I’m still told I was supposed to have been deeply traumatized by the whole thing. But as a 10-year-old, it was hard to lose sleep over what you didn’t really get.
Sure, drilling every day at school in preparation for a nuclear attack was odd, but why would the Russians or Cubans bomb Staten Island, let alone aim for P.S. 35?
Besides, I’d measure everything important in terms of sports. That five months earlier Bennie “Kid” Paret died after a fight with Emile Griffith — a bout I’d watched on TV — now, that was staggering.
The man I’d watched box that Friday night 10 days later was dead; never came out of it. That one hit and stuck.
So on Friday, Nov. 22, 1963, what told me that something bad — bad beyond my grasp — had occurred was not so much the news that President Kennedy had been shot, but that look on the teachers’ faces. They looked sick; they spoke to one another in whispers.
And two days later, again watching live TV, I saw a man shot and killed — Lee Harvey Oswald, who I came to realize was only 24, but looked like a friend’s father who’d pitch to us. My yardstick was sports. Couldn’t help it.
For the longest time it seemed that TV never would return to my normal. For days it only seemed to include a procession with an unmounted horse being led through Washington behind a casket on a wagon — nothing like my Uncle Jack’s funeral — the latest on the assassination, cuts to Lyndon Johnson seen in grainy black and white, and something spooky called the “eternal flame.”
But on Dec. 7, of all days, 1963, the Army-Navy game was played in Philadelphia. It had been delayed a week, after rumors spread it would be cancelled. But it was played, attached to a poignancy that was supposed to have been similar to the Army-Navy game after the 9/11 attacks.
But again, what did I know in 1963? What did I feel? All I knew is that I rooted for Navy — my dad was a World War II Naval officer; married my mom in 1947, still in the Navy and in uniform — and Roger Staubach was the man, so much so, I later learned, that he was to be Life Magazine’s cover story. It was all set — until Kennedy was murdered.
So, other than the fact it was an Army-Navy game spiced by the additive that a Navy win would put it in the Cotton Bowl to play Texas for the national title, I missed the rest — too young and sports-headed to get it.
Now, 50 years later, perhaps I do. Thursday at 8 p.m. CBS Sports Network presents “Marching On: 1963 Army-Navy Remembered,” a one-hour keeper for sports fans of all ages and all Ages.
It just takes you there, or so it seems. The feel, the sounds, the sights, the recollections of young adults now well into their 70s. More than 102,000 people showed up — many, it seemed, just to get back into it, to try to get through what they never would get over.
We hear voices from the past — Chris Schenkel — and the now — Bill Belichick, whose father was a Navy assistant. Army’s young coach, Paul Dietzel, is seen and heard in perhaps his last interview. He died, at 89, in September.
But most of all it gives some of us a second chance — others their first — to get what’s hard to get when you’re a kid, when Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro didn’t mean as much as Kid Paret and Jolly Roger Staubach. Thursday, 8 p.m., CBS Sports Network.
Francesa is no fan of hockey, Orr is he?
“Let’s Be Honest” Mike Francesa’s capacity to be caught being far less remains boundless. Last week, days after telling Bobby Orr that he’s a lifelong fan who read every word of his book, Francesa hung up on a caller who wanted to talk hockey.
Funny thing about Francesa and hockey: He does have moments of great clarity and insight.
A few years ago, before the NHL added tiebreaking shootouts, Islanders goalie Rick DiPietro made a fabulous save with a second left in overtime to preserve the tie, a save that was widely shown and called “a game-saver.”
Shortly afterward, I wrote the game-saver saved nothing because “a quirk” in the NHL points system meant the Islanders would have received a point either way, thus DiPietro’s save was irrelevant to the Isles because it happened against a team outside their conference.
Well, given I had several seasons to discover this “quirk,” the very next day he was on the air, Francesa repeated what I wrote — even used the word “quirk” — and credited his discovery to (who else?) Mike Francesa.
* * *
At first, last week, it struck me as almost impossible that the 2007 murder of Redskins defensive back Sean Taylor, suspects quickly arrested, had just been adjudicated. Justice is swift?
But then I realized that I’d spent all Monday afternoon waiting to be interviewed after summoned for jury duty. Never made it that far, and was told to return Wednesday; the courts were closed Tuesday, Election Day.
But that the wheels of justice turn slowly should have been a matter of self-evidence. In the large waiting room, on shelves that held books and magazines to help potential jurists kill time, was a Monopoly game. “Nice meeting you, too. We’ll pick it up from here Wednesday.”
* * *
UConn’s police chief, Barbara O’Connor, claims former UConn football coach Paul Pasqualoni was told that one of his players had been accused of an on-campus rape. Pasqualoni says he never was told.
Now how does one side or the other get such a thing wrong? Or is a rape claim the kind of thing that over time — two years — one tends to confuse or forget?
* * *
Trying to come up with the opposite of “a true freshman,” the only thing we’ve got is “a false freshman.”
How is it that Giants safety Antrel Rolle speaks with such erudition and wisdom from the locker room, yet behaves like such a check-me-out slug during games? Maybe to make the highlights reels?
Reader Keith Kerulo goes way back. He can recall when “a neutral-zone infraction” was called “offsides.”
College basketball season is here, so let’s get out there and “score the basketball!”