The voice of the Georgia Bulldogs, ... Larry Munson.
Legendary University of Georgia football play-by-play announcer Larry Munson abruptly retired Monday.
That is if you can do anything abruptly at age 86, after 43 years as the pre-eminent voice of Southern college football.
Obviously, as a Clemson grad, I’m not a Georgia fan, by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, I pretty much loathe everything about the Bulldogs.
But that doesn’t mean I don’t respect it. And Munson would come at the top of the list. While the slick suits on ESPN are the norm now, Munson is everything college football should be … but will soon be void of. It’s dying off.
Munson was to college football what Vin Scully is to baseball. Radio guy. Emotion. Personality. Character.
Because I wasn’t emotionally tied to Georgia games growing up, it was just as interesting to listen to the games Munson called when the Dawgs lost. Win or lose, he was an original.
As for my favorite memory of Munson … I grew up in Atlanta, so I had my fill of the Georgia Bulldogs. In 1981, the year after the Bulldogs won the national championship, Georgia played Clemson the week after my 10th birthday. The day of the game, my mom HAD to go to the mall. So I HAD to go, too.
So, while my mom shopped at Northlake Mall, I sat in the car behind the entrance to JC Penney’s and listened to Larry Munson call the game on the radio. Nowadays this is called child abuse, but in 1981 you could get away with it.
Anyway, Herschel Walker fumbled a handful of times, Buck Belue threw it to the guys in Orange more than the guys in white and the Tigers shut down the Bulldogs and won their toughest game, 13-3, on the way to their 12-0 season and national championship.
Obviously, that’s not what he’s remembered for … more likely Georgia fans will remember his call of Lindsay Scott’s TD vs. Florida, Walker’s game as a freshman against Tennessee, or the “hobnailed boot” call.
Below it a video someone else put together of some of his best calls. The video’s aren’t always perfectly synched up to the calls, but you’ll get the picture.
Eighty-five years is a good life by almost any standard.
When you’ve seen the action Yankee Stadium has, it can’t be described as any thing but great.
The New York Yankees defeated the Baltimore Orioles 7-3 Sunday night, Sept. 21, 2008 in the final major league game in The House That Ruth Built. The Stadium, as New Yorkers (I’m not one) and the Yankees players refer to it, was opened nearly 85 years before – April 18, 1923. Babe Ruth homered that day and the Yankees beat the Boston Red Sox 4-1 to open their run for the first of their ridiculous 26 World Series crowns.
Julia Ruth Stevens, the 92-year-old daughter of the Babe was present Sunday. There was a 65-minute pregame ceremony. Virtually every great living Yankee, and many not living, was honored. Longtime public-address announcer Bob Sheppard, sometimes referred to as the voice of God, made a taped appearance. Derek Jeter was removed with two outs in the ninth, getting the ovation he deserved as the Stadium’s all-time hits leader, and Mariano Rivera was on the mound for the final out – the way it should be.
In 85 seasons, the Yankees went 4,135-2,430-17 at the Stadium. The Yankees took part in 37 World Series at the Stadium, winning 26.
The stadium got a facelift in the mid 1970s, and while it wasn’t nearly the same as the old Stadium, the new Yankee Stadium still had that “something.”
When the Yankees announced Sunday’s attendance, the number they gave was 151,959,005 – the total number of fans who passed through the turnstiles in the Stadium’s 85 seasons. I’m proud to say, though I’ve been to New York City but three times in my life, I accounted for two of those 151,959,005.
My first trip came in 1997. I’ll never forget it. My girlfriend at the time made sure I got to go, and I’m forever grateful.
I’ve heard my dad talk about my grandfather’s wish to see the Indianapolis 500 once in his lifetime. That was Yankee Stadium for me.
We sat near the back on the first base side, and the Yankees lost to the Blue Jays. I visited the monuments and took a ton of pictures (though, I’ve managed to post none here). Although I can’t recall if anyone noticed, I’m certain I cried.
The trip home after the game was as interesting as the game. We followed the subway directions my girlfriend’s sister had provided to get to the Stadium, and it all went smoothly. But she didn’t know that one of the trains we needed to take home, by her directions, didn’t run on the weekends. So as we sat in the station after a night game in the Bronx, waiting for a train that would never come, the crowds disappeared, and soon we were alone with a small crowd people that I’ll just call unruly. Eventually, someone gave us the correct directions, but for a few minutes, we were a little concerned.
I’ve since returned for another game, a couple of years ago on a baseball trip with three friends I love, yet see far too little. But the first time is the trip I remember best. And I can always say I was there.
I’m sure the new Stadium will be amazing. But it just won’t be the old Stadium, even the remodeled one.
