So much to address here on this Nov. 23-25, 1973, #freakinweekend: the Kings Island Brady Bunch, No. 1 vs. No. 4 and No. 8 vs. No. 9 in college football, the debut of the HP's International House of Pancakes National Football League e-Magnetic Team Standings Board and more! Friday After a run of seasons in which the networks turned out new series that became some of the most iconic programs of our lives, TV73 came up a clunker. Good Times and Happy Days are going to turn up this winter, but nothing much at all took from the fall debuts. Kojak was the lone new fall 1973 series to qualify for the Nielsen top 30 for the season. The writers had struck, and there wasn't a single week crammed with debuts, so that the new series might market for each other. Plus, it appears to me that so many highly popular series were still so early in their runs that the brand-new series couldn't peel away viewers. Take Calucci's Department, a pretty compelling setup for Broadway's James Coco in a New York unemployment office. From the little bit of it I've seen, there's no reason for me to think that this show couldn't've found the quirky, low-burn stroke that Barney Miller ultimately found ...
But it was pitted against NBC's red-hot Sanford and Son at 7 Central on Friday nights, and Calucci's Department is going to be finito after 11 episodes. By the way, ABC's 7 p.m. Central Friday entry, The Brady Bunch, is nearing the end, too. The Bradys are all going to Kings Island on Nov. 23, 1973, which is one of my very favorite episodes of this show ...
Indeed, I'm sticking with Channel 3 the rest of this Friday night: The Odd Couple, a Julie Andrews variety special with Perry Como and the Muppets and then a Love American Style ...
Saturday
Here's the current Associated Press Top 20 in college football:
1. Ohio State 9-0
2. Alabama 10-0 (after beating Louisiana State on Thanksgiving, Nov. 22)
3. Oklahoma 8-0-1
4. Michigan 10-0
5. Notre Dame 9-0
6. Penn State 10-0
7. LSU 9-1 (after losing to Alabama on Thursday)
8. UCLA 9-1
9. Southern California 8-1-1
10. Nebraska 8-1-1
11. Texas 7-2
12. Texas Tech 9-1
13. Arizona State 9-1
14. Houston 8-1
15. Miami (Ohio) 10-0
16. North Carolina State 7-3
17. Tulane 8-1
18. Oklahoma State 5-2-2
19. Missouri 7-3
T20. Kansas 6-3-1
T20. Pittsburgh 6-3-1
So, as you can see, we've got ourselves a pretty compelling Saturday afternoon in front of Channel 3 to look forward to ...
I'm not sure on which Saturday this little Hee Haw snippet aired on Channel 12, but I think Nov. 24, 1973, is a pretty good bet because it was on Nov. 11, 1973, that Louis "Grandpa" Jones of Niagara, Kentucky, had discovered the corpse of his Nashville-suburbs neighbor, David "Stringbean" Akeman of Annville, Kentucky ...
Now on to happier Saturday-night fare ...
Sunday
NBC's got a pretty good noon Central kickoff in 8-2 Steelers at 6-3-1 Browns ...
But we're not seeing that. Channel 12's got the double-header this afternoon: 3-6-1 Cardinals at 6-4 Bengals at noon and then 7-3 Falcons at 3-7 Jets at 3. Channel 6 is holding fire until 6-3-1 Chiefs at 5-3-2 Broncos at 3.
Here's where things stand in Week 11 of NFL73, after the 8-3 Redskins beat the 4-6-1 Lions, 20-0, and then the 10-1 Dolphins beat the 7-4 Cowboys, 14-7, on a very happy Thanksgiving ...
