the stands will serve as a perpetual reminder of what a wonderful era that was.

My New Hero

I sometimes half jokingly say that if I ever had seats in the Wrigley Field bleachers I would bring a spare baseball into the stands with me. That way if I somehow managed to catch a home run ball hit by the opposition I could discreetly toss my own baseball onto the field while keeping the souvenir for myself. That’s not just a Wrigley phenomenon either; now it seems that fans at every stadium shame people into throwing home run balls hit by the visiting team back in disgust. Why should someone carelessly discard such a memento? Well, on last night’s Sunday Night Baseball game a fan did exactly what I thought of in my hypothetical situation.

Manny Machado hit a home run and the fan who caught the ball followed the admonitions of the crowd and threw the offending ball back onto the field. ESPN cameras caught him sneaking a baseball out of his pocket and that was the one that he threw back. Buster Olney interviewed him a couple of innings later and the fan admitted that is exactly why he had that initial ball - just in case. Hilariously enough he told Olney that no one seated near him had noticed it; he’d have gotten away with it if it weren’t for the meddling cameraman.

Basketball Update

I’m not sure if this completely qualifies as parity, but it was amazing to see how close the NBA standings were this season. There was one huge advantage to that - the races for positioning as well as the races to stay out of the play-in tournament seemingly changed every day. Not only did that mean we didn’t see the standard number of players largely sitting out the last week of the season, but it also prevented teams from gaming the system & doing a semi-tank in order to gain a more advantageous playoff seeding. A team couldn’t say “if we wind up as the 3 seed the team with the 6 seed is a great matchup for us so there’s no need to push for the 2” because there was no way of determining the potential matchups. Nothing was determined until the completion of yesterday’s action.

The Western Conference was particularly wacky. The Thunder, Nuggets & Timberwolves began the final day of the season in a 3-way tie. Dropping from 1 to 3 in one day is quite a change. Or how about the East? The 2-seed Knicks and the 8-seed Heat were separated by only 4 games in the standings. The line between safe playoff qualification and play-in territory was a thin one indeed. We could be in for an unusual number of upsets in this year’s playoffs.

That tight middle of the standings also came with some awful showings from teams at the bottom. In yet another tribute to the historically inept 1972-73 76ers, despite a record breaking 28 game losing streak, the Pistons wound up comfortably surpassing that older team’s victory total. There was even a brief period in which the Wizards had a worse record, but in the end the Pistons finished 1 game behind the Wizards in the race to the bottom. And we can’t ignore the fact that even though the Spurs were almost as bad, Victor Wembanyama lived up to every bit of the hype. He can’t be blamed for the fact that he was surrounded by a terrible roster, he came as advertised.

Finally, as a followup to the earlier item about an SNL guest star, the WNBA Draft is this evening. In anticipation of the season, last week the league revealed the national TV schedule, due to Caitlin Clark anticipation, 36 of the 40 games that the Indiana Fever play this season will air on one of the league’s national partners. The Fever could potentially do the most hilarious thing possible in the draft.

50 Years Ago - Late For the Sky

There were several phases to Jackson Browne’s career, and this album brought phase one to a close. With his first 3 albums, he firmly established himself as part of the confessional singer-songwriter movement that was such a prominent part of the music scene at the time. His commercial peak really began with his next album, but Late For the Sky helped set the stage for the breakthrough that was to come.

As was usually the case, he was helped out by several of his famous friends. Among those who contributed backing vocals were Don Henley, Dan Fogelberg, and J.D. Souther. And his chief musical collaborator David Lindley is prominently featured on this collection. By this point they had been working together long enough that they were a well-oiled machine.

This was a decent hit at the time of its release; it went gold, and was eventually certified platinum. Having said that, with the possible exception of For a Dancer, it doesn’t contain any of the Jackson Browne songs that have entered into the classic rock canon, although Joan Baez recorded well-regarded covers of a couple of songs from the album. The collection does stand the test of time, however. It usually finds its way on Rolling Stone’s ranking of the top 500 albums.

My personal of feelings for Jackson Browne are ever evolving. I admire his songwriting skill, but sometimes I find his work a bit too emotionally distant. It feels like he spends hours trying to make it perfect, whilst erasing some of the passion in the process. The songs on this record are the work of a true professional; it’s very good, but if this makes sense, you can almost feel the intense labor emanating from the grooves. Or to put it another way, I understand why this album has so much acclaim, but I respect it more than I enjoy it. As far as the Jackson Browne discography goes, Running On Empty may be the “safe” choice, but it’s also my preferred choice.

Closing Laughs

It’s April 15, and you know what that means. News reporters are stationed at the post office to interview the people who waited until the last possible moment to file their taxes. Let that not be you. See you again on Wednesday.