By Michael Gora (Temporary Sports Columnist)
Editor’s Note: Once again, columnist Mike Gora steps away from
the world of reality to visit the athletic arena as a temporary sports
columnist.
Edwin Pope and Luther Evans sat in the Orange Bowl press box
a row in front of me that night in about 1962 as the football game
between my Florida Gators and their Miami Hurricanes played out
before us on the emerald green pitch.
Edwin and Luther were in their prime. Luther specialized in covering
the horse tracks, but could write on any subject. Edwin stayed with
the major sports which, at that time, meant the Miami Hurricanes
football program.
The Dolphins did not exist, nor did The Heat or the Panthers. The
Miami Hurricane basketball program was nothing to brag about,
Gator basketball bragging rights were limited to an occasional leap
of brilliance by a win here and there over the Kentucky Wildcats, or
Mississippi State Maroons, SEC power houses of the day.
Edwin Pope’s bi-weekly column in the Herald was called “Adventures
of a Traveling Troll”, and I so much wanted to be like Pope when I
grew up. I was in the press box that night in my role as the sports
editor of the UF student newspaper, the Florida Alligator, then an on
campus rag. I was later to play a part in getting that paper banned
from the campus, but that is another story.
Now, like most sports fans, I do my traveling by clicking the remote
control looking for exciting moments in the featured games of the
day. Especially interested in the Gators, Dolphins, and Marlins, I
tolerate the Hurricanes, of my brother Bill, and loathe the Seminoles.
As this is the worst of times for the state’s football and baseball
teams, and the NBA is in the midst of attempting hari kari, I find
myself watching the baseball playoffs
In the absence of my own team, my heart searches for connections to
others in order to establish a temporary rooting interest. It has settled
on the St. Louis Cardinals in the National League and the Detroit
Tigers in the American.
My ties to these franchises are weak and ancient. Dave Duncan,
forever the pitching coach of the St. Louis Cards, was the catcher
of the Gator baseball team during my tenure in Gainesville, where I
doubled as the official score keeper.
The Tiger ties are a bit more recent. After all the team of Dave
Dombrowski, Jim Leyland and Miguel Cabera easily become the
ghosts of Marlin’s past.
I did not settle for the Milwaukee Brewers of my wife’s home town.
Her team of childhood had been the Braves and her heroes the
Warren Spahn’s and Joe Adcocks, not the “Brew Crew”.
The trick of the great sports columnists I have followed through the
years like Evans, Pope, Jim Murray of the L.A. Times, and others,
was to watch a particular event or “series” of events and place magic
moments which they have observed in their proper historical context.
After all, the beat writers have written the game stories appearing the
morning after the game, on the same day the column appears, or a
couple of days before. The columnists have to find and convey the
greater meaning of the recent event in the historical context of the
sport.
Such an analysis has emerged over the last few days and nights
in the Detroit-Texas Series. The Teutonic plates of the history of
baseball have shifted slightly, but importantly. Reggie Jackson is
no longer Mr. October. Nelson Cruz, has, through his grand slam
and three run walk off home runs in the last two games become Mr.
October to fans of a new generation.
Oh, and for the record: the Gators beat Miami in that Orange Bowl
game, as quarterback Larry Libertore, a 115-pound magician, popped
through the behemoths of both lines to break a long run for the win.