Tuesday, May 28, 2019

What's (Not) On TV Tonight (1973)?

The Indianapolis 500, that's what:


I'm not sure what Channel 3 is going to show now that the race is delayed, but the great news is this frees up my Memorial Day May 28, 1973, Monday evening to watch baseball on Channel 6. In some markets at least, that game is scheduled to be the Oakland A's at the Detroit Tigers.

And if that doesn't happen--the A's-Tigers game was rained out Sunday--I will settle for the Channel 12 sitcom reruns. Per the Paducah, Kentucky, Sun-Democrat, here's what we can look forward to at 8 and 8:30 Central:

Here's Lucy. Lucy lands the job when singer Petula Clark contacts the agency for a secretary who can also act as her companion.

The Doris Day Show. Doris spends so much time interviewing a rock music star that word spreads that the young singer and Doris are seriously involved.

I actually saw both of these episodes when they originally ran during the fake 1972/73 TV season that I've been enjoying, and I would be happy to watch them both again.

30 comments:

  1. Let me tell you something. In my world, this post is a giant gateway to about six different kinds of tried-and-true fun. It's going to be a good week.

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  2. So the A’s lost, 4-3, in Detroit on Channel 6 Monday night, May 28. John “Blue Moon” Odom picked up his eighth loss in nine decisions, as the Tigers completed the series sweep.

    This must’ve been a delicious weekend in 1973 for Detroit. Here was part of the Oakland Tribune dispatch from the series opener:

    (Oakland shortstop Bert) Campaneris was injured Friday night when (Detroit catcher Bill) Freehan dumped him on his right shoulder breaking up a doubleplay in the 11th inning. There’s no telling when he’ll be back, which should deprive the Detroit fans of their favorite boo target.

    They boo him because he threw his bat toward reliever Lerrin LaGrow in the second game of last year’s Playoffs. LaGrow, in response to a probing question, said he wasn’t wamong those booing Campy on Friday night.

    “Nah,” LaGrow said, smiling. “That’s all over now.”

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  3. What's more, that Here's Lucy rerun with Petula Clark was kind of a letdown. No offense to Petula Clark, whose 1973 single with Sacha Distel, "Taking It On," I've been enjoying this week. It's just that I have to be in the right mood for a Here's Lucy, and watching the A's get swept wasn't conducive to that experience.

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  4. So then the race was delayed again, on Tuesday, May 29. And that meant I was back on Channel 6 for A Time For Love: “Jack Cassidy, John Davidson, Lauren Hutton, Bonnie Bedevil and Christopher Mitchum star in two stories about opposite types meeting and falling in love," reads the Sun-Democrat's preview blurb. The bit I could find on YouTube was pleasant enough, especially the super-familiar made-for-TV-movie music. I think I would've enjoyed the whole thing.

    That is, unless I had been simultaneously following the Tuesday-night opener of the A’s/Yankees series in New York. The Yankees clobbered Jim “Catfish” Hunter, 7-1, and Campaneris still wasn’t back in the lineup.

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  5. Here were the American League West standings in the May 31, 1973, Sun-Democrat:

    White Sox 26-14
    Angels 23-19, 4 games back
    Twins 23-19, 4
    Royals 26-22, 4
    Athletics 23-23, 6
    Rangers 13-28, 13.5

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  6. And here are the rest of the MLB73 standings:

    AL East
    Tigers 24-20
    Yankees 23-22, 1.5
    Orioles 19-20, 2.5
    Red Sox 19-22, 3.5
    Indians 20-25, 4.5
    Brewers 19-24, 4.5

    NL East
    Cubs 28-18
    Mets 20-21, 5.5
    Pirates 19-20, 5.5
    Expos 18-21, 6.5
    Phillies 19-25, 8
    Cardinals 18-24, 8

    NL West
    Giants 31-19
    Dodgers 28-19, 1.5
    Astros 28-21, 2.5
    Reds 26-20, 3
    Braves 17-28, 11.5
    Padres 16-32, 14

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  7. The Wikipedia article on the race is excellent, especially around how the safety rules changed in the wake of this race in terms of how emergency-response vehicles are to move in relation to race and pit traffic. Good detail, too, on how ABC was still editing together the end of the show when the program started in prime time on Wednesday, May 30.

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  8. It was really strange to see an Indianapolis 500 with such empty stands. Of course, this makes sense, given the race had been delayed by two days to a Wednesday, but it's still strange to see.

