THE FRONT ROW with MARK NELKE: The draft, the Vandals and more on Kaline
I kinda liked the way the NFL draft was presented this year.
Just give me the picks, tell me a little bit about them, and move on.
I get that the top picks, especially, miss out on their moment in the spotlight in front of a crowd, and that fans miss out on the chance to be part of a “live” event.
If Seattle ever hosted the NFL draft, would you drive over there to say you were a part of it?
It’ll be interesting, if they poll all the college kids, if they actually preferred being in the comfort of their own home, surrounded by family and friends, compared to going to another town, being in more of a spotlight, but surrounded by fewer family and friends.
If so, we might be onto something here.
Now, hopefully, we have a season for them to play this fall ...
’TIS STILL the season for watching old games.
One game I stumbled upon in my VHS collection recently was an Idaho men’s basketball game at Montana in January of 1991.
It was a Thursday night game on ESPN, with a 10 p.m. local tipoff time in Missoula.
(It’s hard to imagine ESPN showing a Big Sky basketball game these days, unless it’s perhaps for the conference tournament championship.)
The SportsCenter anchors on the show just before the game were Dan Patrick and Chris Myers.
The ESPN studio host for the game was Chris Fowler.
The announcers on the scene in Missoula were Tom Mees, one of the original SportsCenter anchors who drowned in 1996, doing play-by-play; and Terry Holland, the former Virginia coach, as analyst.
Tensions from the Persian Gulf War were evident, and before the game started, some Montana students went out onto the court and laid down, and had to be dragged off the court by law enforcement.
That was an ode to the war.
Then, fans threw potatoes onto the court, and the start of the game was delayed further so the floor could be cleaned of spuds.
That was an ode to Idaho.
Among Idaho’s key players were Leonard Perry, who would later become Vandals coach, along with Sammie Freeman, Calvin Ward, Otis Mixon, Keith Stewart, Ricardo Boyd, Lance Irvin and others.
Idaho forward Clifford Martin had recently been ruled ineligible.
Coming off the bench for the Vandals was an athletic forward named Deon Watson, future father of Deon, Haile and Anton.
Larry Eustachy was in his first year as Idaho coach, replacing Kermit Davis, who left for Texas A&M after leading the Vandals to back-to-back Big Sky tourney titles.
1990 remains Idaho’s last trip to the NCAAs.
Stew Morrill was Montana’s coach. And the Griz, led by Kevin Kearney, Roger Fasting, Daren Engellant and Delvon Anderson, held off the Vandals 67-62.
A COUPLE readers responded with their memories of former Detroit Tigers star Al Kaline, who died April 6 at age 85.
“He was my baseball hero growing up just outside of Detroit,” wrote Mike Riabucha, who moved to North Idaho in 2004 and spent 10 years in Harrison before moving to Coeur d’Alene. “I watched him play many times at Briggs (Tiger) Stadium with family members. I even had a ball glove with his signature on the pinky finger. Seemed to have lost it throughout our multiple moves from Michigan to California to Idaho. Darn.”
Riabucha said he still has a baseball signed by Kaline that he bought in Cooperstown in the 1980s, and also still has the book then-Tigers manager Sparky Anderson wrote (“Bless You Boys”) after Detroit won the 1984 World Series. One of the heroes of that Series was Kirk Gibson.
“Kirk went to the same high school as I did but only about 10 years later,” Riabucha recalled. “He graduated with my youngest sister and he even asked her out on a date. She was the homecoming queen of their class but she turned him down. He became a Tiger about 4 or 5 years later. Darn ... he could have been my brother in law.”
Jerry Bittner, girls basketball coach at North Idaho Christian, also recalled watching Kaline play in Detroit when he was growing up.
“Went to every one of those home games in 1968 as I was managing a Kresge store in downtown Detroit, not far from the stadium,” Bittner recalled of the Tigers’ World Series season. “I remember his first game and his last. Gordie Howe gave a speech that last game. Gordie said, ‘One of the greatest things that has happened in my life was that I got to be a friend to Al Kaline.’”
Dave Campbell, the former ESPN broadcaster who like Bittner lives on The Highlands Golf Course in Post Falls, played briefly on that 1968 Detroit team.
“Watched a game in Detroit when a fight broke out,” Bittner recalled. “Gates Brown and Willie Horton went to the mound and ripped their shirts off and stood back to back waving the other team to come and take them on. They got no takers.”
Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached via email at mnelke@cdapress.com. Follow him on Twitter@CdAPressSports.
