Sports Then and Now

I’ve gradually gotten to the point that Twitter is my primary means of relating to people. My favorite use of the social medium is exchanging comments on Sabres games during games. It doesn’t matter who’s at the game and who’s in the TV room at home. We’re all sitting next to each other in the same section in the virtual arena.

Often we commiserate with each other about bad plays, missed opportunities, and foreboding signs from the tone and tenor of play by our hometown heroes. There is usually a hero, especially when the game goes well. I remember one of my “tweeps” (Twitter friends) typing “Gerbe Gerbe Gerbe Gerbe” when little Nathan Gerbe made stellar play after stellar play as the Sabres momentum toward an unlikely playoff berth started to build in one game late last season.

Buffalo is a unique town, even among small market towns. We are what we are, and because we are the butt of snow jokes and worse-than-Cleveland insinuations, our rust belt hackles get up quite easily. The upside of that syndrome is that it gives us a stronger sense of collective angst. We are David against the Goliaths of the world. We are on the side of justice on behalf of all the worlds victims and underdogs.

That being said, it was providential and perhaps inevitable that New York State’s greatest political victory for the underdog came as Buffalo sports fans, normally so obsessed with sports that we can be oblivious to the real world, were following the NHL draft and the unveiling of the Buffalo Bills new uniforms, all in one night. Read the rest of this entry →

This is part three in a series:

The second pick in the 1972 NBA draft, Bob McAdoo won three scoring titles in four full years with the Buffalo Braves.

This time he wanted to meet at the Anchor Bar. I thought it was rather bold, considering his secretive, back alley, after dark, jump in, jump out of a smoke-glass stretch limo style at the previous two meetings…until I realized he meant three in the morning, not three in the afternoon.

In the far end of the parking lot, the black limo dissolved into moonless darkness. I had a feeling it wasn’t just coincidence all the street lights within 50 yards were out.

I pulled up parallel to the limo, slid my window down and waited, as instructed. A moment later, the window next to me slid down.

“Hop in,” he said.

I obeyed.

“You don’t get it.” He complained.

“What?”

“Why do you think I’ve been calling these meetings? I need you to take action. Start the ball dribbling, so to speak.”

“What’m I supposed to do?” I asked. “I’m just a Sports Then & Now contributor. A volunteer journalist. The largest audience I’ve had for an article is a couple of thousand, and that was my tongue-in-cheek prediction that the Bills would win the next Super Bowl.”

Read the rest of this entry →