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  9. Oh, another thing the Wikipedia story clarifies is how A.J. Foyt showed back up in the race after his car had gone kaput earlier: "After witnessing the Savage crash, a disconsolate George Snider decided to climb out of his car for the day, and turned it over to A. J. Foyt, his car owner.[23] Foyt himself had already dropped out on lap 37, and was standing by in case he was needed for relief." ABC noted Foyt's reappearance in the race field but didn't have any of the detail on why it came about; Jim McKay simply pointed out it would be within Foyt's authority as team lead to take over Snider's car.

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  10. The broadcast was totally gripping. Some of my favorite parts were all of the great graphics that Jackie Stewart talked us through early on stuff like how air flow pushes the cars down to the track; McKay's evident relief that rain brought the race to an end, and upright Chris Schenkel of Bippus, Indiana, trying his darnedest to turn all of our frowns upside down: "Being a Midwesterner, I just want to tell them it will be better next year."

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  11. There's no word about this in the main Wikipedia article on the race or the Dave Diles page, but I sure do wonder about his relationship with the racing and Indianapolis Motor Speedway suits after this broadcast. Diles was pretty aggressive in his trackside reporting in trying to cast light on the story of problems with the track that drivers and other race personnel were almost certainly telling him about off camera. I wonder if he'll turn up in the 1974 ABC telecast, and I'm hopeful YouTube and I are both still around on Memorial Day 2020 so that I get to find out.

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  12. Every so often, you come across a peculiar sentence or two that the tremendous Wikipedia editors apparently haven't yet gotten to, and here's one from the Dave Diles page:

    Diles’ hometown named a park after him. The Dave Diles Park is named in his honor located in his hometown of Middleport Ohio, along the banks of the Ohio River. Meigs County is unrecognized by the sponsors at Ohio History Central to some degree. In published accounts of Israel Putnam of the Ohio Company and Revolutionary War officer, his land holdings,(Rutledge and Bedford Townships) in Ohio are ignored. Not as famous as his family member Rufus Putnam certainly, but worth a footnote at least in the post Revolutionary War period through the Civil War.

    I'm not exactly sure what all of that stuff at the end is saying, but this does make me want to go to Dave Diles Park in Middleport, Ohio. And, indeed, at another stage in my life not too long ago, I might well have gotten up very early this morning and undertaken a pilgrimage.

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  13. On Wednesday night, May 30, in New York, George "Doc" Medich struck out the first two Oakland batters and retired the first eight. The Yankees opened the bottom of the first by loading the bases with no outs and eventually taking a 2-0 lead against Vida Blue.

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  14. In the middle of the game, I thought this might be where the whole season of the 1973 A's turned around. There was an inning where ninth-hitter Dick Green got on first with two out. Then Bill North singled, and then Ted Kubiak--still playing shortstop in place of injured Bert Campaneris--tripled. (In my whole boyhood of accumulating and thumbing through Ted Kubiak baseball cards, he seemed like such an anonymous player that even 50-year-old me still was stunned that he would be responsible for so thrilling a play as a game-tying triple!) Then Sal Bando walked, and then Reggie Jackson singled home Kubiak! The A's were now ahead, 3-2.

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  15. But then somewhere amid all of the Swede Savage commotion, the Yankees manufactured a game-tying run on the BackToBaseball.com feed. And then Thurmon Munson led off the bottom of the eighth with a solo home run off Darold Knowles, and then that was that.

    I'm getting ready to time travel back to Indianapolis on May 31, 1973, via Newspapers.com, and I'm already honestly dreading seeing the baseball-standings agate and my defending-champion A's being a game below .500.

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  16. Back to .500 (24-24): On May 31, Ken Holtzman retires the first 20 Yankees, and Reggie Jackson triples and homers in his first two at-bats as A's win, 6-0.

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  17. It's always amazing to find the actual episode of Love American Style that aired on a given night. Here's the Jack Klugman/Brett Somers Krugman rerun that turned on Channel 3 on Friday night, June 8, 1973. I feel like a freaking champion!

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  18. On the crushing side, the BackToBaseball.com server is on the fritz.

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  19. To Tell the Truth isn't a good game show; it's a great game show. And now it's even covering the Olympics!

    Men's Freestyle 68 kg wrestling, Munich 1972:

    -- Dan Gable of Waterloo, Iowa, gold
    -- Kikuo Wada of Japan, silver

    "At the 1972 Olympic Games in particular, Gable won all six of his matches without giving up a point."

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  20. I'll tell you what else. What's My Line? is a pretty darned entertaining game show, as well. Here's a super episode filmed June 23, 1973. Earlier this month, there was an episode featuring Vince Noltemeyer of Louisville, in which he "demonstrates a machine to make your own peanut butter from fresh peanuts."

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