I’ve been to a lot of major league baseball parks (27) and seen games in a lot better places to see a game, particularly Fenway Park in Boston. But even as great as it is, it won’t be as big a deal when it hosts its last game. The history just isn’t there.
Farewell, Yankee Stadium.
A little irony
The stadium opened in 1923 with a game against the Boston Red Sox. That was appropriate since it was the Red Sox that sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees and effectively allowed the two American League clubs to swap their fortunes.
But the Yankees have a history with Baltimore, whose Orioles were the final team to visit the Stadium on Sunday night. First, Babe Ruth, the star who got his stadium, was a Baltimore native. Secondly, the New York Highlanders, as the Yankees were known until 1913, were originally the Baltimore Orioles, before moving to New York in 1903. The Orioles’ name didn’t again surface until the St. Louis Browns moved to Baltimore in 1954.
Can they take your order?
I really don’t know what the point of this is. But you just don’t find a photo like this everyday.
These are the rookies on the San Diego Padres undergoing a little bit of hazing from their veteran teammates.
Does it make you think twice about you’re next trip to Hooters? I don’t know.
But the next time you hear somebody say, “Just imagine if men were forced to parade around in outfits like that,” just say, “No thanks.”
Until I saw it on the television a couple days ago, I had totally forgotten that trampoline was an official Olympic sport. But it was right there on NBC, so it must be an important event.
My co-worker Chris and I always used to speculate on what sport we, as out-of-shape, 30-plus-year-old journalists, would have the best chance of qualifying in for the Olympics, winter or summer. I don’t recall the conversations verbatim, but I’m certain curling was always in the mix at the end.
(For what it’s worth, we also used to discuss forming a rock band from those in the newsroom, which always included Chris on the triangle.)
In our conversations, trampoline never came up. I think that’s mainly because it’s a new sport, added in 2004 maybe? Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong. But it’s also because trampoline is pretty damn hard.
I watched the competition, and it was essentially gymnastics … performed on a trampoline. The athletes spend two minutes, maybe, just bouncing, getting up to the height needed for their routines. And then there are lots of flips and twists and turns and moves that look a lot like things you see on the vault or the floor exercise.
But once upon a time, I was an Olympic trampoline hopeful.
A family down the street where I grew up bought a trampoline. All the neighborhood kids were allowed to play on it, provided they had a permission slip signed by their parents absolving the owners of said trampoline of any liability.
This was the first obstacle to achieving my Olympic dreams as a trampolinist. My mother was religiously, morally, fundamentally and anally opposed to me, or my sister, also an Olympic hopeful, setting foot on that death machine. Finally, however, she relented and we joined the fun.
In the olden days of the 1980s, the trampoline routines I experienced were far less complex than what I’ve seen in Beijing. They consisted of the butt bounce, the knee bounce, the flip from the knees, the standing flip and the back flip.
But there were other trampoline events I’ve not yet seen in the Olympics. Like dodge ball on the trampoline. Throwers would take their positions on each side of the trampoline and try and pick off one of the dozen or so people crammed onto the trampoline with a Nerf football. Great game. Not sure why this one isn’t in the Olympics.
Another was tackle-the-man-with-the-football on a trampoline. This provided another setback for my Olympic hopes. In the act of recovering a loose football, another competitor jumped on my wrist, breaking it, costing me not only months of trampoline time, but a season of baseball as well.
The broken arm resulted in a temporary ban from the trampoline, instituted by my mother. The ban was lengthened when I got kicked in the mouth on the trampoline, where I wasn’t supposed to be, chipping my two front top teeth and resulting in a visit to the dentist.
After some time, everything calmed down, and one summer day, I was on the trampoline with the two girls who lived there and their friend, who I’ll call Becky … mainly because that’s her name. While on the trampoline, Becky managed to land near one of the corners, her foot slipping between the bar and the mat. Her leg slipped all the way through, she fell off and her leg snapped.
Somehow, despite being six feet away, I was blamed. “He pushed her,” they said. There were three of them and one of me. Never trust girls. But that’s a whole other discussion. Needless to say, another trampoline banishment followed, this time from the owners. Like Shoeless Joe, I got hosed.
By this time, I was getting up there in age, as kids on trampolines go, and my window to become a trampoline star was quickly closing.
But before you begin to question what if … what if he hadn’t been injured? … what if Becky hadn’t fallen? … what if little girls weren’t liars? … just know, there was a bigger obstacle to my trampoline glory.
I was a scardy cat.
As God is my witness, I’ve never done a flip or a twist or a cartwheel … or anything … on a trampoline. I couldn’t then, and I can’t now. Never learned. Never even tried. And I’m not gonna try now.
I guess curling is still my best shot.
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Raising Two Americans 