One of my favorite things about the HP is that I just don't feel too much regret around this place. I play for a while with one thing, and then I don't care about it anymore, so I just quit and start playing with something else. A few weeks ago, I thought I was going to go all cuckoo for the College All-Star football game in Chicago, but then it just made me strangely depressed. I mean, the Dolphins won, and it's great to know the NFL73 Dolphins have just won a Super Bowl, and they're getting ready to win another Super Bowl. But I don't know ... thinking about rookies like Ray Guy of the Raiders, John Hannah of the Patriots, Bert Jones of the Colts and even Leon Gray of the Dolphins, who is actually going to end up being an All-Pro for the Patriots and then the Oilers but not the Dolphins ... and remembering how those guys and their teams are going to be such studs during my real Wide Awake in America childhood while the Dolphins are navigating the choppy seasons between the perfect years and until the Marino years ... well, to heck with it, I ended up turning off that post and moving on. Then last week I got all fired up for some made-for-TV satisfaction and all of the Fort Sumter points I wanted to make about Channel 3 and Channel 12 and Maude and Rush Limbaugh and Roe v. Wade and on and on and on. But I wore even myself out just thinking about it and lost interest and kind of got depressed in another way by the whole deal, and, so, I just quit that one, too. Well, that kind of lack of followthrough and sustained attention is refreshingly OK at the HP, and I really love this glorious clubhouse for that fact. And so here I am again, without apology, firing another round in the air, and we'll see what happens But I'm not even going to pretend that this bad boy isn't going to depress me into submission: “Don’t miss this topical story about a successful aerospace engineer whose life undergoes a complete reversal when he’s fired from the job he has held for 20 years. George Kennedy and Vera Miles are very good as the couple who face unexpected struggles and challenges when their affluent world crumbles. An above-average made-for-TV feature."
In other news, 1973 me really did need to chillax. The A's are five and a half up in the American League West as of Aug. 29, 1973. Jim Hunter just made his third start after his injury break. He pitched a one-hitter against Boston last night, and the A's won, 6-1. After the game, "Catfish" was all mad that the scorer gave Carl Yastrzemski a hit on a ball that ricocheted off Gene Tenace’s glove after the first baseman apparently made a valiant try to chase it down. Glenn Schwarz of the San Francisco Examiner quoted Hunter as getting into a loud disagreement with the official scorer, Joe Sargis.
“If Geno doesn’t touch the ball Greenie (second baseman Dick Green) has it and I’m there to cover first base,” said Hunter to Stargis, Catfish’s voice increasing in volume with each word. “It was an error.”
“I called it a hit because Geno tried to get to the ball and couldn’t,” replied Sargis. “I can’t give him an error for hustling.”
Schwarz quoted Tenace, Green and A’s manager Dick Williams as all agreeing with the scorer’s decision.
Geno waited until Hunter was well within hearing range. “They,” said Tenace, “out to give the error to Catfish for throwing that ball.”
I am really, really excited about the A’s winning the World Series again.
You know I'm entering that bad boy! Let's not get ahead of ourselves, however. It is still July, and 1973 me wants to cram in some summer reading before I totally turn myself over to NFL73.
You know I'm entering that bad boy! It'll be exciting to see if I hear back from Wells Fargo or Amazon or Alibaba or whoever today owns Vitalis and the Sports Illustrated Book Club.
That's three straight paragraphs opening with exclamations, so I think it's high time to gear down this #freakinweekend mix tape a notch with some slow-hand love for sleepy, just-after-the-All-Star-break baseball. When we last checked in on MLB73, Oakland had just taken over first place in the American League West. Well, the Swingin' A's now are cruisin', as shown in the Friday morning, July 13, division standings:
A's 50-39
Royals 49-43, 2.5 games back
Angels 45-41, 3.5
Twins 45-41, 3.5
White Sox 45-42, 4
Rangers 30-56, 18.5
In fact, I'm feeling comfortable enough about the defendin' champs to check in on the rest of the league:
AL East
Yankees 50-41
Red Sox 46-39, 1
Orioles 44-38, 1.5
Tigers 46-42, 2.5
Brewers 43-44, 5
Indians 31-58, 18
Back to Billie Jean King for a moment ... I guess I had never checked, and I grew up just sort of believing that Charles Schulz had created the Marcie character amid the 1973 Bobby Riggs hysteria. Not true. It goes back a good bit before then.
A couple of years ago, 1971 me was surprised to discover Marcie in the newspaper strips, before Billie Jean King had really exploded into the culture and onto the covers of People, TIME and even Sports Illustrated.
Bobby Riggs is one of the stories on the July 13, 1973, 60 Minutes, incidentally.
Is all of this Marcie/Billie Jean King deal covered in that great Charles Schulz biography? I'll bet it is, and I've forgotten reading it. This is going to turn out to be another of those deals where, like, I have the same original observation about Tiger Woods's anxieties, except I have it about three Masters tournaments in a row.
Which, in conclusion, reminds me: The British Open!
