Sunday, May 8, 2016

The Freakin' Weekend (1970)





Give it all you got, take your very best shot, and may the best team win. The time is now. The name of the game is action! ...





ABC's Wide World of Sports is carrying the Rebel 400 NASCAR Grand National Race from Darlington, S.C.








I don't know what this college-basketball game is that CBS is scheduled to be showing tonight, but, per the Kentucky New Era TV grid, it will apparently be pre-empting my My Three Sons rerun and might push me over to Lawerence Welk.





I don't often watch Lawrence Welk, but the old boy did have a winning appearance on Here's Lucy this season.











It's only Game 4 of the Stanley Cup playoffs, but it appears the NHL also might be wrapping up its 1969-70 season this weekend.
















73 comments:

  1. Game 7 from Madison Square Garden ...

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  2. OK, the Laker starters are Elgin Baylor and Keith Erickson at the forwards, Wilt Chamberlain at center and Dick Garrett and Jerry West at the guards. The ABC color commentator, Jack Twyman, says Erickson during this series has played stalwart defense against the Knicks' Bill Bradley.

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  3. New York counters with Dave DeBusschere and Bradley at the forwards, Willis Reed at center (giant ovation for the injured Knick captain) and Walt Frazier and Dick Barnett at the guards.

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  4. This is the first NBA Finals series to be televised nationally from beginning to end.

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  5. So Reed doesn't even get off the floor for the center jump against Chamberlain to open the game. Baylor airballs the first shot of the game, and then Frazier passes to Reed for a jump shot near the free-throw line to put the Knicks up, 2-0. Chris Schenkel is ecstatic.

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  6. And Reed scores again, and Schenkel is so beside himself that he just called the Lakers, the "Los Angeles Rams." Knicks, 5-2.

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  7. 9-2, New York, and the Lakers call timeout.

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  8. 2:19 to go in the first quarter, and the Knicks are ahead, 30-19. Reed appears as though he might be done. He can barely walk, much less run up and down the floor with Chamberlain. Reed scored those two outside buckets, and that has definitely influenced the early going--Chamberlain has had to stick with Reed on the perimeter, leaving the area near the basketball ring more open for the smaller Knicks to drive and shoot.

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  9. The Knicks are outshooting the Lakers, 67 percent to 42 percent, from the field. Now 34-23.

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  10. Schenkel tells us that the Rebel 400 half of tomorrow's Wide World of Sports will be blacked out in North and South Carolina. The other half of the show will be the PGA Tour event in Houston, and, presumably, the folks around Darlington will get to see the golf.

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  11. 46-27, and this game just isn't very good at all.

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  12. 56-33, 6:08 to play in the half.

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  13. 63-38, 2:25 to go in the first half ... Chamberlain has made one of his eight free-throw tries.

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  14. OK, that's the half: 69-42, Knicks. I am thrilled for Walt Frazier of Southern Illinois University. He hit eight of 11 field goals and seven of seven free throws for 23 points, to go along with nine assists.

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  15. For my money, this hasn't been much of an NBA season.

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  16. Bill Russell retired, and the Celtics disappeared (34-48, sixth of sevenh in the Eastern Division and out of the playoffs) after winning everything in the 1960s--including the 1968-69 championship when it was clear that the team was way past its prime.

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  17. New York is a good, young team; only Dick Barnett among the Knicks is older than 30. But watching the team's best player, Reed, even though he's only 27, hobble around in this game after getting multiple cortisone shots that makes me think the Knicks are probably not going to be the next Celtics.

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  18. I do like the Bucks, with Lew Alcindor and WKU's Greg Smith, and there's the Bullets, with Louisville's Wes Unseld.

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  19. Over in the West, Deford had me excited about the Hawks a couple of weeks ago, and I was getting excited about the Bulls with WKU's Clem Haskins and Evansville's Jerry Sloan. But then Chicago traded Haskins to Phoenix, so I'm mad at the Bulls.

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  20. Anyway, this whole NBA season feels a little half-baked.

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  21. And now we have the damaged/never-going-to-be Knicks blitzing the never-exactly-were Lakers at half of Game 7.

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  22. And that's over. Los Angeles did not close to within two points. Final: 113-99.

    Here's Howard Cosell interviewing Dick Barnett, and he's asking him about rumors that he might be made available in the upcoming expansion draft. That goes over really well.

    Chris Schenkel urges ABC's viewers to stay tuned for a President Nixon press conference following the game. A 10 p.m. Eastern Friday press conference from the president of a nation at war ... that doesn't sound any too happy.

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  23. We missed a Brady Bunch rerun to watch this thing tonight.

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  24. Replies
    1. Elgin Baylor, future general manager of the Clippers, is quoted by Deford: "I forget the losses. I'm immune to the past."

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  25. Deford points out in the same story that Jim Murray had been cracking on Louisville in his Kentucky Derby coverage for The Los Angeles Times.

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  26. I'm so excited about Roberta Flack's second album this 1970 summer. Her first one might 've been Hoptown 1969 me's favorite record of the whole year.

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  27. There you go ... David Pearson of Spartanburg, South Carolina, wins in Darlington. He had a near miss at the Daytona 500, and now the 1966, '68 and '69 Grand National Series champ has his first win of 1970.

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  28. Next Saturday, Jim McKay says he'll have same-day videotape coverage of the Indianapolis 500 time trials, the ABC's Wide World of Sports athlete of year for 1969, Japanese kickboxing (first time for that sport on the show) and the Mexican 1000 cross-country road racing championship.

    McKay: "That's next week. This week, Johnny Reb is indicating that David Pearson is the winner of the 1970 Rebel 400. The executive producer of ABC’s Wide World of Sports is Roone Arledge ..."

    Wow! What a great show that was.

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    Replies
    1. The guys running along and atop Pearson's car are just fantastic.

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  29. Last week 1970 on American Bandstand: Crabby Appleton with "Go Back." And now it's up seven slots to No. 69 in this week's Cash Box Top 100.

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  30. Replies
    1. Boss General Johnson and the Chairman of the Board just bringing it ... No. 54, "Dangling on a String."

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  31. Quincy Jones's "Killer Joe," which would one day become the theme of the great Little Bill cartoon, is No. 59.

    No. 70, incidentally, was Bill Cosby's interesting "Grover Henson Feels Forgotten," still climbing in its fifth week on the Cash Box Top 100.

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  32. Exciting! Airport must be out this year! It's rare to find a movie I'm actually interested in seeing.

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  33. This is probably going to be the highest-charting song this week 1970 that I don't believe I've ever heard before: No. 11 "What Is Truth?" by Johnny Cash.

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  34. No. 100 on the Cash Box Top 100 for the week ending May 23, 1970: peppy "Primrose Lane" by O.C. Smith of Mansfield, Louisiana.

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  35. For sure, the best record I've heard all 1970 remains Frank Sinatra's Watertown:

    People say to me,
    'You need company
    'When you have
    time to spend,
    'Drop around
    and meet a friend'
    They forget
    that I'm not over you
    for a while


    My Lord, that is so beautiful and so perfect.

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  36. Speaking of the Warriors (in the most recent NBA Update post), the 1970 Warriors have named Al Attles as their full-time head coach. He served as player-coach for the last 30 games of the season after George Lee was fired, and now he says he plans to retire as a guard to take over the permanent coaching position.

    We don't know it yet, but this is very bad news for us Bullets fans.

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